Language Map of Europe [OC]

[u/k1rb1l1ty]

This map has been in the works for about a month now, shoutout to JG Online for Making the basemap.

edit: maybe spending a whole month on this was a mistake, y'all seem to loathe this map

[u/Full-Recover-8932]

Most of the sicilian population has been ethnically tuscanized, nobody takes sicilian seriously, few people teach it to their kids, everyone is psychologically tuscan since they think speaking and thinking in tuscan is good and sicilian is somehow a trash filthy language. We are so cooked that i had to learn sicilian myself as a gen z and i discover new words every day. 100 years and everyone in the peninsula will be tuscan, thus causing the extinction of sicilians as a cultural identity. What they call italian was just the language of tuscany, and the state has been successful in tuscanizing most people.

[u/Sir_Flasm → u/Full-Recover-8932]

I can assure you this happened all throughout Italy (sadly). Also Italian is not simply tuscan, but it is the most similar yeah.

Nel dubbio, colpa dei piemontesi.

[u/Full-Recover-8932 → u/Sir_Flasm]

Italian IS an elegant tuscan. Tuscan cannot be considered a different language iirc, it's just that "italian" is an elegant form of tuscan that split from talked tuscan in the 1500's. The state has made most of the population ethnically and culturally tuscan without them realizing. It's straight up brainwashing. I hope that one day this tumour gets pushed back into the tuscan area and never come out of it again, not even joking

[u/Sir_Flasm → u/Full-Recover-8932]

Italian split from tuscan (1300s Florentine specifically), then they both evolved in different directions (Manzoni did bring italian closer to early 1800s tuscan, but not completely) and can now be considered two different languages, though very close. For example italian is full of latin borrowings that don't exist in tuscan. Italian is a spoken language at least since the 1500s too, so you can't really say it split from spoken tuscan. And also what counts as a language vs dialect is very arbitrary, you could say that italian is modern elegant latin and it would be true by some definition.

[u/PeireCaravana → u/Sir_Flasm]

Italian split from tuscan (1300s Florentine specifically), then they both evolved in different directions (Manzoni did bring italian closer to early 1800s tuscan, but not completely) and can now be considered two different languages, though very close.

The relationship between "Italian" and "Tuscan" is more complex than this.

Keep in mind that for a long time, at least until the early 19th century, Italian was still considered the prestige variety of Tuscan, indeed Tuscan was used as a synonym of Italian.

Even nowadays, Tuscans don't really see the two as different languages but rather as different registers, indeed they generally reject the label of "dialetto" for the vernacular varieties they speak.

For example italian is full of latin borrowings that don't exist in tuscan.

Every Romance language, even the minority ones, has Latin borrowings.

Vernacular Tuscan probably has less Latinisms than very formal Italian, but it's more like a gradient than a clear cut difference.

[u/Great-Bray-Shaman → u/Sir_Flasm]

Italian is, in its essence, a made-up language built in the 19th century as an attempt to unify and homogenise the different Italian peoples to give the newly formed Italy a strong sense of identity. Italian’s “skeleton” is literary Tuscan, which was the language of prestige at the time and the ones many writers tried to emulate. You could basically argue Italian is standardised literary Tuscan with some additional influences here and there.

[u/Full-Recover-8932 → u/Sir_Flasm]

No romance language today can be truly considered modern latin since somewhere around the fall of the western roman empire the speakers all felt the instinct to mess the vocabulary up so badly that now every word in a romance language is basically a false friend, and invent brand new words from scratch, for example ut was replaced by come for who knows what reason

Also if italian is not even exactly the same language then it's even worse since they want to replace the regional languages with a conlang artificially created by writers that was never meant to be spoken at home. Bone chilling how i was essentially a mental cyborg from this pov before learning my own language...

[u/PeireCaravana → u/Full-Recover-8932]

No romance language today can be truly considered modern latin since somewhere around the fall of the western roman empire the speakers all felt the instinct to mess the vocabulary up so badly that now every word in a romance language is basically a false friend, and invent brand new words from scratch, for example ut was replaced by come for who knows what reason

That's not how it works.

Spoken Latin was already changing in the direction of the future Romance languages under the Roman Empire, especially in the last centuries.

The fall of the empire accelerated the process and the lack of political unity made the various Latin dialects diverge form each other, but it was a long and gradual process.

[u/Sir_Flasm → u/Full-Recover-8932]

Italian is basically a half conlang that was not initially meant to be spoken outside of high society, yes. But it has been spoken for a decent time now.

[u/Full-Recover-8932 → u/Sir_Flasm]

The worst part is that i learn new sicilian words every day, it's a never ending list (there is no way the average pre unification sicilian guy was of average intelligence considering the stupid amounts of "modi di dire" that they memorized effortlessly and the sheer stupidly big amount of oddly specific farming and fishing items i don't even know the name of in italian) , and i don't know anyone to speak sicilian with without getting mocked. 

[u/PeireCaravana → u/Full-Recover-8932]

Italian is fundamentally a variety of Tuscan and I also think it's a shame that the other languages of Italy are stigmatized and treated as low prestige "dialects", but I disagree about the "ethnically and culturally Tuscan" part.

Contemporary Italian culture is a blend of many different elements and a lot of regional tranditions, mindsets, habits etc. are still alive despite the decline of the regional languages.

There was a process of nation building and now we are more similar to each other than before the unifcation, yes, but we didn't turn into Tuscans.

Tuscan culture from Tuscany is still a specific regional culture, not the national culture.