Talk:Niçard dialect

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If you compare the Occitan and Nissart versions of the Declaration, it is very obvious that Nissart is an independent language, although closely related to Occitan (but not more closely than to Italian or the Northern Italian local languages). To wit:

(Nissart) Toti li persona naisson libri e egali en dignitat e en drech. Son dotadi de rason e de consciéncia e li cau agir entre eli emb un esprit de fratelança.

(Occitan) Totes los èssers umans naisson liures e egals en dignitat e en dreches. Son dotats de rason e de consciéncia e se devon comportar los unes amb los autres dins un esperit de fraternitat.

Not all linguists agree that Nissart is Occitan. Occitan linguists do... but they overlook the obvious differences, and the historical fact that Occitan was never an official language in Nice, contrary to Italian and French. Also, Nissart has quite a literature to it.

Anyone who has ever heard Ligurian will agree that Nissart is something else.

(Ligurian, Genoa variety) Tutti i òmmi nàscian in libertæ e son pægi in dignitæ e drïti. Son dotæ de raxon e de consciensa e àn da fâ l'un con l'ätro in pinn-a fraternitæ.

Monegasque is a variety of Ligurian, a lot less closely related to either Occitan or Nissart. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.148.158.231 (talk) 15:14, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

But to anybody with a knowledge of Italian and/or Lombard, Nissart is 95% intelligible.

93.148.158.233 (talk) 14:58, 1 March 2010 (UTC)Brerus

Can a language (nissart) be a dialect of another language (provencal) that is a dialect of another language (Occitan)? This article is really stupid. I think that Nissart was the original language of the city of Nissa that was influnced by Provencal, Ligurian, French and Italian. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.13.96.189 (talk) 21:37, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

The "comté de Nice" was very different from the french department of "les Alpes Maritimes". It was much smaller, at least the french part of it. Nice is limited on the West by a river called the Var, and on the other side of the river is a town called Saint Laurent du Var. as a typical example, during the 19th century, the "comté de nice" wasn't french, but Saint Laurent du Var was, as were Antibes, Cannes, and so on... Palleas 17:29, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Nissart must be comparetaed with western ligurian variety not with genoan of course.Genoa is very far from Nice.The closest varieties of ligurian are the intimelion, the monegasque and the alpin ligur, not at all the ligur dialect of the town of Genoa.

Occitan?

Can it honestly be said that Niçard is a dialect of Occitan and not Ligurian? I would be inclined to think it can be categorized either way- as part of a continuum- but closer to the latter. Any info out there? Dionix (talk) 16:28, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

This chapter from a book on languages in Contemporary Europe (2002) suggests Nissart is Ligurian (Northern Italian), not Occitan or French. Dionix (talk) 16:44, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

No scholar consider Niçard as Ligurian; all scholars consider it as Occitan. Please see bibliography, especially Bec (1970-71), Dalbera (1984) and Gourdon (1997).--Nil Blau (talk) 16:59, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Sue Wright is a scholar and her opinion on the referenced "Beyond boundaries" book must be taken in consideration. Please remember that in Wikipedia we have to consider all the scholars' opinions.--Merighi (talk) 22:33, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I agree. Dionix (talk) 22:39, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Sue Wright is not a specialist of Romance linguistics and what she says about the linguistic adscription of Niçard (Occitan or Italian) is totally undocumented: all specialists of Romance linguistics agree about the fact that Niçard is a part of Occitan: see the given references (especially Dalbera). — — — Merighi's last modifications are wrong about Cerquiglini's book: Cerquiglini has never said that Niçard would have been a former Ligurian variety. the Royasque dialect (Brigasco, Tendasque...) is structurally Ligurian, yes of course, but this is not the case of Niçard: please note that Royasque is not Niçard.--Nil Blau (talk) 22:49, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Well, I must bow to your knowledge on this subject matter. What I'm learning is just recent surfing. Nonetheless, when you look at language as a continuum, there is no doubt that Niçard is in many ways a transition. It seems entirely plausible that in the past it was closer to Ligurian. Dionix (talk) 22:59, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

You say "It seems", but no linguist has never demonstrated such a thesis. What we need in Wikipedia are academic references and documented sources, Wikipedia official policy doesn't accept personal research nor undocumented statements. Please see Wikipedia:No original research--Nil Blau (talk) 23:06, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Wait a moment, please! Sue Wright is a scholar and here there are two other references added to bibliography. DALBERA Jean-Philippe (2003) “Les îlots liguriens de France” & CERQUIGLINI Bernard (2003) (dir.) Les langues de France, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France / Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication-DGLFLF: 125-136] Why Nil Blau considers ONLY the scholars he wants? Sorry, this is not a wikipedian NPOV.--Merighi (talk) 23:12, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I first mentioned Dalbera/Cerquiglini in the bibliography section, a few days ago, before you. I read this book and you probably didn't. Dalbera says clearly that Royasque is Ligurian and that Niçard is Occitan: both dialects are separated by a strong limit of converging isoglosses. We can keep Sue Wright's statement of course, and I just restored it, but the fact is that Wright doesnt't give any source about Niçard linguistic adscription.--Nil Blau (talk) 23:19, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

No, you referred only to one book of Dalbera. I have added the other one on the "Ligurian isles in France", that evidently you don't like because of your nationalistic points of view. Furthermore, the "strong limit of converging isoglosses" is a famous creation of De Gaulle's historians when he wanted to take even Ventimiglia for France in 1945/6.--Merighi (talk) 23:26, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Please, read what Dalbera really says. If you want, I can give you his quotes, I have the very book here at home. Accusations of "nationalism" won't help us to progress.--Nil Blau (talk) 23:29, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I have read it , and I suggest you to read even Cerquilini. Hope now we can agree. --Merighi (talk) 23:33, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

I guess you didn't because Dalbera's article about Ligurian in France (Royasque) is a part of the book directed by Cerquiglini, Les langues de France. This is all in the same book.--Nil Blau (talk) 23:40, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Cerquiglini has not written only that book, as you probably know. Anyway, I don't want to have problems with 3RR and other edit wars: hope we can agree friendly.--Merighi (talk) 23:44, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Merighi, look: you wrote that, according to Cerquiglini, Royasque is "a remnant of a bigger medioeval "ligurian" area that included Nice and most of the coastal County of Nice": your statement is simply false: Dalbera (and Cerquiglini) don't say that. Please give the quotation, unless I will have to remove your false statement.--Nil Blau (talk) 23:49, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Please read Histoire de la langue française 1945-2000. Co-edited with Gérald Antoine. Paris: CNRS Editions, 2000. For the exact page, I have to find it when I 'll have more time. Hope you have the book.--Merighi (talk) 00:23, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

I have added even Vignoli Giulio Gli Italiani Dimenticati. Minoranze Italiane In Europa. At least one author from the italian side, in the bibliography full of french scholars.....--Merighi (talk) 03:40, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

For many reasons nicard cannot be considered a occitan dialect: Nicard form plural without S (Example:LI PICHOI, LI CANTI, CHILDREN/SONGS), don't loss the latin D like occitan (example CRUDNOT CRUA/ CRUDE),YES is Sì(Sì language is the italian) not O or Oc(like in OCCITAN said also langue d'OC for that reason).Italian and nicard are intelligible while nicard is not intelligible for occitans,especialy occitans from Auvergne or Guascogne.Until the XIX century everybody considered nicard an italian dialect with occitan influence the scholars considering nicard a occitan or worst a old french patois arrived only after the anexion of Nice to France, when the french government tried a fast asimilisation of the nisards to the state of France. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.11.47.138 (talk) 14:14, 21 October 2012 (UTC) Clasification of Nicard as gallo.iberian is absurd, that has nothing of iberian, it would be more correct a clasification as gallo-italian — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.11.47.138 (talk) 14:17, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

you clearly do not speak occitan nor niçard....Not only niçard IS an occitan dialect, but is is one of the most conservative. First occitan printed book wasd in niçard, and there is many example since the medieval era of texts written in niçard that clearly demostrate that's an occitan dialect. Matieu Sokolovic (talk) 08:28, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

POV alert, Ligurian activism

I have put a POV alert today. Merighi and Dionix, you don't give any facts. You don't give any effective citations from the books in question. You don't give any evidence of the so-called Ligurian features in Niçard. What you do is nothing but Ligurian activism. No specialist of Niçard approve your odd statements. All specialists say that Niçard is Occitan, not Ligurian, as I have demonstrated.--Nil Blau (talk) 20:41, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Nil Blau, I respect your addition of the POV tag but I'd like to clear my stance on this. Simply put, I only moderated what Merighi added. Based on the discussion, I was under the impression you two had reached a consensus or that Merighi provided adequate references. I have no idea if this is the case, as I'm not familiar with any of the texts nor do I intend to research this. As I said before, it seems plausible (yes I know, WP:OR, but the Sue Wright reference is clearly of merit). I'm not saying this to support Merighi's claim if the claim is indeed without merit. Feel free to revert. Dionix (talk) 22:08, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for your precisions, Dionix, I will check up all this topic.--Nil Blau (talk) 11:25, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

I've researched this a bit over the last couple of months. I could not find any support that Niçard was more closely related to Ligurian in the past, although there is no doubt that it is very similar even in this day and age. What I did find (for example, here) is that in Garibaldi's time, people from NW Italy, and not Occitan-speakers, dominated Nice's commercial scene. This, along with the political control by the House of Savoy, may have given the "air" and the impetus needed for the Irredentists to claim Nice. Hopefully we can put this to rest. Dionix (talk) 21:44, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Dionix, please read even the google book of Barberis (just added in the references) and you'll agree on the Ligurian roots of the Nissart.--93Mutina (talk) 19:34, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Can't we just say that scholars are divided on whether the language is properly classified as Ligurian or Occitan? It sounds like there's a scholarly disagreement among linguists on this point. --Mole2 (talk) 17:03, 7 June 2009 (UTC)

Orthography Comparison

We really should add a version of that text in French, to show the extent to which Niçard differs from the national language of France. 76.226.103.127 (talk) 21:12, 21 July 2010 (UTC)

I have added a comparison between Nissart and Italian, showing the many similarities. The text was taken from a book written in 1871 by Francesco Barberis, a Nizzardo italian.--93Mutina (talk) 19:32, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Such comparisons are totally useless and pointless, at least for the purposes of demonstrating linguistic similarities to Occitan and Ligurian and helping the reader to make up their own mind on the classification issue. Neither Provençal, Niçard nor Ligurian are particularly closely related to either (Standard) French or (Standard) Italian; they are clearly distinct and the reader will already be aware of that once they have read this far. What would really be needed for this purpose are word-to-word translations (using available cognates wherever possible, with no gratuitous rephrasings, unless a lexical difference is typical and diagnostic) into Provençal (preferrably a local subdialect whose classification as Occitan is uncontroversial, such as the Occitan dialect of Cannes or perhaps the one of Marseille, not a standardised form of Provençal/Occitan) and Ligurian (not Genovese or Standard Ligurian but a closeby western Ligurian dialect such as the one of Ventimiglia, Tende, Roquebrune, Menton, or even the Royasque dialect), so that the characteristic features and isoglosses can be examined. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:52, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Also, orthographical comparisons are notoriously misleading. You could spell English like Danish to "prove" that it is a Danish dialect. Superficial resemblances caused by the choice of orthographical conventions prove nothing. Neither orthography nor lexicon can be used to demonstrate linguistic affinities, else English could be argued to be a French dialect as its spelling is largely based on Old French spelling conventions, and a large proportion of its vocabulary derives from French and still has cognates in contemporary French, and I include Latinate vocabulary here as much Anglo-Latin was mediated through French – just like Greek vocabulary was typically imported through this Anglo-Latin. Even the immediate source for words from other languages (such as Italian or Spanish) was sometimes French. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 17:13, 25 December 2012 (UTC)

Orginal research removed.

The original dialect of "Nissa la Bella" (as Nice was called) had strong ties with Monégasque language (Ligurian), due to the geographical proximity of the two languages, and showed strong similarities to the Ligurian language until the middle of the 19th century. I removed this. The statement is not supported by the source(actually contradicted by the source, that displays poems clearly Occitan, not Ligurian). It consists of the personal interpretation of the wiki editor. Correjon (talk) 15:35, 2 December 2012 (UTC)

References

Niçard IS occitan, not ligurian

This article seems to be a joke. Niçard language had always been part of the occitan language, since the medieval era. It's very well documented (even the first printed book in occitan language was made by someone from Nice). The part saying that niçard was influenced by the occitan only since 1860 is a bad joke, and a total lie Matieu Sokolovic (talk) 08:13, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Differences between Niçard and standard Occitan

This part is another joke

1. Niçard does not make the plural by adding the letter -s, but instead changes the last vowel (as in Italian). => like in provençal dialect
2. Niçard uses non before the verb to make a negative of it, whereas Occitan uses pas after the verb. => like in some occitan dialect (provençal, aranés, alpine dialect)
3. Niçard has some proparoxytonic words (such as lagrima) like Italian, while Occitan has no proxitonical words (lagrema).=> like in aranés
4. Niçard has conserved the Latin "d" between vowels (as in creder, veder).=> like in gascon
5. Niçard uses the definite article before the possessive, as in Italian and Portuguese. => like in many other occitan dialect
6. Niçard in creating the future tense of verbs ending in -ar changes a to e (for example, parlar becomes parlerai, not parlarai as in Occitan) => this is maybe the unique thing that features only in the niçard dialect EDIT : it does also exist in gascon dialect
7. Niçard retains the /v/ sound for the letter v, whereas in Occitan it is pronounced /b/.=> like in provençal, lemosin, auvergnat
8. Niçard used "Ahì" to say yes, not "O" or "Oc", as in Occitan dialects. => like in some alpine dialect (and anyway "ahì exist in general occitan as an interjection)
9. Niçard pronounced the final -a on feminine nouns /-a/ as written (as in Latin, Italian, or Spanish) whereas Occitan pronounced it as /-o̞/. => like in aranés, Montpellier, Sétois, and some alpine dialect
10. Niçard shares many words with Italian and its dialects (anquei pms. ancheuj, lij. ancheu, brut, capir; plu and not mai or mes to say "more", as in Occitan, pilhar, bastian countrari, ficcanas, madona, minga, calar, tchapar, rumenta, riturnella, testada, testard, tchouc) that are absent in other Occitan dialects. => many of these words aren't absent in other occitan dialects, especially in provençal

Matieu Sokolovic (talk) 06:15, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

Removed some irredentist nonsense

I have just checked, thanks to my Wikipedia library account, the latest references about Romance languages, with up-ot-date visions of the area's languages. None of them do present Niçard as an Italian/Ligurian dialect, as it was never the case. Niçard is clearly Occitan (Provençal, Langue d'oc, you may use whatever name), with enough dialectal differentiation from the rest of Occitan to be taught under a separate name by the French ministry of Education. Debates and discussion are still existing about the status of Mentonasque (see latest Forner's book at DeGruyter's: Morphologie comparée du mentonnais et du ligurien alpin analyse synchronique et essai de reconstruction), but in the same book Forner takes Niçard as an example of Maritime Provençal. — J. F. B. (me´n parlar) 10:01, 18 May 2023 (UTC)