Venetian LanguageRonnie Ferguson- Venetian and the Historical Disciplines
almost every facet of Venice and of its remarkably long-lived Republic
(la Repub(b)lica Veneta)1 has been an object of study. this applies to the
city’s unique urban site and development as well as to the stable oligar-
chic constitution of the former independent Venetian state (the Stado
Veneto or Stato Veneto)2 with its mainland and overseas empires (Stado
da Terra and Stado da Mar). Venetian art, architecture, music, theater,
literature and print culture, institutions, and social organization have
been, and continue to be, of intense concern to historians. the present
volume is testimony to such exceptionally deep and wide-ranging schol-
arly interest. the most notable exception to this thorough scrutiny, and
widespread dissemination of results into other disciplines, is language.
While distinguished linguists have in the past 50 years devoted important
studies to particular aspects of the 1000-year history of Venetian language,
their results are largely confined to circles of linguists and philologists.3
it is only very recently that overarching monographs and syntheses of
the history, trajectory, and status of this highly significant, influential,
and in many ways unusual language/dialect have begun to be published
and to enter the wider scholarly domain.4 it remains rare for historians of
1 the terminology and spellings used here and elsewhere in the essay for Venetian insti-
tutions follow Venetian usage between 1400 and 1797.
2 Stado from Latin statum “condition, position, state,” with voicing of intervocalic
t > /d/, represents the historically normal Venetian form (see Section 3 below). Stato is a
Renaissance and early modern borrowing from tuscan/italian.
3 Full bibliographies of recent detailed studies of Venetian are in: günter Holtus and
Michael Metzeltin, “i dialetti veneti nella ricerca recente,” in günter Holtus and Michael
Metzeltin, eds., Linguistica e dialettologia veneta. Studi offerti a Manlio Cortelazzo (tübingen,
1983), pp. 1–38; alberto Zamboni, “Venezien/Veneto,” in günter Holtus, Michael Metzel-
tin, and Christian Schmitt, Lexikon der romanistischen Linguistik, 8 vols (tübingen, 1987–
2005), vol. 4 (1988), pp. 517–38; Michele Cortelazzo and ivano Paccagnella, “il Veneto,” in
Francesco Bruni, ed., L’Italiano nelle regioni. Lingua nazionale e identità regionali (turin,
1992), pp. 220–81; and Ronnie Ferguson, A Linguistic History of Venice (Florence, 2007).
4 the most important monographs on Venetian are Ferguson, A Linguistic History of
Venice, and Rembert eufe, “Sta lengua ha un privilegio tanto grando.” Status und Gebrauch
des Venezianischen in der Republik Venedig (Frankfurt, 2006). the results of recent research