946 ronnie ferguson
vernacular was chronologically very late compared to the historic Veneto
varieties of the mainland. the latter evolved in a relatively untroubled
line from Venetic settlement in the region starting around 800 bc. Venetic
speech (a form of indo-european rather closely related to Latin) was
peacefully and gradually overlain by Latin from about the 2nd century
b.c. Regional dialect divisions in the Venetorum angulus subsequently
developed, partly conditioned by Celtic incursions to the west and north
of the decima regio Venetia et Histria. the least affected parts of the region,
preserving the most genuine Veneto speech-type, clustered in the areas of
profoundest and untroubled Venetic settlement in the present provinces
of Padua, Vicenza, and Rovigo. Overall, therefore, the historical heritage
of the Veneto region presents the following picture: uninterrupted eth-
nic and linguistic tradition on the mainland, on the one hand, and late
(and, as we shall see, mixed) settlement and a new dialect offshore, on
the other.
the second observation regards the unusual, perhaps unique, way the
peopling of the lagoon, followed by the urbanization of the central island
nucleus around the Rivoalto, arose. the former was a gradual migration
process, taking place over a number of centuries. urbanization began
slowly, at the start of the 11th century, increasing more rapidly in the 12th,
when—around 1150—the city may have had some 25,000–30,000 inhabit-
ants. its population then took off explosively in the 13th century when,
with around 100,000 inhabitants, Venice became a european metropolis.42
this is the city of the 70 contrade depicted in the 14th-century drawing in
the Marciana attributed to Paolino da Venezia, where its physical mor-
phology is essentially already that of the famous woodcut in the Museo
Correr by Jacopo de’ Barbari showing the city in 1500. By the time of Fra
Paolino’s map, not only was Venice’s characteristic physical shape in place
but also its language had, in parallel, settled into its stable, characteristic
shape. to a linguist, these complex migration and urbanization processes
42 On this urbanization process see Jürgen Schulz, Urbanism in Medieval Venice, in
anthony Mohlo, Kurt Raaflaub, and Julia emlen, eds., City States in Classical Antiquity and
Medieval Italy (ann arbor, 1991), pp. 419–45; Wladimiro Dorigo, Venezia Romanica (Venice,
2003); andrea Castagnetti, “insediamenti e popoli,” in gino Benzoni and antonio Menniti
ippolito, Storia di Venezia. Dalle origini alla caduta della Serenissima, 14 vols (Rome,
1992–2002), vol. 1 (1992): Origini–Età ducale, ed. Lellia Cracco Ruggini, Massimiliano
Pavan, giorgio Cracco, and gherardo Ortalli, pp. 577–612; Crouzet-Pavan, “La conquista e
l’organizzazione dello spazio urbano,” in Storia di Venezia, vol. 2 (1995): L’età del comune,
ed. giorgio Cracco and gherardo Ortalli, pp. 549–75; and David Jacoby, “La dimensione
demografica e sociale,” in Storia di Venezia, vol. 2: L’età del comune, ed. Cracco and Ortalli,
pp. 681–711.