954 ronnie ferguson
the Lombard dialects of the contiguous trentino region,56 ousted Friulan
from several major urban centers in Friuli, and probably erased the Ladin
speech of trieste.57 the colonial dominions of Venice showed exceptional
loyalty to the Republic and its speech, so that the “italian” of the istrian
and Dalmatian coasts that flourished well into the 20th century was
essentially Venetian.58 this was also the time of the greatest diffusion of
Venetian lexical items both within and outside italy.
as a trading state, Venice was never concerned to impose its language.
On the contrary, it was a significant language absorber in the medieval
and Renaissance periods. it is no surprise that this multicultural interna-
tional emporium, hosting colonies of greek, albanian, Ottoman, and ger-
man merchants (the latter housed in the Fontego dei todeschi < arabic
funduq “merchant’s lodging-house”), forged the first european multilin-
gual theater. Venetian Renaissance theater and comic literature abound
in the realistic or caricatured depiction of mainland dialects and foreign
languages that was to be the basis of the polyglot commedia dell’arte.59
although uncodified and never standardized, Venetian continued to
evolve structurally in the MidV period towards informal spoken and writ-
ten norms and indeed towards a convergence of the two. it divested itself
of some of the most characteristic features of eV. it followed centuries-
old and also new internal trajectories; it may have been subject to under-
ground influence from its own hinterland and was constantly exposed to
the roofing influence of italian. While very cohesive as a dialect, with no
rigid demarcations, Venetian also continued to show the diversity accord-
ing to class, district and register that one would expect from a language in
constant use at all societal levels in a city with complex social and neigh-
borhood stratification. this rich configuration was evidence of the excep-
tional longevity and status that would guarantee the survival of Venetian
into the 21st century.
56 giuseppe Bonfadini, “il confine linguistico veneto-lombardo,” in Manlio Cortelazzo,
ed., Guida ai dialetti veneti, vol. 5 (Padua, 1983), pp. 25–59.
57 Mario Doria, Storia del dialetto triestino (trieste, 1988).
58 See Franco Crevatin, “Dialetti veneti dell’istria,” in Manlio Cortelazzo, ed., Guida ai
dialetti veneti, vol. 4, pp. 39–49 (for istria); and Michael Metzeltin, “Venezianisch und ita-
lienisch in Dalmatien,” in günter Holtus, Michael Metzeltin, and Christian Schmitt, eds.,
Lexikon der romanistischen Linguistik, vol. 4 (tübingen, 1988), pp. 551–69 (for Dalmatia).
59 See Ronnie Ferguson, The Theatre of Angelo Beolco (Ruzante): Text, Context and Per-
formance (Ravenna, 2000), pp. 121–61.