Let’s jump to the north of Italy; let’s go to Milan! Milan l’è on gran Milan, a Milanese would say. Let’s debunk the idea that in the north people don’t speak dialects anymore, even in the city of Milan the dialect struggles but still survives.
The Milanese language is a variation of the Longobard language, language that has been recognized by the European Council in 1981, and it comes from the Gallic-Italic language group. It’s also known as meneghino dialect, due to the famous Milanese mask called Meneghino or Meneghin in dialect.
Milanese is its own dialect, but people from the surrounding areas can pick up the meaning and words all the way to the province of Brescia and Bergamo, thanks to the similarities in the vocabulary and the structure sentences, for instance, with the Brianzolo, the dialect from the nearby area called Brianza.
The native speakers of this dialect really like to notice the similarities with French. In fact, Milanese seems to have a lot of sounds in common with the Francophone language, for example the Milanese noeuf and the French neuf which means “nine,” the Milanese pomm and the French pomme for “apple,” and so many more.
The Milanese dialect, as many other dialects, is a very colorful language with picturesque sayings and original words. Let’s look at some of them! A famous one is bauscia, a unique word, characteristic of this language which stands for “loudmouth,” “poser,” “braggart.” Another one is ciospa to indicate a really ugly woman. One of my favorite expressions is va a ciapà i rat, literally translating to “go catch the rats,” which is a nice-ish way to tell people to get lost.
Anyhow, at the beginning, I told you that Milanese is struggling but surviving; in fact, to help preserve the language the city hall of Milan established the Giornata del dialetto Milanese – The Day of the Milanese Dialect – on September 15th, in which the population is challenged to speak the dialect for the entire day and with the intent to celebrate as well the Milanese singer Nanni Svampa, who recently passed away and was an icon for Milanese music.
In the past, Milanese music and the arts were spread throughout the area surrounding Milan, but, contrary to other dialects, today only a couple of singers still persevere in making this kind of music and less and less town theaters perform in dialect as the younger people are losing the pronunciation. The Legnanesi theater company though, still makes everyone laugh through their funny shows all performed in dialect, by men, dressed like women.
However, one song will never be forgotten in Milan and always be in the Milanese people’s heart, a song about what is probably the symbol of the city of Milan and the most recognizable emblem of the city; and it goes like this: O mia bela Madunina che te brillet de lontan, tuta d'ora e piscinina, ti te dominet Milan – “Oh my beautiful little Madonna, that shines from far away, all gold and little, you rule Milan.”