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Northern Italian (traditional name in Romance linguistics) or Padanian (recent name) or Cisalpine (rare name) is a linguistic set with different definitions. It can be viewed:

• as a Romance language (according to linguist Geoffrey Hull)
• as a sub-family composed of several regional Romance languages (according to regional activists)
• as a group of Italian dialects (according to traditional Romance linguistics).

It is spoken in Northern Italy, Southern Switzerland, San Marino, Monaco and Western Istria (Croatia, Slovenia). The area where Northern Italian is spoken roughly corresponds to Northern Italy or Padania.

The southern linguistic frontier, between Northern Italian and Italian proper, is called La Spezia-Rimini line.

It can be subdivided into:

• Gallo-Italic group (not to be confused with the whole Northern Italian group)
  • Piedmontese
  • Ligurian
  • Lombard
    • Western Lombard
    • Eastern Lombard
  • Emiliano-Romagnolo
    • Emiliano
    • Romagnolo
• Venetian group
  • Venetian
  • Istriot (which classification is quite controversial and difficult)

Northern Italian nowadays is spoken by far fewer people in its area than Italian is in the same area. However, literature in Northern Italian languages continues to this day and these languages are also spoken in countries with significant Italian immigrant communities.

Ligurian is formalised in Monaco as Monegasque.

These languages are nowadays thought of as being part of the western branch of Romance languages.

Further information: Gallo-siculo

Varieties of Northern Italian are also found in parts of Sicily, corresponding with the central-eastern parts of the island that received large numbers of immigrants from Northern Italy during the decades following the Norman conquest of Sicily (around 1080 to 1120). Given the time that has lapsed and the cross-fertilisation that has occurred between these varieties and the Sicilian language itself, these dialects are best described as gallo-siculo. The major centres where these dialects can still be heard today (in ever decreasing numbers) include Piazza Armerina, Aidone, Sperlinga, San Fratello, Nicosia, and Novara di Sicilia. Northern Italian dialects did not survive in some towns in the province of Catania that developed large Lombard communities during this period, namely Randazzo, Paternò and Bronte. However, the Northern Italian influence in the local varieties of Sicilian are marked. In the case of San Fratello, some linguists have suggested that the siculo-gallic dialect present today has Provençal as its basis, having been a fort manned by Provençal mercenaries in the early decades of the Norman conquest (bearing in mind that it took the Normans 30 years to conquer the whole of the island).

• Hull, Dr Geoffrey (1989) Polyglot Italy:Languages, Dialects, Peoples, CIS Educational, Melbourne
• Hull, Dr Geoffrey (1982) The linguistic unity of Northern Italy and Rhaetia, PhD thesis, university of Sidney west.
• Bernard Comrie, Stephen Matthews, Maria Polinsky (eds.), The Atlas of languages : the origin and development of languages throughout the world. New York 2003, Facts On File. p. 40.
• Stephen A. Wurm, Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger of Disappearing. Paris 2001, UNESCO Publishing, p. 29.
• Glauco Sanga: La lingua Lombarda, in Koiné in Italia, dalle origini al 500 (Koinés in Italy, from the origin to 1500), Lubrina publisher, Bèrghem
• Studi di lingua e letteratura lombarda offerti a Maurizio Vitale, (Studies in Lombard language and literature) Pisa : Giardini, 1983
• Brevini, Franco - Lo stile lombardo : la tradizione letteraria da Bonvesin da la Riva a Franco Loi / Franco Brevini - Pantarei, Lugan - 1984 (Lombard style: literary tradition from Bonvesin da la Riva to Franco Loi )
• Mussafia Adolfo, Beitrag zur kunde der Norditalienischen Mundarten im XV. Jahrhunderte (Wien, 1873)
• Canzoniere Lombardo - by Pierluigi Beltrami, Bruno Ferrari, Luciano Tibiletti, Giorgio D'Ilario - Varesina Grafica Editrice, 1970.

• Padania
• Northern Italy
• Piedmontese
• Venetian language
• La Spezia-Rimini Line
• Ligurian language (Romance)
• Sicily
• Sicilian language
• Lombard language
• Emiliano-Romagnolo
• Gallo-siculo
• Pierre Bec
• List of languages in Europe / Languages of Europe
• Romance plurals
• Plural inflection in Eastern Lombard