The Florentine dialect or vernacular (dialetto fiorentino or vernacolo fiorentino) is a variety of Tuscan, a Romance language spoken in the Italian city of Florence and its immediate surroundings.
A variant derived from it historically, once called la pronuncia fiorentina emendata (literally, 'the amended Florentine pronunciation'), was the official national language of the Kingdom of Italy when it was established in 1861. It is the most widely spoken of the Tuscan dialects.[1]
Perhaps the difference most noticed by Italians and foreigners alike is known as the gorgia toscana (literally 'Tuscan throat'), a consonant-weakening rule widespread in Tuscany in which the voiceless plosive phonemes /k/, /t/, /p/ are pronounced between vowels as fricatives[h], [θ], [ɸ] respectively. The sequence /lakasa/la casa 'the house', for example, is pronounced [laˈhaːsa], and /buko/buco 'hole' is realized as [ˈbuːho]. Preceded by a pause or a consonant, /k/ is produced as [k] (as in the word casa alone or in the phrase in casa). Similar alternations obtain for /t/ → [t], [θ] and /p/ → [p], [ɸ].
Strengthening to a geminate consonant occurs when the preceding word triggers syntactic doubling (raddoppiamento fonosintattico) so the initial consonant /p/ of pipa 'pipe (for smoking)' has three phonetic forms: [p] in [ˈpiːɸa] spoken as a single word or following a consonant, [ɸ] if preceded by a vowel as in [laɸiːɸa]la pipa 'the pipe' and [pp] (also transcribed [pː]) in [trepˈpiːɸe]tre pipe 'three pipes'.
Parallel alternations of the affricates /tʃ/ and /dʒ/ are also typical of Florentine but by no means confined to it or even to Tuscan. The word gelato is pronounced with [dʒ] following a pause or a consonant, [ʒ] following a vowel and [ddʒ] if raddoppiamento applies ([dʒeˈlaːθo], [undʒeˈlaːθo]un gelato, [ˈkwattroʒeˈlaːθi]quattro gelati, [ˈtreddʒeˈlaːθi]tre gelati. Similarly, the initial consonant of /ˈtʃena/cena 'dinner' has three phonetic forms, [tʃ], [ʃ] and [ttʃ]. In both cases, the weakest variant appears between vowels ([reˈʒoːne]regione 'region', [ˈkwattroʒeˈlaːθi]quattro gelati; [laˈʃeːna]la cena, [ˈbaːʃo]bacio 'kiss'; this one actually comes from Latin basium and was never pronounced with an affricate, even though the modern standardized pronunciation, that was solely based on the spelling, accorpated the fricative with the affricates, hence putting an unetymological /t/ in pronunciation).
¹Notice that the form semo directly comes from Vulgar Latin*(es)sēmus, a form shared throughout most languages of Italy together with som~son, from the original Latin sumus (cf. Spanish somos). Despite this, cultured Florentine displaced all the original 1st person plural present forms with the subjunctive of the 3rd conjugation (-ire verbs, which have the subjunctive in -iamo), so that andamo, cademo, sentimo have all changed to andiamo, cadiamo, sentiamo.
Cases
Florentine uses the diminutive case-ino/-ine far more than Italian does, with many surnames also ending in -ini.
stop it, or I will beat you (lit. "you will get them", i.e., beatings)
acquai
kitchen sink
sei un boccalone
you have a big mouth
babbo
dad/father
Judeo-Florentine
A variety of Florentine known as Judeo-Florentine was spoken by the Jewish community of Florence.[7] It was used in the 19th-century play titled La Gnora Luna, and is now no longer used by Florentine Jews.[8]
↑"The Jewish Experience in Contemporary Italy". 2016-02-24. Retrieved 2025-05-17. A case in point is that of iodiesco, a Judeo-Florentine dialect that appears in an[sic] 19th century play entitled La Gnora Luna, which is no longer used in daily speech by the Jews of Florence.
↑Venetian is either grouped with the rest of the Italo-Dalmatian or the Gallo-Italic languages, depending on the linguist, but the major consensus among linguists is that in the dialectal landscape of northern Italy, Veneto dialects are clearly distinguished from Gallo-Italic dialects.
