The Cembran dialect

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The Cembran is a central Trentine dialect of rural type (unlike the one of the town of Trent, which is defined civic dialect.)
Like all the dialects of the Trentino, the Cembran underwent the deep influence of several Romance idioms ( the Ladin in the north, the Lombardian in the west, the Venetian in the south, and the Italian as adstratum and superstratum language.)
Even though it is very similar to the one of the town of Trent, the dialect of the Cembra Valley yet shows a greater resistance to the changes (especially the Venetian influence ones), and preserves, in different proportion in the various towns, archaic features of Ladin type (for instance the preservation of the diphthongs ei and ou); a typically “alpine” character is the termination -es of the second person singular of the present, by now used almost only in the interrogative sentences.

One of the reasons why the rural dialect is more conservative consists undoubtedly in the relative isolation that the valley retained till well inside the 20th century (the first road suitable for vehicles was built in 1929.)


The Cembra Valley is also near to the German-speaking zone of Italy: Salorno (Salurn) indeed, only few kilometres far from Cembra via paths coverable on foot, belongs already to the South Tyrol (Alto Adige in Italian, Südtirol in German), region where it dwells a significant linguistic minority speaking a German dialect (the South Tyrolese or altoatesino or Südtirolerisch, precisely, with a few differences among the valleys.)
In the past this proximity was even bigger as the zone between the Avisio and the church of Salorno had been conquered by the Tyrolean army in the 13th century.
To a certain extent also this fact hindered modernizing trends of the dialect. As Giulia Maestrelli Anzilotti points out: «[…] In this way the dialects of the Cembra Valley, like also the Fiemme Valley one and the dialect of the Non Valley to which it has to be added the low Sole Valley one, preserved their dialectal autonomy on which the dialect of Trent couldn't have influence. […]» (Storia di Cembra page 314 [quote translated by me].)

Of course the linguistic cohabitation with the German has caused a few loans in the lexicon. For example of course! in Cembran is said muz (compare with the sentence it must in High German: es musst), room is stua (in German Stube), pointed is spiz (point in German is Spitze), excavator is said pachera (in German Bagger, but the Bavarian pronunciation is Packer); in some variants of Cembran ill is said cronc (in German krank).

More ancient seem to me the loans from the Celtic languages: for instance giàsena (black bilberry, from glasina) and brocón (heather, from brūcus).

Some of the German and Celtic loans are shared with the other central Trentine dialects (see the Dizionario trentino-italiano by Groff.)


Not being the Cembran a “standard” language, difference, some more some less marked, does exist between the vernacular of the various hamlets; as an example, the ordinal numbers are a bit different in the two sides of the valley.
In the list below, the numerals in the first column are the ones of the dialect of Sevignano, on the left bank, the ones in the second column are the numbers of the dialect of Cembra, on the right bank:
Sevignano Cembra
Uno Ün (or un)
Dói Dói
Trèi Trèi
Quatro Quater
Źinque Cinq
Sèi Sèi
Sète Sèt
Òto Òt
Növe  (or nóve) Nöf  (or nóf)
Dése Dés

Another difference of the dialect of Cembra, shared with the one of Sover, concerns the preservation of the ending -es of the second person singular, regularly used in the affirmative sentences and not only in the interrogative ones.


As often happens when you deal with Italian dialects, to me, that I am Genoese, it's happened also to find similarities between Cembran and Genoese (they are both yet Romance languages); for instance “today” in Cembran is “ancói” (or ancöi, or encöi) , in Genoese “ancheu” (see the Vocabolario Genovese by Olivari): both adverbs derive from Latin HANC HODIE (see the Provençal ancoi.)

Notes about the transcription of the Cembran



For more information there are a few books (in Italian):

  • The Dizionario Cembrano by Aldo Aneggi (dedicated to the zone in the triangle Sover-Montesover-Piscine) is a translation from Cembran to Italian of more than eight thousand words (some are a bit obsolete.)

  • The electronic version of Aneggi's dictionary (on CD-ROM) can be found enclosed to the first edited book dedicated to the Trentine dialects lexical archive.

  • At the pages 193-293 of the issue 2 of the Annali di San Michele there's an article by Lotte Zörner (Il dialetto di Cembra e dei suoi dintorni - Descrizione fonologica, storico-fonetica e morfosintattica): a detailed treatment including a section dedicated to the grammar (especially related to the dialect of the municipalities of Cembra and Lisignago, on the right side of the Avisio.)
  • Chapter 8 of Storia di Cembra (volume unfortunately out of print and unobtainable) is dedicated to the dialect and toponymy of Cembra (Dialetto e toponomastica di Cembra, written by Giulia Maestrelli Anzilotti.)
  • In the second postwar period Laura Nones dedicated her Degree Thesis to the Cembran dialect (in particular concerning the zone of Sovér, in the upper part of the valley, in the southern bank.)
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    © 2005..2008, Fabio Vassallo