As requested by @moonstruckgay, here goes a quick overview of the Italian spoken in Tuscany toscani perdonatemi se scrivo scemenze, non sono del posto
Is Tuscan dialect really a thing?
Yes and no. The dialect spoken in Florence in the 14th century was actually the foundation for the creation of standard Italian, which is why Tuscan isnāt traditionally perceived as aĀ āregularā dialect: the regional varieties spoken in Tuscany are therefore often calledĀ āvernacoliā, to differentiate them from other Italian dialects. In recent years, however, the term dialect is increasingly being applied to these varieties as well in scientific literature.
Is there only one Tuscan dialect?
There are quite a lot of them, actually! In 1977 Giovan Battista Pellegrini outlined seven (fiorentino, senese, toscano occidentale, aretino, grossetano-amiatino and apuano), but the truth is you might find even more, set apart by small and large differences. Still, there are a few traits that stay more or less consistent throughout the whole area: letās have a look at them.
The most famous phenomenon is probably what is known as Tuscan gorgia: the voiceless stops /k/, /t/ and /p/ are pronounced as fricative consonants ([h], [Īø] and [Éø]) in post-vocalic position (when not blocked by syntactic gemination, but weāll get to that one later). This is why in Italy we feel compelled to ask every Florentine specimen we ever come across to pronounce the infamous sentence:Ā āvorrei una Coca-Cola con la cannuccia corta cortaā, and then rejoice in seeing them aspirate every single ācā while they surely wish us a slow and painful death
This so-called gorgia also affects other consonants, like /g/, /d/ or /b/, and the affricates /ʤ/ and /ʧ/, which respectively becomeĀ [Ź] and [Ź].
This phenomenon is at ist strongest in Florence and Siena, but can be observed in other areas as well. In the Arno valley, the fricativisation of /k/ is pretty consistent.
The affrication of /s/ is also common, albeit a little less: when preceded by /r/, /l/ or /n/, the voiceless s might turn into a voiceless alveolar affricate ([ts]).
This is common in the whole region (as well as central Italy in general), except for the area of Florence and Prato.
We mentioned syntactic gemination before, so letās get a little more into detail about that: itās a pretty common phenomenon in Italian, where, under certain circumstances, the first letter of a word is doubled in pronunciation. It usually happens after words stressed on the last syllable (ex. perchĆ© mai? will sound like perchĆ© mmai?), after a stressed monosyllable (ex. ĆØ giusto? --> ĆØ ggiusto?), with a couple of unstressed monosyllables such as the prepositionĀ āaā. In Tuscany, however, other words such asĀ ādoveā,Ā ācomeā orĀ ādaā might trigger the phenomenon, so youāre likely to hear things likeĀ ādove vvai?ā,Ā ācome vva?ā orĀ āda ccasaā.
As it happens in a number of regional varieties of Italian, the object pronounĀ āteā is sometimes used as a subject instead of ātuā.
Ex. Tu ci hai capito qualcosa? --> Te ci hai capito qualcosa? (āDid you catch any of that?ā)
The use of noi + impersonal si is also viewed as very characteristic. If you know French, it might be easier to assimilate this to the use ofĀ āonā: weāre talking about a group of people, and the subject should formally beĀ ānoiā, only itās replaced by āsiā, and the verb is subsequently conjugated to the third person singular. This might look more immediate with an example.
Letās imagine you want to say that you had lunch at a resaurant. In standard Italian, that would beĀ ā(noi) abbiamo mangiato al ristoranteā; in Tuscany, you might hearĀ ā(noi) sāĆØ mangiato al ristoranteā instead.
Possessive pronounsĀ like mio, tuo or suo might also sound a little different. When theyāre placed before a noun, they may in fact lose their endings (miā, tuā, suā)! This, while being a common phenomenon in central Italy in general, can lead to iconic expressions such asĀ āil miā babboā (my father).
Finally, letās touch briefly on the verbs. Fare (to do) and andare (to go) both have a regional form for the first person singular in the present tense: fo instead of standard Italian (io)Ā faccio, and vo instead of (io)Ā vado.
The last feature Iām going to mention is the loss of infinitival ending -re, which results in such forms as perdere --> pĆØrde, or andare --> andĆ (this is quite common in central Italy as a whole).
I wonāt really elaborate on this, as my knowledge of these regional varieties is limited, but of course there are words youāre more likely to see used in Tuscany than elsewhere, such as babbo for papĆ (ādadā), ghiaccio/a meaning ghiacciato/a, molto freddo (āfreezing coldā) or the demonstrative prounoun codesto, now obsolete in standard Italian, used to identify an object far from the speaker, but near the listener.