16 Facts About Friulian

Friulian or Friulan is a Romance language belonging to the Rhaeto-Romance family, spoken in the Friuli region of northeastern Italy.

Documents in Friulian are attested from the 11th century and poetry and literature date as far back as 1300.

In Friulian, there are a plethora of words of German, Slovenian and Venetian origin.

The first written records of Friulian have been found in administrative acts of the 13th century, but the documents became more frequent in the following century, when literary works emerged .

The Friulian language has never acquired primary official status: legal statutes were first written in Latin, then in Venetian and finally in Italian.

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Idea of unity among Ladin, Romansh and Friulian comes from the Italian historical linguist Graziadio Isaia Ascoli, who was born in Gorizia.

The scholar Francescato claimed subsequently that until the 14th century, the Venetian language shared many phonetic features with Friulian and Ladin and so he thought that Friulian was a much more conservative language.

Today, Friulian is spoken in the province of Udine, including the area of the Carnia Alps, but as well throughout the province of Pordenone, in half of the province of Gorizia, and in the eastern part of the province of Venice.

The examples show that Friulian was used together with Latin, which was still the administrative language.

Friulian is quite different from Italian in its morphology; it is, in many respects, closer to French.

Still, there are some purists, including those influential in Friulian publishing, who frown on such words and insist that the "proper" Friulian terms should be without the final -o.

Indefinite article in Friulian derives from the Latin unus and varies according to gender:.

Main association to foster the use and development of Friulian is the Societat filologjiche furlane, founded in Gorizia in 1919.

The standard is based on Central Friulian, which was traditionally the language used in literature already in 1700 and afterwards but with some changes:.

Standard Friulian is called in Friulian furlan standard, furlan normalizat or from Greek, coine.

Four dialects of Friulian can be at least distinguished, all mutually intelligible.