Barese love poem
Lu Specchiu
U' visu ttu jind'a lu specchiu
Cuss jè u' kiu beddju pènzir mmi,
Ma ha da fà subète, cca se ccangie,
Cuss jè l'oldeme Te vogghje ben mmi !
→ French poem ←
Woman from Bari and barese language
Italian from bari, barese is your language, and the image that you reflect ... Is the poem, the purest translation, of the Italian romanticism! You are the sweet mixture of all the people who came to Apulia, Greeks, Arabs, Franks, Lombards, Vikings, Spaniards.
You live in the old town, on the promontory overlooking the old port. You prefer ... the classic, when the time even in the efforts flows slowly ... speed and precipitation of modernity has never made you dream.
There are 2 million people in Apulia able to understand this language based on Italian, enriching with the foreign languages of the populations settled in Bari (Greeks, Arabs, French, Spaniards).
This one is based on Italian, enriched with the foreign languages of the populations who came to settle in Bari (Greeks, Arabs, French, Spaniards).
The Bari dialect belongs to the family of Apulo-Barese dialects of central Puglia, dialects related to Neapolitan, but which are the most distant from it. He has more to do with Italian than Spanish.
Bari has been an important port for a long time, with a Romanization dating back to 2,300 years. Then Bari will see pass Lombards, Byzantines, Berbers, Normans, Swabians, Angevins, Venetians, Aragonese, French who in turn will devastate it or take control of it.
Its historical dialect, Barivecchiano, spoken in the old town, will be the result of all these passages, more or less long and influential.
In the 19th century, even if the city's scholars were bilingual with Italian, some decided to adopt Barese as the literary language. In the twentieth, literacy intensifying, more bilinguals were found, with also a gradual abandonment of the dialect because the Italian (fascist) politics will prohibit.
After the war, with a rise in regional identity, carried by intellectuals, it will eborn, but gradually to be again abandoned by the new generations and middle classes, in favor of the Italian.
Today, Baresian is considered an endangered language even though many children still speak it, but in a very limited context.