Taller: “Plan de liderazgo situacional y gestión” Objetivos

The choice of the orthography to be used in the grammar sketch and the wordlist has been object of discussion among community members. As mentioned in Section 2.3.1, Brazilian Bergamasch is a predominantly oral language and its written production is very scarce, although the people of Botuverá are increasingly taking interest in representing their language in written form. For this reason, during my fieldwork Seu Pedro and I organized and moderated a meeting with a few key community members, i.e. council members, teachers, fluent italiàn speakers committed to the preservation of the language. For the occasion, I had prepared a list of potentially problematic sounds and their possible representations, both close to Bergamasch standard spelling conventions and adaptations to Portuguese orthography. The discussion mainly focused on one question: is it better to adopt the existing standard orthography, which could symbolically bridge the two varieties but it is more difficult to learn, or should a more immediate, Portuguese-based spelling convention be created? All community members but one agreed on adopting the standard orthography that is already employed in Italy. On the basis of this decision, the grammar sketch and the wordlist presented in this thesis also follow the standard spelling conventions.

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The current orthography has been proposed by the association ‘Ducato di Piazza Pontida’, which is reference for all cultural and linguistic practices of Bergamo and its people. The association, which was founded in 1924, aims to “encourage and support the study and conservation of the community’s [cultural] expressions, with focus on […] speech, poetry, and theatre [produced] in the local language”48

(ducatodipiazzapontida.it). The Ducato and its members greatly contributed to Standard Bergamasch linguistic description by publishing grammars, grammar sketches, and dictionaries49.

The vowels /a i u/ are written as a, i, u. When stressed, /ɛ ɔ/ are represented as è, ò while /e o/ are represented as é, ó. When unstressed, the graphemes e and o are used for both mid-high and mid-low vowels. Finally, the vowels /ø y/ are written as ö and ü respectively. The consonants /b d m n r v l/ are always represented with the same symbols of the IPA: b d m n r v l. The remaining consonants follow specific orthographic rules:

- the graphemes c and g are used as orthographic representations of both /k t ʃ/ and /g d ʒ/. In particular, /k g/ are written as c, g when followed by any consonant or the vowels /a ø y u o ɔ/. When followed by /ɛ e i/, they are written as che, chi and ghe,

ghi. The cluster /kw/ is always written as qu. /t ʃ d ʒ/ are always represented as either ci, ce or gi, ge. In word-final position, /k/ is written as ch while /t ʃ/ as cc.

(67) /gaˈlina/ galina ‘chicken’

/ˈkikera/ chìchera ‘cup’

/d ʒiˈke/ giché ‘jacket’

/bank/ banch ‘bench’

/mezaˈnɔt ʃ/ mesanòcc ‘midnight’

- /s/ and /z/ are often represented by the same grapheme s. /z/ is written as z in word- initial position and when part of consonant clusters. In intervocalic position, it is written as s. /s/ is written as s in word-initial position and when part of consonant clusters. In word-final and intervocalic position, it can be represented as either ss or s, depending on the etymology of the word and its grammatical function. More specifically, if /s/ changes into /z/ when the word is inflected or derived, the sound is represented by the grapheme s; differently, if /s/ remains unchanged, it is written as ss. When used word-finally in verbs, /s/ is always written as ss.

(68) /skiˈsa/ schissà ‘crush’, ‘press’ /skiˈsada/ schissada ‘crushed’ (F PL)

/bys/ büs ‘hole’

/byˈza/ büsà ‘pierce’

- /p t f/ are almost always represented as b d v when used in word-final position, with the exception of few specific cases where /f/ is spelled as f due to particular etymological reasons.

- The approximants /w/ and /j/ are always written as u and i.

- Some consonant phonemes are represented as digraphs. In particular, the palatal nasal /ɲ/ is written as gn, the palatal lateral approximant /ʎ/ is written as gl, and the voiceless postalveolar fricative /ʃ/ is written as sci, sce. To distinguish between the fricative /ʃ/ and the cluster /st ʃ/, the latter is always represented as s-c.

- The voiced postalveolar fricative /ʒ/ is written as j.

48 _{“favorisce e promuove lo studio e la conservazione delle espressioni popolari con particolare riguardo […] alla}

parlata, alla poesia ed al teatro in dialetto”.

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One final remark concerns the use of graphic accent marks to represent stress. Generally speaking, the grave accent mark ` is compulsory used on vowels to represent a stressed syllable. This, however, does not apply when the stress falls on:

- the penultimate syllable of a word ending with a vowel;

- /e/ and /o/, for which the acute accent mark ´ is used instead;

- /ø/ or /y/, as they already present dieresis;

- functional monosyllabic words such as articles, conjunctions, prepositions, and secondary pronouns;

- closed syllables forming monosyllabic words, when the vowel is different from /e ɛ o ɔ/.

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