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La Spezia Rimini Line

Plot of La Spezia-Rimini line

Aspects in language of the Romance languages , the line La Spezia - Rimini (rather vague name that should replace the line Massa - Senigallia , sometimes the nearby town of Carrara is preferred over Massa) is a linguistic dividing line which refers to a large number of isoglosses distinguishing clearly enough the Romance languages of the Eastern Western.

South of the Massa-Senigallia Line, the Eastern Romance languages make up what is called by linguists eastern Romania. They include the Italian standard, the Corsican , the Romanian Vlachs and its variants as well as former Dalmatian.
North of the Massa-Senigallia Line, the Western Romance languages are the Western Romania. They include the various dialects of the group of northern Italian , the group Romansh ( Ladin , Romansh and Friulian ), the French , the Francoprovenal , the Occitan language , the Catalan , the Spanish (Castilian), and the group Galician and Portuguese.

The Sardinian is generally not included in this distribution (dialects Gallurese and sassarese , north of Sardinia, Sardinian, and stand out are closely linked to Corsica and the Italian , in eastern Romania).

The line follows the line of divide between mainland Italy and the Iberian Peninsula, its ends are the cities of Massa ( Tuscany ) and Senigallia ( Marche ). The main feature of this line relates to the voicing of certain consonants in intervocalic position (between vowels), and especially the / p /, / t / / k / from Latin. The sonic character, the weakening or collapse of these consonants is characteristic of the western part, north and west of that line. Their maintenance is the constant in the south and east of the line. For example, Latin focu (m) (/ m / end does more pronounced in classical Latin) became fuoco Italian and Romanian jib but has evolved into fogo in northern Italian dialects (as in Venice ), ca fuego in Spanish or French to fire.

Another important isogloss is that relating to plural nouns. North and west of this line comes from the plural of the accusative plural in Latin and usually ends with / s / (with the exception of the dialects of northern Italy as the Venetian , which could have experienced some form of this type in the past but have since resumed the Italian form) and French where the s is silent more, while being kept in writing and bonds, irrespective of gender and declension. South and east of that line, the plural of nouns ending in a vowel. The explanation is that this case comes from the plural nominative and then change the / s / Latin / i /. In several cases, particularly in dialects where the vowel is neutralized in final / /, also changing the vowels often intermediaries, the phenomenon of metaphony , as in German. Here are some examples in Italian and Spanish: