A Short Grammar of the Muggia Dialect: From Phonetics to Pronouns

Abstract

This article presents selected grammatical features of the local Muggia dialect. Muggia residents speak an Istrian–Venetian dialect because this town, like most other coastal towns in Istria, was ruled by the Venetians for several centuries. Up until the end of the nineteenth century, Muggia residents spoke the Muglisano dialect, a pre-Venetian Romance language that developed from the spoken Latin used in this town. Today most locals converse in dialect, and its usage has also been observed among young residents, who, however, frequently introduce dialect expressions from the neighboring Trieste dialect and standard Italian. The dialect material was collected through a dialectological study conducted in 2018.