Western Lombard is a
Romance language spoken in
Italy, in the
Lombard provinces
of Milan,
Monza,
Varese,
Como,
Lecco,
Sondrio, a little part
of Cremona (except
Crema and its neighbours),
Lodi and
Pavia, and the
Piedmont provinces
of Novara,
Verbano-Cusio-Ossola and a small part
of Vercelli (
Valsesia), and
Switzerland (
Canton Ticino and part of
Grischun). After the name of the region involved, land of the former
Duchy of Milan, this language is often referred to as
Insubric (see
Insubria and
Insubres) or
Milanese, or, after Clemente Merlo,
Cisabduano (literally "of this side of
Adda River").
In Italian-speaking contexts, Western Lombard is often incorrectly called a dialect of Italian language, but actually it is a separate language. It has more than a few similarities to French. Insubric and Italian are different languages and are not mutually intelligible, because of lexical, phonetic, and grammatical differences. Western Lombard is relatively homogenous (much more so than Eastern Lombard), though it does present a number of variations,[2] mainly in relation to the vowels /o/, /?/ and the development of /ts/ into /s/.
Western Lombard can be divided into four main dialects, referred by many Italian linguists[who?] as lombardo alpino (spoken in the provinces of Sondrio and of Verbania, Sopraceneri of Canton Ticino and Grigioni in Switzerland), lombardo-prealpino occidentale (spoken in the provinces of Como, Varese and Lecco, Lugano and its neighbors in Canton Ticino), basso-lombardo occidentale (Pavia and Lodi), and macromilanese (provinces of Milan, Monza, Novara and Valsesia of Vercelli). The boundaries are obviously schematic, since the political division in provinces and municipalities are usually independent from languages spoken.
At the present time, Western Lombard has no official status in Lombardy or anywhere else. The only official language in Lombardy is Italian.
