Introduction to Piemonteis

Piemonteis is recognized as a language from everyone but the Piedmontese themselves. At the international level it is acknowledged as an important language, both because of the relatively high number of speakers (even nowadays, estimates lie between two and three millions) and because of the linguistic interest in some peculiar grammar features that it has; for example, it is included in the list of endangered languages released by UNESCO. Documents have been written in Piemonteis since the early Middle Ages!

In these pages you will find some basic hints to read, write and understand Piemonteis; their purpose is to offer a quick briefing for you to get some initial rules and start to learn how to handle this language. For all the rest, including learning the grammar, building up your lexicon and seriously start to speak, you will have to use the other websites listed in the pointers, that I do not mean to replace.

Before starting, however, I will note that Piemonteis comes with a great number of variations, with significant differences from province to province and even from village to village; in some variations there even are additional sounds (and thus additional letters). The language described in these pages is thus the "literary Piemonteis", as used in books, mostly based on the Turin dialect of Piemonteis, and conventionally assumed as the basic form of the language.