Lombard/Orthography and pronunciation rules

Orthographies overview
Since Lombard language consists of different varieties with a separate literary tradition, it has no spoken standard. In times past, different local spellings were used, especially for the main dialects. A first attempt to give a written standard to the Lombard language was that of the singer-songwriter Lissander Brasca in 2014 with his orthography “Scriver Lombard” (literally “Lombard Writing”). This was followed in 2020, with the establishment of the Academia Bonvesin de la Riva, by a new pan-Lombard writing system, the New Lombard Orthography.

They range from local orthographies, specifically designed for dialects but often inconsistent with each other, to the Scriver Lombard (Write Lombard) which claims to write the same word in the same way in all dialectal variants, and it will then be the reader to read it differently based on his dialect, the New Lombard Orthography is a bit of a middle ground, which at the same time guarantees spelling comprehension and consistency between the different variants of the language. In this book the New Lombard Orthography will be used.

For the classical Milanese orthography refer instead to the book on Insubric language (also known as Western Lombard), which precisely it is the western branch of the Lombard language, with the Milanese dialect in the historical centre.

Note
 * = fundamental importance
 * = medium importance
 * = rarely used

New Lombard Orthography
The New Lombard Orthography (NOL) is an orthography derived from the graphic tradition of various Lombard variants and designed for the entirety of Lombard language

Features
NOL was born as a polynomial orthography, i.e. with the possibility of writing in the same way for everyone, with the specific aim of involving all local variants and at the same time maintaining and showing local differences. This is achieved thanks to the flexibility of the handwriting: in fact, it is possible to write in a more standard or local way depending on the need of the person using it.

The spelling choices were made on the basis of past spelling proposals and the local spellings of Lombard, to try to make them more consistent with each other and not stray too far from traditional orthographies.

Compound words
For compound words, a dash is used between the two words that make up the compound: (per exemple: mazza-pioeugg, ...).

Infinitive
There are some verbs that have an irregular ending in the infinitive and that do not follow the rules just explained (for example: prodù, toeu, …).

The infinitive verbs of the 1st, 2nd and 4th conjugation used with an enclitic maintain the graphic accent, instead they lose the -r in the 3rd. Even verbs with an irregular ending in the infinitive have the same ending (and sometimes also the graphic accent).

Participle
The participle suffix is orthographically fixed:

For monosyllabic verbs of the first conjugation and the verb vesser there is the possibility of two endings:

Imperative
The monosyllabic forms of the imperative of the second person singular are always written with the graphic accent (for example: fà, dà, stà, scrìv, bév, ...).

Local pronunciations and Wiktionary
As can be seen, the pronunciation of the New Lombard orthography is not unique for all the letters; the reader should know the correct pronunciation a priori, it may be useful to consult the Wiktionary. However, some more information can be obtained if one knows in which dialect the text was written, see for example:


 * Phonology of the New Lombard Orthography in Milanese dialect
 * Phonology of the New Lombard Orthography in Bergamasque dialect
 * Phonology of the New Lombard Orthography in Laghee dialect

In the year 2021 a Lombard-language wikictionary was born, available on the site https://lmo.wiktionary.org/ which contains:


 * definitions in Lombard;
 * ways of writing the same word in different dialects and orthographies;
 * etymology of the word;
 * pronunciation, as far as pronunciation is concerned, it has also been specially designed to provide the pronunciation IPA of the same word in different dialects.

This will be discussed in more detail in the module about dictionaries