Pellegrini’s map of the languages of Italy, 1977.
There
are a lot of maps around. One posted quite recently in this community.
However, most of them contain incorrect information. This map was done
by an actual linguist, yes it’s old, but scientifically sound. Here’s
how to read it. Each color represents a group of mutually intelligible
languages. It does not mean that one color corresponds to one language.
Every town has its own languages, but they can be divided by mutual
intelligibility and common features. More or less, it is like giving the
same color to French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and Romanian,
because they are all Romance languages. Starting from the deep south:
- violet is the area of extreme southern Italo-Romance. Sicilian, Southern Calabrian, and Salentino belong to this group.
- pink
is the area of continental southern Italo-Romance. Apulian, Campanian,
Lucanian, Northern Calabrese, Molisano, Abruzzese, and Southern
Marchigiano belong to this group. - light pink is central Italo-Romance. Laziale, Umbro, and Marchigiano belong to this group.
- green is the area of Tuscan.
- yellow
is northern Italo-Romance. It’s divided in yellow (Emiliano-Romagnolo,
Ligure, Lumbard, Piedmontese) and light yellow (Veneto). - orange (north east) is Friulan.
- light grey is Slovenian
- dark grey is German varieties
- coral (north west) is Franco-provençal
- light brick orange is Sardinian
Within
each area, you can see red lines (isoglosses). These lines constitute
language borders. So for example, if you zoom in you’ll see the
isoglosses separating Piedmontese from Lumbard, Campania from Apulian,
etc. As you can see, the map uses different terminology from the maps
that you can usually find on the internet. Just to give an example,
amateur -made maps describe Neapolitan as being spoken everywhere in
continental southern Italy, while in fact this is not the case.
Tiny letters represent alloglot languages (Griko, Slavomolisan, Arbereshe, etc.)
You can find the original here. Enjoy!