We are interested in the vitality of Regional Minority Languages (RMLs) in Italy. These are traditionally referred to as "dialects". However, they are not offsprings of (Standard) Italian, but they all originate from Latin, just like Italian (the continuation of the variety spoken in Tuscany).
Many RMLs in Italy do not have official language status. Researchers and users themselves often refer to them as "dialects" due to their inferior political status. They have been victims of agressively monolingual language language policies in the past. Although there are some indications of revalorization, the number of users continues to drop. The number of users is typically assessed by means of surveys. However, linguistic research shows that self-assessment is not an indicator of how well these languages are actually maintained.
In our team we are developing assment tools for regional minority languages. Our first tests for Sicilian and Venetan have been finalzied and are publicly available to anyone who is interested in using them.
