The Vitality of Friulian in the Province of Udine: a Sociolinguistic Study

This study was designed to assess the language vitality of Friulian and to provide an informed assessment of its current sociolinguistic status in the Italian province of Udine. Friulian’s future survival is definitely at risk. The Friulian speech community is clearly shifting from the minority language to the national language, namely Italian. Friulian is spoken in very few domains which tend to be familiar rather than public, it is very rarely transmitted to children, highly influenced by Italian’s lexicon and it suffers of poor institutional support. On Whaley’s (2003) scale of endangerment it can be considered as a “disappearing” language. The only way to save it is by acting immediately. In fact, the language is still discretely vital among the older generation of the speech community and it can still be saved. Urgent and effective language polices should be adopted to reverse the language shift to Italian and promote bilingualism in the region.