18 Apr Venetian
Venetian or Venetan (Venetian: vèneto, vènet or łéngua vèneta) is a Romance language spoken as a native language by over two million people, mostly in the Veneto region of Italy, where most of the five million inhabitants can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and often well understood outside Veneto, in Trentino, Friuli, Venezia Giulia, Istria, and some towns of Dalmatia, totalling 6–7 million speakers. Venetian is usually referred to as an Italian dialect, in spite of it being a Western Romance language, a branch Italian does not belong to. Some authors include it among the Gallo-Italic languages, but by most authors, it is treated as separate. Typologically, Venetian has little in common with the Gallo-Italic languages of northwestern Italy, but shows some affinity to nearby Istriot. Venetian is not closely related to Venetic, an extinct Indo-European language that was spoken in the Veneto region before Roman expansion.