Lingue in contatto: un caso di prestigio linguistico

Abstract

Languages in contact: a case of linguistic prestige The article aims to offer a review of the influences exerted by the Italian language (and the Venetian dialect) on the Serbian literary language as well as on the local dialects. These impacts date back to the Middle Ages and, in practice uninterruptedly, persist to the present day. The aim of the paper is to demonstrate how, due to socio-economic and cultural circumstances, Italian has been able to establish itself as a prestigious language compared to Serbian and how the relationship between the two languages over the centuries has always been essentially monodirectional.

Keywords

• language loans
• contact linguistics
• italian
• serbian
• linguistic prestige