And yet it’s spoken! – zenei.se

The St George’s Cross flag flying in front of Genoa’s Lanterna lighthouse

Unna lengua de longo corso

An ocean-going language

Liguria has an invisible monument, built by generations, one voice at a time.

A stepped creusa between houses in Nervi, Genoa

1984: o zeneise o conquista o mondo

1984: Genoese goes global

With Creuza de mä, De André and Pagani turned Genoese into a world-music language.

The Lanterna, the lighthouse of Genoa

Çent’anni de «Ma se ghe penso»

A century of “Ma se ghe penso”

A 1925 emigration song the whole city still knows by heart.

The painted houses of Caminito, La Boca, Buenos Aires

Xeneizes: perché o Boca o parla zeneise

Xeneizes: why Boca Juniors speaks Genoese

The nickname of Argentina’s most famous club is a Genoese word in Spanish spelling.

Pesto in a marble mortar with a wooden pestle

O primmo «pesto» o l’ea sensa baxaicò

The first pesto had no basil

The surprising biography of a word the whole world thinks it knows.

Medieval miniature of the troubadour Raimbaut de Vaqueiras

A damma ch’a l’à dæto o legnetto – in zeneise

The lady who turned down her suitor – in Genoese

Around 1190 Genoese makes its literary debut – to turn down a troubadour.

A bowl of cioppino, San Francisco’s fish stew

Cioppin: a pittansa de San Francisco ch’a parla zeneise

Cioppino: the San Francisco dish that speaks Genoese

A Genoese word recorded in California before Genoese dictionaries ever listed it.

Vasco da Gama before the Zamorin of Calicut, painting by Veloso Salgado (1898)

Tra portogheixi e indien se parlava zeneise

The Portuguese and the Indians spoke Genoese to each other

Vasco da Gama’s first conversations in India ran partly through Genoese.

The harbour of Carloforte, San Pietro island, Sardinia

Tabarchin: Zena, Tabarca, Sardegna

Tabarchino: Genoa to Tunisia to Sardinia

A Ligurian twice transplanted – today the variety with the liveliest transmission.

View of Genoa in 1481, painting by Cristoforo Grassi

Donde van, unn’atra Zena ghe fan

Wherever they go, they make another Genoa

Genoa’s first great poet described the diaspora – seven hundred years ago.

The Balilla monument in Genoa

1941: o Balilla o torna, stavòtta contra o regimme

1941: Balilla comes back, this time against the regime

An anonymous sign on the monument, a poem by Firpo: the myth reclaimed from Fascism.

The Rock of Monaco seen from the sea

O ligure ch’o s’imprende à Monego

The Ligurian they teach in Monaco

Monegasque is a Ligurian variety – taught by law, all the way to the baccalauréat.

The Portoria uprising with Balilla, painted by Giuseppe Comotto

«Che l’inse?»: doe poule, un sollevo

‘Che l’inse?’: two words that started an uprising

5 December 1746: a stone, a Genoese sentence, a city freeing itself.

Genoa in the 1930s

O fascismo o l’à proibio o zeneise?

Did fascism ban Genoese?

The story is more ambiguous than the received one: recruited myths, Govi on tour, and a decline that came from elsewhere.

Old nautical chart of the Ligurian and Tyrrhenian seas

Zemin: a poula ch’a cangia pittansa à ògni pòrto

Zimino: the word that changes dish in every port

In Liguria a lean vegetable stew, in Sassari a roast of offal. Same word.

Galileo shows the Doge of Venice how to use the telescope, fresco by Giuseppe Bertini

Escì ch’ô se parla!

And yet it’s spoken!

Unrecognised, unprotected. But Ligurian is spoken every day.