Tuscan dialect

Tuscan (Italian: dialetto toscano [djaˈlɛtto tosˈkaːno; di.a-]; locally: vernacolo) is a set of Italo-Dalmatian varieties of Romance spoken in Tuscany, Corsica, and Sardinia.Standard Italian is based on Tuscan, specifically on its Florentine dialect, and it became the language of culture throughout Italy[1] because of the prestige of the works by Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli, and Francesco Guicciardini.In De vulgari eloquentia (c. 1300), Dante Alighieri distinguishes four main subdialects: fiorentino (Florence), senese (Siena), lucchese (Lucca) and aretino (Arezzo).As a result of the weakening rule, there are a few minimal pairs distinguished only by length of the voiceless fricative (e.g. [laʃeˈrɔ] lacerò 'it/he/she ripped' vs. [laʃʃeˈrɔ] lascerò 'I will leave/let').The Tuscan dialect makes use of both in the same sentence as a kind of intensification[citation needed] of the dative/indirect object: This usage is widespread throughout the central regions of Italy, not only in Tuscany, and is often considered redundant and erroneous by language purists.It is also a standard feature in Spanish: a mí me gusta ("I like it") In some dialects, the double accusative pronoun me mi vedi (lit: Me you see me) can be heard, but that is considered to be an archaic form.The singular and plural masculine definite articles can both be realized phonetically as [i] in Florentine varieties of Tuscan but are distinguished by their phonological effect on following consonants.A case such as Latin sapio > Italian so (I know), however, admits no such phonological account since the expected outcome of /sapio/ would be */sappjo/, with a normal lengthening of the consonant preceding /j/.Thus so, sai, sa, sanno (all singulars and the third-person plural of 'know') has come to fit the template of do, dai, dà, danno ('give'), sto, stai, sta, stanno ('be, stay'), and fo, fai, fa, fanno ('make, do') has followed the same pattern.