Friulian
Friulian (or "Friulan";
native name furlan) is the native Romance language of Friuli (or Friûl),
now part of the Autonomous Region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia. In the extreme
northeast of the present territory of Italy, it shares political/administrative
borders with the Veneto Region (Italy) to the west, Austria to the north, and
Slovenia to the east, and linguistic borders with the Venetian dialect of North
Italian, German and Slovene, while the area's physical limits are,
correspondingly, the Dolomite Alps, the Carnic Alps, the Julian Alps, and to the
south, the Adriatic Sea. With limited official recognition, Friulian is spoken
by perhaps half a million people, mainly in rural areas (including possibly 75%
of Udine province), who are in most cases also able to speak Italian (and until
recently, Venetian). There are several spoken dialects, and a standard
orthography has recently been established. Friulian is the most widely spoken of
the Rhaeto-Romance languages, which also include Romansh and Ladin, within the
Romance language family (Indo-European).
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