Ligurian language
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The Ligurian language was spoken in pre-Roman times and into the Roman era by an ancient people of north-western Italy and south-eastern France known as the Liguri. Very little is known about this language, which is believed to have been non-Indo-European, as evidenced by certain place-names in the region where it was spoken, although it appears to have adopted significantly from Indo-European languages including Greek (from Greek traders), Celtic (Gaullish), Italic (Latin) and, in later times, Germanic (including Teutonic and Cimbrian).
Ligurian is sometimes also applied to a Romance language currently spoken in Liguria, a region of Italy, and in Monaco.
It has been adopted formally in Monaco as the Monegasque language or, locally, Munegascu. It is taught in schools and it has been suggested that 17% of the Monegasque population speaks it. The ISO 639-2 code for this language is roa.
It is generally called Zeneize or Zeneise (both spellings are accepted), which also represents the people of Genoa, the historically dominant city and cultural capital of Liguria in the modern era.
In some contexts, it has been incorrectly applied to any Northern Italian, as is common in South America where a significant part of the Northern Italian heritage population traces its origin to Genoa and Liguria.
External links
Ethnologue report for Ligurian (http://www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=lij)bg:Лигурски език de:Ligurisch fr:ligure it:ligure pl:Język liguryjski