Co va la pa?
“What does that mean?,” you might be asking yourselves? Well, it means “How are you?” in Ladin, a language spoken in the Dolomites.
The Ladin people live in the five valleys surrounding the Sella Massif in the heart of the Dolomites and today still speak a minority language: Ladin. Although the language spoken in Val Gardena, Val Badia, Val di Fassa, Livinallongo and Cortina d’Ampezzo varies slightly, they all originate from Rhaeto-Romanic, a language that goes back to the Roman Empire.
Ladin has official status in Italy together with Italian and German and the Ladin population in the Trentino-South Tyrol autonomous region is officially recognized whereas this is not the case in Veneto. Ladin is actually part of a wider linguistic area that includes the canton of Grisons in Switzerland (they call their language Romansh) and the Friuli region in north-eastern Italy (where they speak Friulian). The three areas represent what remains of a wider Romance territory that once extended from the Rhine as far as the Adriatic sea. Despite the distances between the areas, linguistic awareness and a sense of identity are well-rooted and supported by a dense network of associations, research centres and institutions such as, for example, the Ladin Cultural Institute.
More details:
- Official Website of the Dolomite Ladins
- Ladin Standard
- Learn about the attempts to standardize Ladin
