Il francoprovenzale e il francese nell’Italia settentrionale

This article focuses on the Francoprovençal varieties and on the French spoken in Northern Italy, in two regions located in multilingual contexts: the Aosta Valley (where, in addition to French and Francoprovençal, Italian and Walser dialects also coexist) and Piedmont (which, in addition to sharing the diatopic varieties mentioned for the Aosta Valley, also embraces Piedmontese and Occitan). It will be shown that French has played an important role in the history guaranteeing the autonomy of the Aosta Valley, also thanks to the sustainment of the government, while the various Francoprovençal dialects have not been supported at the same grade, are rather used in oral contexts and in general, they are undergoing a process of Italianisation, even though they are taught at school and partly also at university. French is the language of instruction in the Aosta Valley next to Italian and as L2 in Piedmont, while Francoprovençal has been introduced at school only towards the end of the XX century.