the Province of Ferrara (Cento, Poggio Renatico, Sant'Agostino and Mirabello) and in Pavana (Province of Pistoia, Tuscany). Ferrarese, spoken in the Province of Ferrara (except for Cento and surroundings), southern Veneto, and Comacchio. Carrarese and Lunigiano dialects, spoken in Carrara, Lunigiana, in almost all of the Province of Massa and Carrara in northwestern Tuscany, and a good portion of the Province of La Spezia in eastern Liguria. Historically, this region has been part of Tuscany and the duchies of Modena and Parma at different times, so it has a close economic relationship with the Emilian area and is geographically proximate due to the Magra and Vara rivers. Other definitions include the following: Massese (mixed with some Tuscan features) Casalasco, spoken in Cremona, Lombardy. Phonology Consonants Affricate sounds [, ] can also be heard as alternates of fricative sounds /, / particularly among southern dialects. In the Piacentino dialect, an // sound can be heard as either an alveolar trill [], or as a uvular fricative [] sound. Vowels Rounded front vowel sounds /, , / and a mid-central vowel sound // are mainly common in the Piacentino and western dialects. In the Piacentino dialect, five vowel sounds being followed by //, are then recognized as nasalized , unless // occurs between two vowel sounds. Vowel length is also distinguished for the following vowels . Writing system Emilian is written using a Latin script that has never been standardised, and spelling varies widely among the dialects. The dialects were largely oral and rarely written until some time in the late 20th century; a large amount of written media in Emilian has been created since World War II. References Bibliography Luca Rognoni, Il sistema fonologico del dialetto modenese. L'Italia Dialettale 74, pp. 135–148, 2013. Colombini, F. 2007. La negazione nei dialetti emiliani: microvariazione nell’area modenese. University of Padua, MA Thesis. Further reading Pietro Mainoldi, Manuale dell'odierno dialetto bolognese, Suoni e segni, Grammatica – Vocabolario, Bologna, Società tipografica Mareggiani 1950 (Rist. anast.: Sala Bolognese, A. Forni 2000) Fabio Foresti, Bibliografia dialettale dell'Emilia-Romagna e della Repubblica di San Marino (BDER), Bologna, IBACN Emilia-Romagna / Compositori 1997 E. F. Tuttle, Nasalization in Northern Italy: Syllabic Constraints and Strength Scales as Developmental Parameters, Rivista di Linguistica, III: 23–92 (1991) Luigi Lepri e Daniele Vitali, Dizionario Bolognese-Italiano Italiano-Bolognese, ed. Pendragon 2007 External links Emilian basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database Emilia (region of Italy) Emilian-Romagnol language