borrowing pronouns

[Frank Rossi]

JPM wrote:

>2. As of 1960, in the Veneto, dialect speakers were uncomfortable with the
>feminine pronoun <Lei> in addressing a man. They address a man with their
>masculine pronoun <Lu>.

The same applies to Lombardy today.
Dialect speakers who don't speak Italian well (and there are still many
around), address strangers as Lui, which is considered quite incorrect in
Standard Italian.
In MIlanese Lombard dialect, the correct term is "Sciorlu" (shurly), i.e.
"o" = Italian "u", "u" = French "u".
In Bergamasco Lombard dialect, which usually differs considerably from
Milanese in its phonetics, the same term is used with the same
pronunciation.
Milanese may have borrowed this usage directly from Spanish, as Milan was
under Spanish domination for 200 years, but in Bergamo this cannot have
been the case, as Bergamo was under Venice.
Today, as I was out walking with my wife, we were addressed as "Loro" by an
old lady, and it struck us as this form is rapidly losing ground in the
plural as I said in my earlier posting.

Frank Rossi
Bergamo, Italy
iglesias at axia.it