Council for Ligurian Linguistic Heritage

Ligurian Council

DEIZE

Italian-Ligurian (Genoese) dictionary

tu

pron.
  1. pronome personale soggetto di 2ª persona singolare

    ti [ˈti] (var. tie)1

    e tu cosa vuoi?

    e ti cöse ti veu?

    tu cosa ci resti a fare qui?

    ti cöse ti gh’arresti à fâ chì?

    tu sì che canti bene

    ti scì che ti canti ben

    tu parli il genovese

    ti ti parli o zeneise

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1. Variant with epenthesis of the vowel -e

This term may also occur with epenthesis (i.e. final addition) of the vowel -e. In Genoese, this phenomenon mostly affects monosyllables (such as mi [ˈmi]mie [ˈmiːe] “I”, ti [ˈti]tie [ˈtiːe] “you”, chì [ˈki]chie [ˈkiːe] “here”, [ˈli]lie [ˈliːe] “there”, scì [ˈʃi]scie [ˈʃiːe] “yes”, no [ˈnu]noe [ˈnuːe] “no”) and some bisyllables (ascì [aˈʃi]ascie [aˈʃiːe] “also”; coscì [kuˈʃi]coscie [kuˈʃiːe] “so”). It occurs especially when the word is at the end of the phonetic chain (thus, generally, at the end of a sentence) and serves essentially emphatic purposes. It is therefore a phenomenon typical of spoken language, and generally does not occur in written texts (unless, of course, they aim to imitate speech). Its use with nouns in -on [ˈuŋ] (staçion [staˈsjuŋ]staçioñe [staˈsjuŋˑe] “station”) and with participles in -ou (cantou [kaŋˈtɔw]cantoue [kaŋˈtɔwˑe] “sung”) is decidedly rare, and mostly restricted to certain areas.

Multi-word expressions

dare del tu.