(edited by Francesco Deplanu)

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The "dialect" of our areas, like any "language",   it is changeable, it is  a stratification of influenced terms  from historical events, such as the Umbertidese dialect term "luzzino",  dialect term attested both in Sansepolcro and in Città di Castello and Pietralunga,  usually referring to a child who does not sit still or to a very fast one: according to Professor Mattesini (biturgense), teacher for many years of "History of the Italian language" and "Dialectology" at the University of  Perugia,  it would derive from the Greek " luchnos " which means "torch", from which by extension "lightning" ... or from the Greek of the 5th century with the domination of the Eastern Roman Empire in  "Byzantine corridor". The varieties  linguistic locales, such as language   they manage to convey to us the continuity of what we call "history", a cultural stratification that is used,  without awareness, even by those who come to live in Umbertide from other countries, especially from children born here.

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As for this aspect that links history and language, what we know of our dialect was incomplete and not very thorough for a long time. In one  of the most complete Italian attempts to give life  to a "new story" that was publishing in the 70s, de la  " History of Italy series ", for example, there is a notable lack of knowledge of the dialect of Upper Umbria.   In fact, as regards the sociolinguistic paper by Corrado Grassi which indicates the limits of the use of " imo " to " go " present in " Words and tools of the peasant world "  within vol. 20 of the " Atlas Images and numbers of Italy " volume  edited by Lucio Gambi, of the " History of Italy " series  (gigantic and innovative work of 1976  reprinted by “Sole 24 ore, in Turin in 2005), we cannot fail to notice that this map does not show any particularities present in our dialect. Here it is reported, in fact, in table n. 2 " Conservative and innovative linguistic areas of the Latinity of Italy " with a line called " d " the northern limit, which goes from the Conero directly to Rome, of the  persistence of the verb “ire” in central southern Italy (for example “ imu ” in Sicily, “ iamme ” in the Neapolitan for “let's go”) due to the different modality in which Latin in the linguistic Romanization of the peninsula took root on the previous linguistic substratum. Grassi reports that this persistence of Latin came  instead replaced by " vadere " throughout the "Romània" with the exception of very areas  further south of our Umbertide, as reported above.

Notoriously, however, the use of dialectal terms of this type in our area is present and still in common use even among the youngest: “ gimo ” for “let's go” and “ gite ” for “go”.

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