Romagnol (rumagnòl or rumagnôl; Italian: romagnolo) is a Romance language spoken in the historical region of Romagna, consisting mainly of the southeastern part of Emilia-Romagna, Italy. The name is derived from the Lombard name for the region, Romagna.[3] Romagnol is also spoken outside the region, particularly in the independent Republic of San Marino.[4]Romagnol is classified as endangered because older generations have "neglected to pass on the dialect as a native tongue to the next generation".[5]
Romagnol belongs to the Gallo-Italic family alongside Piedmontese, Ligurian and Lombard, forming with Emilian and as one of the two branches of the Emilian-Romagnol linguistic continuum.[6]
Further groupings of variants of Romagnol has not been set yet and both speakers and authors tend to refer to their own town or the nearest major province cities.
The variants of Romagnol form a dialect continuum with their neighbouring varieties, while the more distant dialects might be less mutually intelligible. Variants spoken north of the Santerno river are considered by speakers of Sammarinese as being less, but still, intelligible, while past the Sillaro such intelligibility is lost.
In Italian-speaking contexts, Forlivese (like most of the other non-Italian language varieties spoken within the borders of the Italian Republic) is often generically called a "dialect". This is often incorrectly understood as to mean a dialect of Italian, which actually is not the case. Forlivese and Italian are different languages and are not mutually intelligible. Forlivese is a central Romagna variety and is intelligible to speakers of other neighbouring Romagna varieties.
Like all other dialects of Romagna, Forlivese is a Western Romance language related to French, Romansh and Italian.