The ligure , or Ligurian, is a whole of speeches gallo-italics (pertaining to the Romance Langues), spoken in Ligurie, in the zones bordering on the Piedmont, the Toscane and the Comté of Nice (Roya), like in the enclaves of Monaco, Bonifacio (Corsica) and of the small islands of San Pietro and Sant' Antioco (Sardinia).

The Ligurian is also called:

• Ligurian , preferable denomination because it makes it possible to distinguish it from old the languages of the Ligures), with which he does not have a direct relationship (see below). But this distinction of terms exists only in the French-speaking linguists: in Ligurian and standard Italian, one says ligure in the two directions.
• génois , of the name of the principal dialect of the town of Genoa (in Ligurian zeneise , in standard Italian genovese ).
• Tabarquin (tabarchino), word which indicates only the ligure isolate of Sardinia.

The Ligurian and former Ligurians

It will be noted that the ligure term indicates an old spoken language by old the Ligures, which is badly known people of Antiquity pre-Roman. If the consensus wants that they occupied the edges of the Mediterranean since the Eastern borders of current the Ligurie to - probably - the Catalan coast, as well as part of the Alps, their extension towards north could have reached the shores of the Belgium or the Netherlands, before they are pushed back towards the south by the Celtic expansions.

The Indo-European character of this language (or at least, of what one can reconstitute, i.e. mainly let us étymons toponymic standard fixed , shelter (< creek, country cottage, fpr cheûtâ…), clapa- , fall (< pr. , fpr. clapyâ), the suffix - asque/-osque in toponyms or gentilés ( Manosque, Gréasque, comasque, bergamask, Monegasque… , hydronymes rear , Dr. , water, running water, river, torrent (< Aar, Arve, Arrondine, Arar - old name of the Saone, Doire, Doron, the Durance…) like some certificates on lepontic funerary steles , mainly exhumed in the Swiss canton of the Tessin, for example the term pala , stone, stele < ( fpr. Pallet, Palettâ)) forever firmly established fault of a verbal and syntactic corpus sufficient. A contrario , the general tendency is to be baptized ligure the primitive bottom non-indoeuropéen which, following the example word pala , would have been borrowed by the successive Indo-European superstrata, like the lepontic, for example. If there is a relationship between the ligure current and the language of the old Ligurians, it can be only by the way of simple a linguistic Substrat.