In the five ladin valleys that compose Ladina, a strong factor of unification is the language which, although with differences among the valleys, is spoken in all the land. The ladin is a language coming from latin and, mixing first with the one of the retich populations of the Dolomites and undergoing the influence of italian and german, was converted in the actual ladin. We have to take care not considering ladin one of the italian dialects: it's in fact an indipendent linguistic group because of historical and structural causes; so we have to consider it a real language (such es the Sardinian, for example), that was recognized also by a lot of linguists (the first was Graziadio Isaia Ascoli in 1800) and by a resolution of the European Union, that promoted some entreprises in order to defend the linguistic minorities. The importance of ladin nowadays is witnessed by three things: 1) in Fassa Valley ladin is teached in the primary and secondary school, while in Gardena and Badia Valleys in the high schools too; Fodom and Ampezzo are not included in this kind of policy 2) all the official acts of the municipalities can be written in ladin, german or italian 3) to work in the public offices (such as post office, bank aso)is necessary having a ladin certificate issued by the cultural istitutes, after having passed an exam. Ladins have also their own weekly newspaper, called "La Usc di Ladins", and their radio and television broadcasts, thanks to the ladin RAI in Bolzano.

The Ladin of the Dolomites can be divided into five big dialects: the Fascian in Fassa Valley, with a lot of italian influences; the Ghërdeina in Gardena Valley, near to german; the Badiot in Badia Valley, a little less "germanized" as the Ghërdeina and that in my opinion can be considered the "pure" ladin; the Fodom in Livinallongo and the Ampezan in Cortina, with a lot of influences from Veneto. The differences among these ways of speaking can be rather strong or imperceptible.

COMPARAISON AMONG THE 5 LADIN DIALECTS 

The linguistic differences can be found out also into each valley. The clearest case is Fassa Valley, where you can identify three different ways of speaking: the "cazet" spoken in the High Valley, the "brach" of the Central Valley and the "moenat", spoken in the Low Valley. Even these differences can be strong or imperceptible, phonetic, morphologic or syntactic. Contrasting ways of speaking can be find out also in Badia Tal, where the main dialects are the Badiot (Alta Badia) and the Mareo (Marebbe).

COMPARAISON AMONG THE 3 WAYS OF SPEAKING IN FASSA VALLEY

A peculiarity of the ladin language is the preservation of some structures deriving from the ancient retic language, befor the roman empire, for example: crepa (mountain), troi (path), zondra (bush). Very popular are also words deriving from german, such as "àiserin" (Housewife), deriving from "Häuslerin"; "chino" (cinema), deriving from "Kino"; "angern" (yesterday), deriving from "gestern".

Nowadays the cultural istitutes are still working to realize a unique ladin language, the 2Ladin Dolomitan", theorised by professor Heinrich Schmidt, in order to unify under a standars the different ways of speaking. However, as we saw in the past, is almost impossible realising an artificial language; as a consequence the differences among the five valley won't be erased.

Little diccionary of Fassa Valley Ladin 

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