[11][12] That is in sharp contrast to the influence left by the Celts, who settled in Northern Italy and brought their Celtic languages and culturally and linguistically Celticised the Ligures.

Tuscan writers and humanists such as Luigi Pulci and Benedetto Dei recorded aspects of the language spoken in Milan in the form of parodies;[18] similarly, the Asti-born writer Giorgio Alione parodied Milanese in his Commedia e farse carnovalesche nei dialetti astigiano, milanese e francese misti con latino barbaro (eng.

"Comedy and carnival farces in the Asti, Milanese and French dialects mixed with barbaric Latin") composed at the end of the 15th century.

[19] The Florentine humanist Leonardo Salviati, one of the founders of the Accademia della Crusca, an important Italian linguistic academy operating to this day, published a series of translations of a Boccaccian tale into various vernaculars (including Bergamo and Milanese) explicitly in order to demonstrate how ugly and awkward they were compared to Tuscan.

[20] At the same time, the 15th century saw the first signs of a true Lombard literature: in the eastern parts of Lombardy, the Bergamo-born Giovanni Bressani composed numerous volumes of satirical poetry and the Brescia-born Galeazzo dagli Orzi wrote his Massera da bé, a sort of theatrical dialogue;[21] in the west of the region area, the Mannerist painter Giovanni Paolo Lomazzo lead the composition of the "arabesques" in the Accademia dei Facchini della Val di Blenio, a Milanese academy founded in 1560.

[23] An example of a text in ancient Milanese dialect is this excerpt from Il falso filosofo (1698), act III, scene XIV, where Meneghino, a traditional Milanese character from the commedia dell'arte, presents himself in court (Lombard on the left, Italian translation on the right): «E mì interrogatus ghe responditt.

Sont Meneghin Tandœuggia, Ciamæ par sora nomm el Tananan, Del condamm Marchionn ditt el Sginsgiva; Sont servitor del sior Pomponi Gonz, C'al è trent agn che'l servj» E io interrogatus risposi: Sono Meneghino Babbeo chiamato per soprannome il Ciampichino del fu Marchionne detto il Gengiva; sono servitore del signor Pomponio Gonzo che servo da trent'anni — Meneghino appears in court in "The False Philosopher" (1698), act III, scene XIV[24] The 17th century also saw the rise of the figure of the playwright Carlo Maria Maggi, who normalised the spelling of the Milanese dialect and who created, among other things, the Milanese mask of Meneghino.

[25] A friend and correspondent of Maggi was Francesco De Lemene, author of La sposa Francesca (the first literary work in modern Lodi dialect)[26] and of a translation of Gerusalemme liberata.

[27] Milanese literature in the 18th century was quickly developing: some important names which emerged in that period include Domenico Balestrieri, who was associated the famous poet Giuseppe Parini.

[28][29] One of the most important writers of the period was the Bergamo-based abbot Giuseppe Rota, author of a substantial (unpublished) Bergamo-Italian-Latin vocabulary and of several poetic works in the Orobic idiom, which he always called "lingua".

[34] Milanese poetic production assumed such important dimensions that in 1815 the scholar Francesco Cherubini published an anthology of Lombard literature in four volumes, which included texts written from the seventeenth century to his day.

[35] In the first part of the 20th century, the greatest exponent of Lombard literature was the Milanese lawyer Delio Tessa, who distanced himself from the Portian tradition by giving his texts a strong expressionist tone.

[36] In Bergamo, the most prominent advocate of Lombard language was Bortolo Belotti, a lawyer, historian and minister in the liberal governments of the time.

[38] In their comic shows the actors propose to the public satirical figures of the typical Lombard court; founded in Legnano in 1949 by Felice Musazzi, Tony Barlocco and Luigi Cavalleri, it is among the most famous companies in the European dialect theatre scene.

[40] There is no shortage of translations of great literary classics; in fact, there are numerous versions in Lombard of works such as Pinocchio, The Betrothed, The Little Prince, the Divine Comedy and – in religious literature – of the Gospels.

Surveys in Italy find that all Lombard-speakers also speak Italian, and their command of both two languages varies according to their geographical position as well as their socio-economic situation.

[citation needed] Lombard is spoken in Campione d'Italia, an exclave of Italy that is surrounded by Swiss territory on Lake Lugano.