Cume la va?
Ticino dialect
Said in the canton of Ticino
How are you?
Cume la va?
Where it comes from
Cume la va? almost explains itself: cume is “how”, and va is “goes”. That leaves the la. In Lombard, English Wikipedia explains, a small subject pronoun comes before a verb in the third-person singular, el for the masculine and la for the feminine, the same words as the article; and when the subject is dropped, that small pronoun stays. So Cume la va? can be read, word for word, as “how does she go?”. Who this “she” is, the sources consulted do not say; French does the same with the ça of “ça va”.
According to Italian Wikipedia, Lombard also likes to slip a che in after a question word: cumè che l’é?, “how is it?”.
On the town itself, Italian Wikipedia says that Bellinzona speaks a Ticinese from the western branch of Lombard, with traits of its own: a mole is called talp there, in the masculine, and the dialect differs from the Alpine variety of the northern valleys and the Locarno area. The dialect remains very much alive: the same page notes that people speak it at home, in cafés, at work, in the administration and sometimes on television. In 2011 the linguist Matteo Casoni even saw it gaining ground in text messages, blogs and online guestbooks.
In use
In Ticinese dialect, with forms found in the sources below:
- “Ciao, cume la va?” – Hi, how’s it going?
- “La va ben, e ti?” – It’s going well, and you?
Sources: Italian Wikipedia, “Lingua lombarda” and “Bellinzona”; English Wikipedia, “Western Lombard grammar”; Matteo Casoni, “Usi innovativi del dialetto nei nuovi media (e in classe?) in Ticino” (Osservatorio linguistico della Svizzera italiana, 2011).