Venetian or
Venetan (Venetian:
vèneto,
vènet or
léngua vèneta) is a
Romance language spoken as a native language by almost four million people, mostly in the
Veneto region of
Italy, where most of the five million inhabitants can understand it. It is sometimes spoken and often well understood outside Veneto, in
Trentino,
Friuli,
Venezia Giulia,
Istria, and some towns of
Dalmatia. Venetian is usually referred to as an
Italian dialect although it is a
Western Romance language, a different branch of Romance from that of Italian. Some authors include it among the
Gallo-Italic languages, but by most authors, it is treated as separate. Typologically, Venetian has little in common with the Gallo-Italic languages of northwestern Italy, but shows some affinity to nearby
Istriot.