| Lombards were one of the tribes forming the Suebi, and during the 1st century AD they lived in northwest Germany. Found in older English texts, a Germanic people originally from Northern Europe that entered the late Roman Empire. They occasionally clashed with the Romans, but it seems they were mainly shepherds and farmers until, in the 4th century, the great migrations of peoples coming from East changed the situation. Formerly called Winili, and how the Longobards left Scandinavia under the leaders Ybor and Agio, and settled in Continental Europe, in the lower course of the Elbe river, where they were recorded by Tacitus as early as A.D. 98. After the Langobardi come the Reudigni, Auiones, Angli, Varni, Eudoses, Suarines, and Nuithones, all well guarded by rivers and forests. At the end of the 5th century Lombards settled in the area of (Noricum) or Austria-Neustria -what is now Austria, in the territory formerly occupied by the Rugians, and at the beginning of the 6th century they were settled in Pannonia (now Western Hungary and the Czech Republic) by the Emperor Justinian, in quality of foederati. In the spring of 568, Alboin, King of the Lombards led the Lombards to cross the Julian Alps and to invade northern Italy, together with other Germanic tribes living with them (Bavarians, Gepidae, Saxons) and Bulgars. |  |
Lombardic is the extinct language of the Lombards (Langobardi), the Germanic speaking settlers in Italy in the 6th century. The term Lombard refers to a group of related dialects spoken mainly in Southern Switzerland (Ticino and Graubünden) and in Northern Italy (most of Lombardy and some areas of neighbouring regions). The language declined from the 7th century, but may have been in scattered use until as late as ca. AD 1000. Lombardic participated in some of the earliest evidence for the High German consonant shift.
Formerly, Lombardic was classified as Ingaevonian (North Sea Germanic). In the Codex Gothanus (9th century), the Lombards were of Scandinavian origin ultimately, but they had settled at the Elbe before entering Italy, and Tacitus counts them among the Suebi. Among the primary source texts are short inscriptions in the Elder Futhark which resembles features of Ogham. Duke Zaban of 574, showed /t/ shifted to /ts/.
Lombard is not closely related to the Italian language, Lombard and Italian belonging to different branches of the Romance language family. Romansh, Friulian, French, Provençal, Catalan and even Castilian or Portuguese are genetically speaking closer relatives of Lombard than Italian.
Lombard varieties can be roughly divided in Western Lombard, or Insubrian, and Eastern Lombard, or Orobic. The varieties of Swiss canton Ticino, of Milan, Varese, Como, Lecco belong to the former, while the ones of Bergamo, Brescia and Crema belong to the latter. The varieties of the Valchiavenna and the Valtellina -- together with the three Lombard valleys of Swiss canton Graubünden, although showing some peculiarities of their own and some traits in common with Eastern Lombard, should be considered as Western. Standard Italian is widely used in Lombard-speaking areas. A major distinction is usually made between Western and Eastern Lombard varieties. Another uncommon feature for a Romance language is the extensive use of idiomatic phrasal verbs (verb-particle constructions) much in the same way as in English and other Germanic languages. All the varieties spoken in the Swiss areas are Western, while both Western and Eastern varieties are found in the Italian areas. The Lombard variety with the oldest literary tradition (dating back to the thirteenth century) is that of Milan, where nowadays Milanese, the native Lombard variety of the area, has almost completely been superseded by Italian.