Do Italians speak Italian?
During Roman conquest the Latin language became widespread in the region that includes present-day Europe and the Mediterranean basin, and so overlapped pre-existing languages, called substrata languages. This dominance was to be tested by subsequent barbarian invasions which gave rise to various Italic dialects. Interestingly, recent theories assert the father of these dialects is not the Latin of ancient Romans, rather it is the Latin spoken by previous peninsular civilizations, namely the Latins and other Italic peoples who thrived before their subjugation by the Romans. However rather than expound upon this polemic, the dialects themselves will be addressed.
From a literary point of view, modern Italian is said to derive from the 14th century Florentine, which spread largely due to great authors such as Dante, who first theorized literary Italian in De Vulgari Eloquentia (1303-1305), and later applied his theories in La Divina Commedia (1304-1321), and the humanists Boccaccio (Decameron, 1349-1351) and Petrarca (Il Canzoniere, 1366-1374), who were encouraged to choose this dialect because it had ostensibly conserved Latin the most. Since then 14th Century Florentine has been phonologically proven the closest dialect to Latin. The perfectness of Petrarca’s style would be afterwards modeled by Pietro Bembo in his Prose della volgar lingua (1525) and later revised by Alessandro Manzoni (Della lingua Italiana, 1830-1859), who proposed a structuration of the Italian language around its usage and social value. Moreover, the powerful city of Florence in economic and political terms, contributed to its cultural and linguistic consolidation at the expense of the dialects spoken in Lazio, where the Pope’s power was equally preeminent (if this was a factor), and in Venice, capital of the European book industry.
The last steps toward literacy and the standardization of Italian were only achieved in 1962, when attending middle school became mandatory and television became widely diffused. Now Modern Italian is currently spoken by approximately 56 million people, however for many among them this language is not exclusive. In fact, there continues to exist a plethora of dialects used in everyday life. In the heterogeneity of present-day Italy we are able to find, among other dialects, a Modern Florentine dialect, an oral language derived from the 14th century Florentine of Dante, the same man responsible for forming Italian. Elements of historical phonetics have bound Italian to Modern Florentine, which will be analyzed, and highlighted its differences with northern, central-southern and other Tuscan dialects.
The geographical line which connects the cities of La Spezia and Rimini (correctly known as Massa-Senigallia Line) separates the central-southern parlances from the northern ones: moving from north-west to east we find the ‘Gallo-Italic dialects’ (Piedmontese, Lombard, Emilian, Romagnole), Venetian, Ladin, Friulan, and Dolomitic. Below the La Spezia-Rimini line are the central dialects of Tuscany (Western, Eastern, Central and Southern Tuscan), Umbrian, Marchegian, Abruzzese and the southern ones (Molisano, Pugliese, Campano, Lucano and Salentino). Finally comes Sicilian with its many varieties and Sardinian (divided into Logudirese, Campidanese, Sassarese and Gallurese).
But let us now explore the particularities of Modern Florentine, the dialect of the central part of Tuscany, before comparing it with the neighboring dialect of Lazio. The majority of its traits, as previously mentioned, resemble Latin because of the isolation of the central part of Tuscany until 15th Century, thus explaining the lack of metaphonesis. On the contrary, spirantization of unvoiced intervocalic occlusive consonants appears to be a specific trait of the local speech. The Latin ending –arius became –aio; the rv/lv groups transformed into rb/lb (see ‘Elba’ for the Latin ‘elva’ or ‘nerbo’ for ‘nervus’); the intervocalic postonic consonant –t changes into velar (‘andato’- ‘andaho’); i and u before –n remain the same (see ‘mungo’/‘lingua’ and not ‘mongo’/ ‘lengua’). Finally, in future tenses, the unstressed –ar– becomes –er– (‘loderò’/ ‘amerò’ and not ‘lodarò’/ ‘amarò’). Regarding differences with Italian, Modern Florentine is marked by having a reduced form of Italian diphthongs, such as ‘bòno’ for ‘buono’ (good), and ‘poho’ for “poco’ (little). Being a minor difference, the two languages are hard to distinguish from a lexical point of view as well as from a phonetic and morphological one. There is no surprise in finding in the Dictionary of the Italian Language ‘midolla’ for ‘mollica’ and ‘redo’ for ‘vitello piccolo’.
Before the XV century, Lazio was not influenced by Tuscan speech but rather by southern dialects which had strong effects on the vowel system (Italian retains the distinction between short and long consonants), introducing the metaphonesis of long i and short u at the end of the word, the diphthonging of open e and o; the darkening of closed e and o. Furthermore, Vita di Cola di Rienzo attests sing. ‘dente’ and pl. ‘dienti’, f. ‘vecchia’ ( whith open e) and m. ‘viecchiu’ (with closed e) and some diphthongs seem to darken or vanish. Consonants nd or mb become nn or mm, a typically southern format: ‘quando’ becomes ‘quanno’, ‘andare’ becomes ‘annà’ and ‘gamba’ results as ‘gamma’. Even labial consonant b changes into v at the beginning of the word (‘bocca’ is ‘vocca’ and ‘braccio’ sounds like ‘vraccio’) and –ld- is subject to assimilation (‘caldo’ becoming ‘callo’); finally, –l- palatalizes before consonants (‘molto’/ ‘moito’) and –r– strenghtens (‘salvo’/ ‘sarro’; ‘sepolcro’/ ‘sipurcro’). At last the morphological system assists to the redundant use of unstressed personal pronouns me/te: ‘dimme’ (tell me), ‘te dico’ (I tell you).
The Italian dialects that have been recognized as official regional languages are Sardinian and Friulan, Franco Provençal, Ladin, Occitan and Catalan. While many Italian dialects, including Neapolitan, Sardinian, Sicilian, Ligurian, Piedmontese and Venetian may be considered historical languages in their own right, they do not withhold the status of official languages for historical, cultural and political reasons. Linguistically, some dialects have unique systems of grammar, syntax and lexicon when compared to Italian, with cases of unintelligibility. When this doesn’t occur, a dialect is merely considered a local variation of standard Italian. In any case, linguists such as Ascoli and Castello have deemed Italian the natural progression from Latin to the expense of the slew of surviving dialects. Nonetheless, the old Sicilian proverb is perhaps wisest: “Cu’ha lingua passa ‘u mari” (He who knows many languages, is able to understand peoples across the sea).
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Category: Foreign Language
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