la lingua italiana

[Dianne Hales]

la lingua italiana
the Italian language


As a country Italy makes no sense. Think of it: a spiny peninsula stretching from snowcapped Alps to sun baked islands, spattered with stone villages bound by ancient allegiances, a mosaic of dialects, cuisines, and cultures united into a nation barely a century and a half ago. Metternich dismissed it as a “geographic expression.” Too long to be a nation, sniffed Napoleon. Possible to govern, growled Mussolini, but useless to try. The real Italy resides somewhere beyond blood or borders in what former President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi has called “la nostra prima patria” (“our first fatherland”)—its language.

And what a language it is! Italian, handcrafted by poets and wordsmiths, embodies its native speakers’ greatest genius: the ability to transform anything—from marble to melody, from the humble noodle to life itself—into a joyous art. While other tongues do little more than speak, this lyrical language thrills the ear, beguiles the mind, captivates the heart, enraptures the soul, and comes closer than any other idiom to expressing the essence of what it means to be human.

Centuries before there was an Italy, there was Italian. Its roots date back nearly three millennia to the volgare (from the Latin sermo vulgaris, for the people’s common speech), the rough-and ready spoken vernacular of ancient Rome, which gave rise to all the Romance languages.

The first miracle of Italian is its survival. No government mandated its use. No mighty empire promoted it as an official language. No conquering armies or armadas trumpeted it to distant lands. Brutally divided, invaded, and conquered, the Mediterranean peninsula remained a patchwork of dialects. Italian as we know it was created, not born.

With the same thunderbolt genius that would transform art in the Renaissance, writers of fourteenth- century Florence—Dante, whose words appear above, the first and foremost—crafted the effervescent Tuscan vernacular into a language rich and powerful enough to sweep down from heaven and up from hell. This priceless living legacy, no less than Petrarch’s poetry, Michelangelo’s sculptures, Verdi’s operas, Fellini’s movies, or Valentino’s dresses, is an artistic masterwork.

Yet as a national spoken tongue, Italian, practically born yesterday, is nuovissimo (very, very new). Rallying for one nation united by one language, Italians won their country’s independence in 1861. At the time four in five of its citizens were illiterate. Fewer than 10 percent spoke Italian exclusively or with greater ease than a local dialect.

Word by word, generation by generation, village by village, the people of the peninsula became Italian speakers. Ever-growing numbers of people around the world are trying to do the same. With only an estimated 60 to 63 million native speakers, Italian ranks fourth among the world’s most studied languages—after English, Spanish, and French.

Why do so many people want to study Italian? “I suspect it is because Italy and the Italian language are perceived as beautiful, fun, and sexy,” observed Stephen Brockman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, in an essay called “A Defense of European Languages,” adding, “And why not? I can’t see anything wrong with that.”

Neither do I. Only a beautiful, fun, sexy language could inspire a love song like Riccardo Cocciante “La Nostra Lingua Italiana.” Here is the first stanza, followed by a rough translation:

Lingua di marmo antico di una cattedrale
Lingua di spada e pianto di dolore
Lingua che chiama da una torre al mare
Lingua di mare che porta nuovi volti
Lingua di monti esposta a tutti i venti
Che parla di neve bianca agli aranceti
Lingua serena, dolce, ospitale
La nostra lingua italiana

"Language of ancient marble in a cathedral

Language of the sword and tears of sorrow

Language calling from a tower to the sea

Language of the sea that brings new faces

Language of the mountain exposed to all winds

that talks of white snow to the orange groves

Language serene, sweet, welcoming

Our Italian language."

*From the book LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language by Dianne Hales, published by Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc. Reprinted with permission.

[Dianne Hales]

Sono d'accordo! Thanks for the post. D

[Tara]

It's irresistible, especially when spoken by a handsome Italian man =)