L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, JULY 12, 2018 www.italoamericano.org 12 L'Italo-Americano I sn't Summer the perfect season for trivia? I don't know you, but when the heat hits I suddenly devel- op a thirst for curious facts and tasty tidbits about anything and everything: from history to literature, from food to gossip, anything to satisfy this peculiar desire. It may be the association between light reading and sea side relax, or the simple fact the canicola estiva makes my think- ing sluggish, but nothing seems as good and pleasant during these hot July days on the shores of Italy than some old fashioned, l i g h t h e a r t e d r e a d i n g a n d research. About what, you say? About language! Actually, about the single handedly most popular word of the bella lingua, the ultimate passport to Italian liv- ing, a word so famous it has been adopted by other nations, so perfect and clear it can't be bettered: ciao. Yes, ciao. Can you think of anything more Italian than that? As popular and known as it is, I was surprised to realize how lit- tle I knew about its origins: w h e r e d i d i t c o m e f r o m a n d when did we start using it? Was it always a salutation, or did it have a different meaning initial- ly? Nothing a bit of online and paper investigation couldn't solve for us. So, here what we know about Italy's "hello." Apparently, the origin of the word has to be sought into the dialect of Venice, where people had the habit to say hello to each other using the word "s'ciavo," or "slave." No, Venetians were not crazy, quite simply they used the expression instead of the longer and more cumbersome " s e r v o v o s t r o , " w h i c h w e ' d translate in English as "I am your servant," or even " at your service." To find examples of such use, we don't need to look any further than the work of Venice's own playwright extra- ordinaire, Carlo Goldoni, who employed it without parsimony in his comedies about Venetian society. "S'ciavo," however, is not quite the same as ciao and it took some time and a good deal of linguistic evolution to go from the first to the latter. "S'ci- avo" most likely came from the Latin servus, which meant ser- vant or slave. During Imperial times, many slaves came from the area of what was then called Slavonia or Sclavonia, which roughly corresponds to modern Eastern Croatia. Because of lan- guages' transitive property, the adjective indicating people from those regions, sclavus or slavus, became synonym with the word servus: and that's how we went from the Latin servus to the vul- gar Italian schiavo. Fast forward a few centuries and the rise in popularity of Dante and Guido Cavalcanti's Dolce Stil Novo, a type of poet- ry in vulgar Italian inspired by idealized love and the iconic fig- ure of the donna angelo, gives to the word schiavo a new mean- ing: a schiavo is no longer a mere servant, but also someone subjugated by love and passion, someone ready to do anything for the object of his desire. And so, being a schiavo no longer m e a n s o n l y a n d e x c l u s i v e l y being a slave to a master, but also being ready to do anything for someone, just like a besotted man would do for his lover. It's in this sense that the use of "s'ci- avo"in Venetian dialect should be interpreted: people would salute each other in the street saying "I am at your service," a polite and reverent manner to show appreciation and respect. The first, written attestation of the word ciao is, alas, 200 y e a r s o l d , a l t h o u g h w e c a n imagine its use in the oral lan- guage must have been already common for a while: it appeared in a letter written in 1818 by Francesco Benedetti, a play- wright from Cortona who in it described the niceties received by a group of Milanese with whom he had gone to La Scala: "Questi buoni Milanesi comin- ciano a dirmi: Ciau Benedettin." In 1819, British writer Lady Sidney Morgan mentioned peo- p l e , a l w a y s a t L a S c a l a i n M i l a n , e x c h a n g i n g c o r d i a l ciavo, from a box to another. From the very same period is yet another written attestation of the word, found in a letter sent by countess Giovanna Maffei, from Verona, to her husband, where she mentions that their young son "mi disse di dir ciao a Moti." Today, "ciao" is an interna- tional word, always associated with Italy, but whose meaning is c l e a r i n e v e r y c o r n e r o f t h e world. Well, you know what? It has been the case for more than one hundred years, as its pres- ence in a French novel dating 1893 proves: written by Paul B o u r g e t , i t h a s a c h a r a c t e r speaking in Italian and saying "Ciaò, simpaticone!" Just a few years later, at the beginning of the 1900s, a popular waltz enti- tled "Ciao" had people dancing around Europe. After the end of the Second World War, the pop- ularity of Italian cinema helped t h e i n t e r n a t i o n a l i z a t i o n o f "ciao" even further, making of it a linguistic symbol of Italy. A n d b e c a u s e l a n g u a g e i s continuously evolving - as the o r i g i n i t s e l f o f c i a o d e m o n - strates - there are new variations of our favorite salute, which have become particularly popu- lar in recent years and decades: "ciao raga" (hey guys), "ciao neh" (hey! Hi!) and even the horrible "ciaone" (literally, a huge ciao), recent neologism already part of the Vocabolario Treccani della Lingua Italiana. Today, "ciao" is the most used Italian word on earth, sec- o n d o n l y t o a n o t h e r i c o n o f Italy's life and heritage: "pizza." Short, simple to remember and with an interesting story: no wonder we all love it. And so it g o e s , t h e i l l u s t r i o u s t a l e o f "ciao," of its birth and how it became the most common and colorful way to say hello to friends, family and people in the street: indicatively used only among those who know each other, it's not that uncommon, when the atmosphere allows it or the occasion calls for it, to say "ciao" to people we've just m e t , e s p e c i a l l y w h e n w e ' v e enjoyed their company or shared a special experience: a little word that makes us all feel clos- er. We use it and abuse it, but do we know where the word "ciao" really come from? Ciao belli! A little history of Italy's most popular word FRANCESCA BEZZONE LA VITA ITALIANA TRADITIONS HISTORY CULTURE

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