L'Italo-Americano

THURSDAY, JUNE 10, 2021 www.italoamericano.org 28 L'Italo-Americano R esearch carried out a few years back found out t h a t t h e v a s t m a j o r i t y o f Italians considered lan- guage the strongest repre- sentation of their "being Ital- ian." It seems a legitimate view: in a country where tra- ditions and cultural habits can change drastically from an area to another, our lan- guage – and I dare say, the l i t e r a t u r e i t p r o d u c e d – remains a strong point in common, a way not only to communicate, but ultimately to share, bond and strength- en our connection. Yet, the linguistic reality of Italy is much more complex, as many Italian-Americans probably have learned when realizing the language their grandparents spoke wasn't that close to standard Italian at all, but rather a linguistic variety of its own. This is because each region of Italy h a s i t s o w n i d i o m , o r dialect, some of which are spoken regularly by so many individuals to have gained t h e s t a t u s o f l a n g u a g e (Neapolitan, Sicilian, but also Piedmontese in the North). Current statistics show that while 46% of us speaks exclusively in Italian, 32% is able – and happy – to switch from our national language to their own local dialect, while 14% still speaks exclu- sively the latter, with num- bers doubling when looking at the over-75 age bracket. The relevance of dialects is nothing new, if it's true that o u r b e l o v e d D a n t e h a d already understood their lin- guistic wealth and discussed t h e i r e x i s t e n c e i n t h e D e Vulgari Eloquentia, back in the first decade of the 14 th century. More recently, lin- g u i s t T u l l i o D e M a u r o w r o t e i n h i s S t o r i a L i n g u i s t i c a d ' I t a l i a d a l l ' U n i t à a O g g i t h a t dialects are a distinctive fea- ture of our own culture. In years past -- in truth, for the vast majority of the 20 th century -- dialects had b e c o m e s y n o n y m w i t h provincialism and absence of culture, in other words, only the pauper and the uneducat- ed would prefer them to our n a t i o n a l l a n g u a g e . M o r e recently, however, dialects have enjoyed a surge of inter- est from specialists and com- mon people alike, who appre- ciated their role in defining our heritage and identity, as well as their value from a lin- guistic point of view. But why the contraposi- tion? We need to look into the history of both dialects and the Italian language if we want to understand. There is an important idea t o c l a r i f y i m m e d i a t e l y : dialects are not a variant of Italian, nor are they its lin- guistic bastardization: in fact, they developed, just like our lingua madre, from Latin directly. This may come as a surprise to many, because p o p u l a r b e l i e f w o u l d s e e them as a "lesser" version of Italian and of diminished cul- tural value while, in truth, dialects are just as important, at least from the point of view of linguistics and histor- ical linguistics. Think of a tree, with Latin being the t r u n k a n d r o m a n c e l a n - guages and dialects being all its branches: there isn't an image that better explains what we are talking about. Of course, some branches are larger and have more leaves, just like Italian or Spanish m a y h a v e m o r e s p e a k e r s t h a n , s a y , S i c i l i a n o r Genoese. Yet, each branch has its own characteristics and independence. We should also remember that, in the end, Italian is a dialect, that of Florence. You may wonder why that one, and not another, ended up being chosen: well, it was a m a t t e r o f p r e s t i g e a n d economy, as it often happens. First of all, Florentine was closer to Latin than other idioms like Neapolitan or Lombard, then, Florence – and Tuscany – were essential economic hubs and, let us not forget, at the fore front of the cultural revolution repre- sented by the Renaissance. Florence was also home to literary figures like Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio who, albeit in different manners, all supported the cultural validity of volgare as an aca- demic and cultural idiom. And so, Italian developed and became our official lan- guage, but dialects kept being spoken and with no socio- cultural bias in sight: if any- GIULIA FRANCESCHINI thing, it was more normal to speak your local dialect than Italian. For instance, the first k i n g o f u n i f i e d I t a l y , Vittorio Emanuele II, did- n't like speaking Italian at all, preferring French for official occasions and Piedmontese when entertaining friends and family (and his numer- ous lovers). This is important to understand: up to a centu- ry ago, dialects were as good as Italian. True, the less edu- cated may have not known Italian well and preferred dialects for that reason, but kings, intellectuals and poets alike would switch from one to the other seamlessly, with- o u t a t h o u g h t a n d , m o r e i m p o r t a n t l y , w i t h o u t attributing any specific socio- cultural status to neither. It was only in the 20 th century, and especially after the end of the Second World War, d u r i n g I t a l y ' s e c o n o m i c boom, that dialects started being considered negatively, as a sign of one's belonging to a rural or less formally edu- c a t e d e n v i r o n m e n t n o t many, especially among the younger generations, wanted to be associated with. But after almost 100 years o f l i m b o , d i a l e c t s w e r e embraced again. The new c e n t u r y b r o u g h t a b o u t a resurgence of local history, heritage, traditions and lan- guages, all essential elements of people's identity. This hap- pened because we, as a peo- ple, finally came of age and began feeling comfortable in our own skin; while Italy as a nation has existed for cen- turies, we were never called Italians and, in many a way, we learned how to be so only in the past 160 years. Before being Italian, we've always been Lombard, Piedmontese, T u s c a n a n d N e a p o l i t a n , because those were the lan- guages we spoke on a daily basis and because that was the heritage we had, what we knew. In the 20 th century, we fought against this frag- mented, often rural, provin- cial heritage, because we per- ceived it as an obstacle for the nation to develop into an international and cultural power, perhaps forgetting I t a l y h a s b e e n a c u l t u r a l p o w e r f o r t h e p a s t 2 0 0 0 years, in the end. Dialects were a heavy burden that, quite literally, spoke about a m o r e i n n o c e n t p a s t , p e r - ceived as a sign of cultural and intellectual inferiority. T h e n , j u s t l i k e i t o f t e n h a p p e n s w h e n e n t e r i n g adulthood, we understood we could not "be Italian" without knowing, understanding and appreciating our past and, therefore, without being also L o m b a r d , P i e d m o n t e s e , T u s c a n o r N e a p o l i t a n : because the very histories of our families are based on the deep connection with the ter- ritory and, perhaps, many of us spoke their first word in dialect and not in Italian at all. We also understood that feeling Sicilian or Milanese doesn't mean we don't also feel Italian and that, in the e n d , s w i t c h i n g f r o m o u r d i a l e c t – w h i c h m a n y younger people today speak a g a i n – t o o u r b e l o v e d national language is not only natural, but fun. Dialects are markers of what we are, people coming from a land as varied as the n o t e s o n a p e n t a g r a m . Dialects are not an alterna- tive to Italian, they are our language along with Italian and, just like Italian, they are part of us. A large number of Italians over 75 years of age exclusively speaks in dialect (Photo: GagliardiPhotography/Shutterstock) Dialetto: the real marker of Italians' identity LA VITA ITALIANA TRADITIONS HISTORY CULTURE

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