There was a time when Italia didn’t speak Italian, or at least not all of us did.
And it wasn’t that long ago.
Still in the 1950s and 60s, many “Italians” knew their dialect, but little or no Italian.
A language that was born gradually from spoken Latin and whose literary form was mostly based on the Florentine dialect. One of the reasons why Dante Alighieri is often called the father of the Italian language. When writing his Divine Comedy in the early 1300s, he used the Florentine vernacular, helping it grow in popularity and spread along the peninsula with his masterpiece. Literature in the vernacular already existed, but Latin was still the language of much learned writing.
But even centuries later, Italy had to wait for television to help spread the national language so widely.
If any of you are Lord of the Rings fans, as I am, you’ll understand why I am now going to compare Italians with the Ents. We are sloooooow, especially when we have to change.
Italian dialects and the languages of Italy
What we today consider just dialects are languages in their own right, the only ones many people once communicated in. And since each region was a universe of its own—remember city-states?—despite their common Latin root, they differed considerably. It would’ve been common for someone from one region not to be able to understand what someone from another one was saying. And we are not talking about extreme northern regions compared to extreme southern regions: sometimes it happened from one municipality to another.
The differences had as much to do with borders as with ancient origins and subsequent dominations and migrations.
And Italy’s linguistic diversity goes beyond its Romance dialects.
Just imagine that there are small communities in the hinterland of Puglia where people speak Grico, a local variety of Greek.
Think of the many words of Spanish, French, and Germanic origin scattered around the dialects of the Peninsula.
There are also many communities speaking Arbëresh, a historical variety of Albanian.
School, television, and a common language
Compulsory schooling, of course, was the first huge step. More and more of those who went to elementary school learned to speak a common language. Many of them kept their dialect as the language they spoke with their family and neighbors, while Italian became the language they spoke at school and later, often, at work.
They were bilingual and could easily switch from one to the other.
Dialects, family, and the shame of belonging
With time, unfortunately, dialects started not exactly to disappear, but to feel like something embarrassing, linked to poverty, to an old world modernization laughed at.
But grandfathers and grandmothers cherished them, and as often happens, even when one generation was skipped, frantically refusing its origins, the next one, the grandchildren of those fierce, elderly guardians, was addressed in dialect.
At my husband’s house, for example, speaking dialect inside the house was forbidden. It was considered vulgar. My husband learned it in the street. And not so well, if you ask his hometown friends.
I never had to face the issue, since my father, who was born in Rome to Sicilian parents, and who had then lived a few years back in Sicily, and then moved to Venezuela, through all this wandering, had lost any recognizable regional accent.
As for me, when in Rome, people will say I have no accent, but when I am outside Rome, in another Italian city, it might take a while, but eventually people will guess I am from Rome.
Unfortunately, dialect often continued to be a barrier between people because even the slightest accent or cadence gave clues to a person’s origins. Not only their region, but their presumed social status. So if a Milanese accent was tolerated because it was associated with entrepreneurs, great workers, and a richer city, a Neapolitan one would too often be associated with poverty and little education.
What a huge mistake. Did you know that Naples’ Università Federico II, founded in 1224, was the first university in the world established by a secular public authority? But still, that’s how things work.
Plus, television (although it contributed enormously to the spread of a common language) and cinema sadly contributed to this with macchiette—comic caricatures—that appeared in low-quality but widely watched movies like cinepanettoni. In these Christmas holiday movies, set in some destination—the one most popular that year—families from Milan, Rome, or Naples would meet and clash.
Rediscovering dialects through music and stories
In the last two decades, I’ve witnessed a lot of dusting off of local dialects, not as something quaint and folkloric, but as something deeply connecting us to our roots.
I dare say music led the way: so many talented artists singing in their mother tongue. So many sensations and realities that only the local language could express. Pairing it with the search for ancient melodies was an extra layer of delight. One of my favourites is A’ Finestra by Carmen Consoli (Spotify link here).
And in another artistic field, one of my most treasured audiobook moments was when I read/heard I Leoni di Sicilia, read by a Sicilian actor. It was pure perfection.
Bergamasco, Fiorentino, and Romanesco
Before diving into Italian dialects, or at least some of them, let me just give you one often considered among the least comprehensible and one among the most, for someone who speaks Italian.
Bergamasco, a Gallo-Italic dialect that developed from spoken Latin, with words ending in consonants instead of vowels, and vowels that don’t exist in standard Italian!
Fiorentino, for all that was said above: among the most comprehensible because of its closeness to standard Italian. And Romanesco, too, helped by how much we’ve been exposed to it!
Se beccamo! (Roman dialect)
Claudia