1 - The Italian language on the rise

La bella lingua is among five most studied courses in the world for non-Italian students

In 1995, the students attending Italian language courses abroad were 33,065; by 2000 the figure had grown to 45,699 (+38.2 percent). As to the number of courses, in 1995 they numbered 2,346 and employed 628 teachers; in 2000 they were 3,684 (+57 percent) with 686 teachers (+8.4 percent).
These data appear in Italiano 2000, a survey commissioned by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to Tullio De Mauro, one of Italy's most authoritative linguists (he also served as Minister of Education), about the reasons why foreigners study Italian.
The survey, carried out by De Mauro and by a research team of Siena's University for Foreigners (Massimo Vedovelli, Monica Barni and Lorenzo Miraglia), revealed that Italian is among the world's five most studied foreign languages. It's behind the unreachable English and still distant from French (which is steadily declining, however), and almost on a par with German and Spanish.
News like this gives hope to those who despaired of seeing Italian survive in a globalized world, and who now scramble to understand such vitality. But this is hardly unexpected, since other positive indicators were already known. For instance, Italian ranks 19th among all the languages, even though Italians make up just one percent of the world's population; and three percent of all web pages are written in Italian, a remarkable figure considering the recent birth and almost exclusively Anglophone character of the Internet.
The Italiano 2000 survey was prepared with the Istituti Italiani di Cultura, involved in data collection about their own initiatives as well as those of other organizations managing courses of Italian abroad.
In the late Seventies, the Istituto per l'Enciclopedia Italiana (Italian Encyclopedia Institute) asked Ignazio Baldelli to conduct another survey on the reasons that made foreigners study Italian. Baldelli ascertained that the reasons were cultural: Italian was studied because it was the language of art, music, great literature, but also of Galileo's science.
Tullio De Mauro's survey identified new motivation.:The cultural ones are still there - which means that the link between Italian and its tradition is still strong - but others have appeared. For instance, almost one student out of four takes Italian lessons for business reasons. With Made in Italy products conquering ever-expanding markets, and international joint ventures involving Italian companies sprouting everywhere, knowing Italian entails more work opportunities, because this language can be usefully employed in economic processes. Experts call it "the social worth of a language," and clearly Italian has a lot of it.
There are also motivations linked to tourism, trade, industrial design (cars, fashion, furniture), lifestyle, and cuisine. Finally there are personal reasons: an Italian or Italian-heritage partner. Everything is compounded by the professional skill of the teachers.
In short, says Tullio De Mauro's, a foreigner's knowledge of Italian "can be a cultural investment, as a way to get in direct contact with Italian culture; a learning investment, for those who wish to attend Italy's school and academic system; an economic investment, for people who decide to develop a professionalism centred on Italian; and an investment in terms of a usable language."
De Mauro continues by explaining what led to the rediscovery of Italian. "In the last few decades the perception of our country by foreigners has changed. Italy gained a primary international role (for its social, production, cultural, and linguistic systems)."
He continues: "A large part of the characteristics of Italy's contemporary society and production system are liked by foreigners because they continue in the present and in modern form a system of values that is seen as intrinsic to Italian identity." Italy as a system is increasingly present abroad, and foreigners love it.
However, the reasons for this success do not come exclusively from Italy. In the conclusions of the survey, De Mauro writes: "A central dimension, capable of underscoring the aspects of cultural tradition, innovation and creativity, is due to the new positions achieved by expatriated communities in their respective countries. The rediscovery of the Italian language by our emigrants is part of a wider phenomenon of attraction towards Italian."
Massimo Vedovelli, professor at Siena's University for Foreigners, who led the team of researchers that assisted Tullio De Mauro in carrying out the Italiano 2000 survey, recently published an essay where he examines the "plurality of ways" that led to this new spring of the Italian language in the world. His essay integrates and occasionally expands the horizons of De Mauro's survey.
According to Vedovelli, in the last few decades Italian "has become a language in live use," which can be assumed "as a model for teaching a language to foreigners." Then he widens the scope to include the role played by Italian emigrants. "Starting from the dialects," writes Vedovelli, "they oriented their efforts towards the achievement of a common tongue, very close to the language of use developed within the national borders."
Italian communities abroad went even further; they managed to create awareness about the linguistic diversity of Italy, where the common language coexists peacefully with the dialects. This awareness brought foreigners to discover another richness of Italy and their increased interest towards the country and its language is also a consequence of this discovery.
Another factor of vitality, according to Vedovelli, lies in the interests of the people studying Italian as a second language. To reality as portrayed by Tullio De Mauro, Vedovelli adds his analysis on the role of foreigners living in Italy: "Every day, 1.5 million immigrants get in touch with our language; 160,000 foreign children attend our schools; 15,000 adults take classes in Italian taught by regular schools and by volunteer associations."
The result is that these immigrants study Italian to ease their own professional and social integration in Italy; "but when they go back to their countries of origin," writes Vedovelli, "they carry with them a patrimony of linguistic competence that becomes a powerful way for our language to spread abroad."
In Italy, the survey by Tullio De Mauro was big news. It was featured in articles on newspapers and magazines and TV programs. There was an awakening of sorts. The survey did not raise as much clamour abroad, because those who live outside of Italy's national borders verify every day the growing interest towards Italy and its language.
However, seeing it thus certified is a reason for legitimate pride as well as for reflections on what more could be done.
This will be food for thought in the coming months.
Another aspect to be underscored about the vitality of the Italian language abroad is the increasing quantity of Italian terms being borrowed by English, today's lingua franca. Not just cappuccino, mafia, amore, spaghetti, arrivederci, but also most of the musical lexicon (soprano, adagio, opera, operetta, assolo, fiasco, etc.), and then sciatica, monsignor, torso, numero uno, prosciutto, pancetta, antipasti, risotto, parmigiano, focaccia, zuppe, panini, polenta, radicchio, crostini.
On November 25, 2000, at the SkyDome, concluding the North American Aboriginal Pow-Wow, the speaker emphatically announced: "And now, the gran finale!" with perfect pronunciation. This scribe was there, heard the words and watched the great dance in multicoloured costumes.
Once I was asked by the waiter at a Vietnamese restaurant on Spadina Road: "Cena finita?" It wasn't a linguistic tribute to an Italian customer. That waiter asked the same question in Italian to all his customers, and everybody knew what he meant.
And in a television programme where the chef-host was explaining how to make pesto, he said that among the tools needed an essential one was the mezzaluna.
Tullio De Mauro's survey highlighted many reasons for the renewed interest in the study of Italian abroad, but in summary there are two: ours is the language of an increasingly trendy country, and the language of a community that has become respected and authoritative in the countries where it settled. Neither of these reasons should leave Italians indifferent.

Publication Date: 2002-12-01
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=2088