11 - How Italian Language Was Born

Professor Riccardo Campa emphasizes importance of maintaining la bella lingua

Professor, can you explain the difference between the English and Italian languages? Riccardo Campa smiles, then replies: "With 25 words of English one can board a plane. With 25 words of Italian one goes nowhere."
Riccardo Campa, professor of History of Political Doctrines at Siena's University for Foreigners, is a sophisticated Italianist. He chairs the Language and Media Committee within the National Commission for the Promotion of Italian Culture Abroad, created by Italy's Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1990. The very fact that the Commission lives symbiotically with the Ministry makes it a laboratory of cultural policy. Last year, it sent out to the diplomatic-consular network and to the Istituti Italiani di Cultura a sort of handbook with a very long title that states the strategy adopted by Italy: General guidelines for the promotion and diffusion of Italian culture and language abroad and for the development of international cultural co-operation.
Choosing at random among the priorities we find the promotion of activities linked to current Italian cultural production in every sector (visual arts, theatre, dance, music, cinema, etc.), the diffusion of the knowledge of Italy's huge artistic and archaeological patrimony, the strengthening of the diffusion of Italian language abroad in consideration of the raising demand coming from several countries and of the needs of our communities abroad. References for these and other goals will be the Regions, Provinces, municipalities, foundations and private companies. They also advocate a close relation with Italy's entrepreneurial world since exporting is not only an economic phenomenon but also has cultural significance.
From the operational standpoint, the handbook includes two main aspects: one deals with programmes allowing the creation of bursaries and chairs of Italian language and culture abroad and the establishment of youth exchanges; the other deals with the teaching of Italian, to be strengthened with a closer collaboration between Istituti Italiani di Cultura, Departments of Italian Studies of foreign universities, bilingual high schools and Italian schools abroad, Committees of the Dante Alighieri Society and institutions managing courses of Italian.
"In summary," says Campa, "all the Italian cultural institutions that operate abroad are mobilizing. The fruits are already coming. The recent survey by Prof. De Mauro, which examined the courses of Italian organized by our Istituti di Cultura, highlighted a prodigious increase in the study of Italian abroad. Ours, however, is not an easy task, as the mobilization I mentioned entails the adoption of different methods according to sector and geographic area."
Anyway, there is a strategy. This is nice to know in a period when the Italian language is going through a golden age abroad, and many people expect Italy to reinforce its action in order not to waste this opportunity...
"We are constantly monitoring this phenomenon, and the proof is that the Committee I chair has been asked to prepare a document precisely on the diffusion of Italian abroad. That document will be an essential tool for Italy's cultural diplomacy, especially in the current phase of rediscovery of our national identity. However, this is not the only direction of our work."
What are the other directions?
"We are constantly surveying the language programs of foreign cultural institutions and universities, adjusting teaching materials and interdisciplinary collaboration to every specific situation."
How do you organize interdisciplinary collaboration with foreign institutions?
"Through Siena's and Perugia's Universities for Foreigners, whose structures can organize refresher courses by sending teachers and specialists to the Departments of Italian Studies in Universities and to High Schools. Moreover, each year in October we organize (on behalf of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs) a videoconference with the Ministry for Cultural Heritage, the Accademia della Crusca, and personalities who work operate in favour of the diffusion of Italian in the main foreign cities."
Why did you say that with 25 words of English one can board a plane while with 25 words of Italian one can go nowhere?
"Because Italian is not just a language, it is the hinge between the culture of Mediterranean antiquity and the complex history of the West. It is a cultured language that managed to renew itself. It's not an easy language, which is why 25 words are not enough to deal with a travel agency the way one could do in English, stating destination, departure date, and budget."
However, the adaptability and relative lack of complicated rules are what turned English into the world's lingua franca. Will the future condemn national languages to be forgotten?
"Absolutely not, and the new strength of Italian all over the world proves this. It also proves that the memory and genetic patrimony of Western civilization, allowed by the use of the Italian language, is the antidote to any form of globalization aiming to limit the creativity of the peoples."
In the beginning there was Latin, which prevailed over pre-existing languages because it was the expression of Rome's solid economic, military, political and administrative power. With the fall of the empire, the Latin linguistic unity was broken and a great many dialects were formed, eventually giving rise to the Romance languages: French, Spanish, Portuguese, Rumanian. Why did Italy's national language originate from the Florentine dialect, and not some other variety?
"Because in the 14th century Florence produced the models of poetry and prose - Dante's Commedia, Petrarca's Canzoniere, and Boccaccio's Decameron - that turned that language into a linguistic and literary model for the poets and authors of the rest of Italy. Despite that dialects at the time were already established all over the land, they were not used in 'good circles'. They were called Vulgar languages, because they were the languages used by the commoners, while Latin remained the language of worship, law, culture, and diplomacy."
When was the Florentine dialect allowed in 'good circles'?
"At the beginning of the Renaissance. The literary excellence achieved by Florence in the 14th century induced the literati of other Italian cities to imitate their poetry and artistic prose, the language and style of the Florentines, while the local dialects were confined to humbler literary genres: private, confidential letters and conversation. This sparked a process of partial linguistic unification that lasted for the whole 15th century."
At the turn of that century, the so-called "language issue" arose from the attempt to codify that partial process of linguistic unification. How was the issue resolved?
"Actually, it wasn't, and it would remain standing to our age. We can say that several solutions were proposed in the 16th century: one such was championed by Venetian humanist and rhetor Pietro Bembo, who compiled a grammar rigorously based on 'classic Florentine'; i.e., the language used by Petrarca in poetry and Boccaccio in prose. Bembo was met with the opposition of the School of Siena, founded by linguist Claudio Tolomei, who proposed grammatical and syntactic structures that were more Tuscan than Florentine, we could say more mobile. Tolomei said that the language must accompany the evolution of culture. By that time, culture was not an exclusive of Florence any more. Then there was a faction in favour of non-classic Florentine, the language spoken in everyday life, used for instance by Niccolò Machiavelli. Finally, there was a faction based in the courts; e.g., Urbino or the Pontifical Court in Rome, and in some cities that had surpassed Florence in terms of poetic production. This current proposed a 'courtesan' and 'Italian' language, that is variously composed, which would build upon Florentine, the accepted standard, including linguistic loans from those cities and courts that requested space and attention. The turning point came with the Accademia della Crusca."
How did it go?
"In 1612 the Crusca, accepting the rigorous rules proposed by Bembo but softening them with consideration from the popular language, compiled a great vocabulary that was expanded and reprinted several times until 1923. The Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca, as the work is titled, raised immediate interest and spurred hot debate concerning its criteria. In particular, many disliked its use of Florentine, even toned down, as the basis for the language. However, for centuries it represented the strongest bond among Italians, in an Italy that was politically and linguistically divided."
The 17th century, when the great vocabulary was published, saw the political dominance of Spain on the Mediterranean basin, including large parts of Italy. What was the influence of the Spanish expansion on the Italian language?
"Irrelevant, even though many Hispanicisms made their appearance in that period. But Italian had become a unified and ductile language, with a national connotation of its own. Instead, great influence was exerted by the culture of the Enlightenment."
Why was that?
"With the Enlightenment, a culture having a rationalist and scientific orientation, prevailed the opinion that saw the language as a tool for expressing ideas with clarity and directness, leaving aside any indulgence in aesthetics. Dictionaries become non-selective and not exclusively literary, accepting scientific terminology; style rejected rhetorical decorations and become a function of content. This is how Italian went from the language of memory to a rational language, thus acquiring great nimbleness, especially in travel books, scientific popularization, and journalism."
Why didn't this revolution wipe the dialects away?
"Because, while Italian remained a mostly written language, patrimony of the educated classes, everyday conversation kept using the dialects, which since the Renaissance had also developed a large and autonomous local literature alongside the national one in Italian."
When did Italian become the language of everybody, people of letters and laypeople alike?
"In the 19th century. That century marked the beginning of a new era in the history of Italian. Alessandro Manzoni explicitly posed the problem of the 'sociability of the national language'. While searching for the most appropriate language for his Promessi Sposi, a language that could virtually speak to every Italian, Manzoni developed a prose that was accessible because of its concreteness, realistic because of its constant reference to things, new because it reproduced the everyday language. No indulgence for melodic experiments nor for classical decorations. This prose, peppered with dialectal expressions from Lombardy and Tuscany, ended up becoming the language of Italians who aspired to unity and independence, a new democratic form that anticipated the Risorgimento. There were strong reactions by traditional linguists, but the road was open. The events of the following century would widen it."
What are you referring to?
"For instance, to World War I, which caused many men from Central and Southern Italy to move North and get concentrated on the war front, thus favouring communication among people who spoke different dialects, and an elementary diffusion of the national language. At the same time, compulsory schooling was doing likewise, teaching many illiterate people to read and write in Italian. Then came radio and, after World War II, television; they were decisive in transforming Italian from a largely written language to the language understood and spoken by nearly all the nation."
Nowadays this language, which endured so much before establishing itself in Italy, is making way abroad. Its success is ascribed to Italy's increasingly relevant role played on international scenarios, and to its being a language of great culture. Can you offer other reasons for this success, professor?
"I think I can: the increasing awareness that the cultural, as well as artistic, patrimony of the Western civilization is a premise that cannot be disregarded in the name of 'modernity' or 'post-modernity'. The Italian language can be the antidote to a kind of globalization that, in the name of a hypothetical progress, aims to cancel the identity of countries that contributed, like Italy, to write the history of mankind."

Publication Date: 2003-03-02
Story Location: http://tandemnews.com/viewstory.php?storyid=2430