Xenophobe's Guide to the Italians

Language

Until the end of the Second World War Italian was not widely spoken. It was essentially a written language, mainly used by administrators and bureaucrats and a small caste of academics and the then members of the ruling class. The advent of television was a prime force in spreading it, and these days most Italians understand Italian and all young Italians speak it.

One of the many beauties of the language is the ease with which dimension, value or meaning can be altered by simply changing the ending of nouns and adjectives. Thus, a shoe (scarpa) can become Cinderella’s slipper (scarpina) or a skiing/hiking boot (scarpone); but doing a scarpetta (‘filling a little shoe’) means dunking a bit of croissant in one’s coffee.

A love (amore) can become a sweetheart (amoroso), or a cupid (amorino), or a mistress (amante). Italian men who hear of a bella donna, a beautiful woman, will wonder if she is in fact bellissima (stunning) or just bellina (quite pretty); maybe she is a bellona (well past her prime, but still a poser) or perhaps she is belloccia (passable, in all senses of the word). And is she worth very little (donnetta) or will she charge a fee (donnaccia)? The only way for the Latin lover to find out is by having a go, unless he is a donnicciola – one who is too timorous to try.

Italian has bequeathed to the world a vast number of musical terms: pianoforte, sonata, aria, primadonna, concerto, adagio, pizzicato, pianissimo, soprano, maestro, virtuoso and castrato. And restaurants worldwide offer pasta, pizza, mozzarella, zabaglione, grissini, cappuccino, amaretto and sambuca.

For their part, the Italians have adopted and adapted English/American words with huge enthusiasm – lifting (face-lift), telemarketing, cliccare sul mouse (to click on the mouse), lo zapping (channel hopping). They also use English words that English-speakers would hardly recognise: for example, Italian football stars invariably refer to their trainers as ‘il Mister’. English words are even invented and then exported, sometimes with surprising success, such as ‘body’, which threatens to replace leotard.

But when they are at home in their villages Italians speak the local dialects or languages, which can be almost impossible for gli altri in other regions to understand. One survey found that of the E.U.’s 28 minority language communities, 13 were in Italy. There are French-speaking Italians in the Aosta Valley, German-speaking Italians in the Alto Adige, Slovene- and Serbo-Croat-speaking Italians in Trieste, and Albanian- and Greek-speaking Italians in Puglia, while in Sardinia there are Catalan-speaking Italians. However, with the influx of immigrants, the language map of Italy is changing. The census form is accompanied by ‘How to fill it in’ instructions in multiple languages, including Arabic and Russian.

In addition, local dialect is both structurally and lexically very different from Italian. There are still a good many Italians who speak a dialect, and a number of Italians who have no language other than their dialect. It is possible therefore to believe the following tale. A man from the southern region of Puglia, who has lived in Piedmont for 20 years, has a Piedmontese neighbour who greets him every day as he leaves for work. The Pugliese man speaks Italian, and the Piedmontese man understands him. But, because the Piedmontese man doesn’t speak Italian and the Pugliese has never bothered to learn Piedmontese, their conversation forever remains one-sided.