Modern Italian Language

ITALIAN LANGUAGE, MODERN. Spoken Latin must necessarily have varied in the successive centuries and according to the speech of the peoples which adopted it. When the centrip etal force of Rome was relaxed, these differences were empha sized and by degrees the Romance languages (q.v.) developed. To speak however of the language of Italy, Spain or France is an abstraction, if we understand by language the vernacular actually used by the inhabitants of a whole country; for each hamlet and even each family and social group possessed, as it now possesses, certain peculiarities of vocabulary and pronunciation. So that there existed throughout the Roman Empire, and in particular throughout the Italian peninsula, a variety of vernaculars, each almost undistinguishable from its immediate neighbours, and each gradually better differentiated from others that are and were spoken at increasingly greater distances whether actual or virtual. When we speak therefore of the Italian language and of its dia lects we are using inaccurate expressions. There existed, from the days of Republican Rome and before (cf. Latin language), local vernaculars which became gradually modified by usage, scholastic influence, accession of peoples of different ethnical stocks, contact with other peoples, etc. ; and these vernaculars became more strongly differentiated during the earlier middle ages when, owing to the breaking up of the political organization, public education was impaired and communications were ren dered difficult and slow. It is possible to group the local ver naculars on the basis of certain common features of pronunciation and morphology mostly, but by no means necessarily coinciding with geographical subdivisions of the land; and these groups we call dialects. What is generally understood by the words "Italian Language" will be considered of ter the dialects have been surveyed. Dialects.—In the upper valleys of the Adige and the Piave and in some neighbouring districts, in the land east of the Tagliamento (Friuli) and in some neighbouring parts dialects are spoken be longing to the Ladin (Raetian) group (Trentino, Cadorino, Friu lano, Goriziano, etc.), which is not to be considered as belonging to the Italian family, but as a Romance vernacular kindred to the language of south-eastern Switzerland. Along the Italian coast from Istria (and also from Dalmatia) as far as the mouth of the Po and in the islands of the upper Adriatic, varieties of the Venetian dialect are spoken. Venetian is to be considered the whole region from the Tagliamento to the left bank of the Mincio, with considerably diversified vernaculars (of Venice, proper, of Chioggia, Treviso, Padua, Vicenza, Verona). Part of this terri tory was originally inhabited by Ladin people as is shown by the persistence of final -s in the 2nd pers. sing. of the Present indica tive of interrogatives: vas-tu? (cf. Ascoli, "Arch. glott." 1,411 ss.) Common features of the dialects of Venetia are the simplification. of Latin -ct- to -t-, Latin c/- to palatal c- and the diphthonga tion of short stressed e and o. West of the Adige we meet with the Lombard dialects (in Brescia, Bergamo, Milan, Pavia, Lodi, Como, Valtellina and Canton Ticino) having in common like the dialects of Piedmont, the sounds of Ft and ö (French u and eu), the lack of double consonants, the loss of final vowels and the frequent nasalisation of it and m. Connected with Lombard are the dialects of Liguria, Emilia and Romagna, all possessing the o sound (ii only in Liguria), and all tending to the palatalization of Latin -ct-. Piedmontese dialects (Vercelli, Turin, Alessandria, Saluzzo, Monferrato, Asti, Aosta, etc.) are spoken west of the Ticino and the Trebbia as far as the Apennines and the Alps and are closer to French ; while Ligurian vernaculars spoken all along the Riviera, at San Remo, Savona, Genoa, Spezia, Sarzana, have some points of contact with Provencal. On the other hand the dialects of Emilia (south of the Po; east of the Trebbia, north of the Apennines and the Reno, spoken at Piacenza, Parma, Reggio, Modena, Ferrara and Bologna), and those of Romagna (east of the Apennines, between the Reno, and the Marecchia) spoken at Ravenna, Imola and Forli, respond to central Italian tendencies. In central Italy we find the dialects of the Marches between the Marecchia and the Tronto on the Adriatic coast (Pesaro, Ancona, Urbino, Macerata, Ascoli), of Umbria (upper valley of the Tevere and neighbouring districts (Perugia, Foligno, Spoleto, Terni), of Tuscany (upper valley of the Arno to the sea as far as Grosseto (Pistoia, Pisa, Lucca Livorno, Firenze, Arezzo, Siena), of Latium (west of the Apen nines from Grosseto to Terracina approximately) and of Cor sica. The Tuscan dialects are closest to Latin, but in some parts of the region we meet with cases of rhotacism (obbrigo for obbligo, turnuro for tumulo), with voiced for voiceless gutturals, (siguro for sicuro) and with s for z (speransa for speranza). Characteristic of the dialects of the Marches are the cases of umlaut whereby changes in the internal vowels are caused by certain terminal vowels due to the accidence (castiello next to castella, muorto next to morta, etc.). Corsican dialects are kindred to Tuscan, but southern Corsican is closely connected with Sar dinian. In southern Italy we meet with dialectal groups which do not correspond to territorial divisions, in the northern section we find the dialects of Abruzzi (on the Adriatic side, south of the Tronto and the upper valley of the Pescara (Teramo, Aquila, Chieti, Sulmona), of Apulia (Puglia) and Basi licata spoken at Campobasso, Foggia, Barletta, Bari, Brindisi, Potenza; of Campania comprising Gaeta, Caserta, Avellino, Naples and Salerno. The southern section contains the dialects of the territories of Lecce, Otranto, Taranto, southern Calabria and Sicily. Peculiar features of the Southern dialects in general are the preservation of intervocalic voiceless consonants which in other regions are substituted by voiced consonants (Ital. citta dino is at Naples cetatino), the assimilation of -nd- to -nn (scendere is scennere at Naples) ; peculiar to the southern section and particularly to Sicily is the change of stressed and final -e to -i (aviri for avere) and e, o to i, u respectively in stressed syllables (amuri for amore). The vernaculars of Sardinia are no longer considered Italian dialects but rather as Romance ver naculars. There are of course others besides the phonetic differ ences between the various dialects. Thus all the northern dialects have lost the perfect and use instead the compound past or pret erit (ho cantato for cantai) ; the southern dialects have kept the perfect. The archaic conditional fora

The vocabulary of the several dialects varies owing to the different ethnical substrata and the peculiar conditions of the population. Words of Celtic origin being more frequent, if ever rare, where the pre-Roman population was Celtic; Germanic words having survived where the Teutonic occupation was long est (in the North) and Greek words occurring more frequently where the ethnic substratum was Greek or the Byzantine rule persisted through the earlier middle ages. Thus at Genoa "bran" is called brenu and at Como bren (Celtic) ; apart from a certain number of Germanic words that have been accepted by the literary language (guerra, elmo, rocca, guancia, onta, etc.) we find yen. barba for uncle, and biet, biot from old high-Germ. blaut, naked, in Lombardy. Of Greek origin are the Sicilian melana, ink, centra, nail, etc. On the contrary French words are quite as frequent in the literary language as in the dialects for, particularly during the 13th century, French and Provencal works were often read in Italy, and since then the literary relations be tween the two countries have been continuous and at times inti mate, so that from cavaliere, for cavallaro to vegliare for veg ghiare and to saggio for savio instances of French influence are very frequently discernible (cf. Bertoni, L'elemento germanico nella lingua ital., 1914; G. Rohlfs, Griechen u. Romanen in Un teritalien, 1924; R. R. Bezzola, Abbozzo di low storia del cismi italiani, 1925).

The Literary Language.

During the middle ages only Latin was taught in the schools; consequently all who ventured to write in their local vernacular would tend to regularize or to latinize the more definitely dialectal features of their daily speech and thus roughly to approximate it to Tuscan and particularly to Florentine which, of all the Italian vernaculars, was closest to Latin. The country lacked political unity and thus had no political centre which might become linguistically pre-eminent.

The earliest literary work in Italian as distinct from isolated sentences is the "cantilena" of a Tuscan jongleur (forty lines of eight syllables) which must be ascribed to the neighbourhood of Pisa and dated about 115o. (Since Mazzoni's article in "Studi medievali," II. (1928) pp. 247 ss., the date of the poem is certain and its meaning no longer so obscure as it was previ ously held.) During the 13th century there were written poems and prose works in practically every dialect of Italy. Such an out put was in many departments more plentiful in Tuscany than elsewhere (except perhaps for lyrical poetry at the court of Frederick II.), and as it was more plentiful it soon excelled also for intrinsic merit. Despite this Dante when he had already composed most of his lyrics and the Vita Nuova did not yet realize that the literary language of Italy must be based on the vernacular of Florence, and suggested an artificial selection of the best elements from each dialect. In practice, however, he departed from his own theory, for his language is nothing but Florentine. Dante's influence was as great as his success, and unintentional writings in other dialects disappeared after the beginning of the 14th century. Petrarch who was born in Tuscany if he seldom lived there, had no hesitation as to which dialect to prefer. Boccaccio grew up in Florence. Collectively their ex ample contributed to the inevitable triumph of Florentine. The Renaissance brought about a recrudescence in the use of Latin; for a time every man making any claim to literary distinction either exclusively or in preference wrote Latin; and it was no longer mediaeval Latin, but a language as pure in vocabulary and style as the increasing familiarity with classical masterpieces could well bring about. Works in Italian were thus either popular in character, affecting and exaggerating popular traits, or were written in an unpleasant jargon constituted by the admixture of purely Latin words to, and the superimposition of Latin con structions on, an Italian basis (e.g., Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, by F. Colonna). During the earliest period when the writers were struggling to build up an Italian tradition, they had naturally turned either to Latin or to French for their models. Ultimately Latin prevailed, but the general result was that an Italian literary language was developed which differed to a certain extent in vocabulary and to a greater extent in phrasing from the cultured speech of Florence ; authors who did not hail from Tuscany were apt to allow dialectal features and local idioms to creep into their works, and when the Latin fashion somewhat abated at the beginning of the 16th cent. and the literary output in Italian was proportionately increased, despite the existence by then of a Kot.vi batXecros, it was ardently debated whether the Floren tine usage, the language of the princely courts or the works of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio should be taken as standards. Machiavelli championed the first, Castiglione the second and Cardinal Bembo the third solution. In theory, if not always in practice, Bembo triumphed, and his triumph implied the rigid conformance to models of the past precisely as was done in writing Latin or Greek. And thus during the later 16th, the 17th and the early i8th centuries the remoteness of prose style from everyday speech became accentuated in all except scientific works. At the same time there was an orgy of concepts and a considerable, if short-lived, influx of Spanish words and idioms. The so-called polite form of address in the third person is one of the few Spanish mannerisms that became established. In order to free themselves from the tyranny of the past, some i8th cen tury authors (Verri, Beccaria) urged and practised a supine imi tation of French, thus provoking a reaction and a return to the classics. Both these movements fostered the development of a more modern language; but it was only during the i9th century that the question was finally settled. A. Manzoni, a Milanese, steadily maintained that the vernacular of Florence must be the source and the touchstone of literary Italian. By then the Italian Kingdom was formed and Italy had acquired a political centre; the capital being established at Florence in 1864 and transferred to Rome in 1871 (cf. L. Morandi, Origini della lingua italiana, 7th ed., 1897; P. Rajna in D'Ancona e Bacci, Manuale, I., 1903; V. Crescini, Origine della lingua ital., 1909; C. H. Grandgent, From Latin to Italian, 1927; T. Labande-Jeanroy, La question de la langue en Italie, 1925).

Contemporary Language.

Even cultured Italians, how ever, when in their native districts still spoke the local dialects; when writing therefore they made use of a medium that was to a certain extent foreign, being unable to employ their normal idioms unless they happened to be Tuscans. As a consequence throughout the i9th century prose style was often over elaborated, stiff, clumsy or excessively dialectal. And it was only during the present century that the Italian language ceased to labour under the severe handicap that had thwarted so long its natural develop ment. The results of this soon became apparent for, except among the Tuscan writers of the earliest period, the literary language has never been so closely connected as it now is, with the spoken language. This change is perhaps greater than con temporaries are able to evaluate, though it implies no alteration in phonetic and morphology. Apart from a few orthographical changes and the obsolescence of words indicating things that are no longer in use, present day Italian is still Dante's Italian; such sound changes as are noticeable in English, German and French are completely unknown to Italian. Of course the dialects, lack ing the restraining influence of an acknowledged literary usage and of the schools, alter more rapidly and profoundly. Despite this a comparison of the sentences in the documents of Capua (A.D. 96o) with some modern variety of the Neapolitan dialect would show that no fundamental change has occurred. And a similar result would be reached if 13th century Northern or South ern texts were compared to modern parallels, provided it was borne in mind that ancient writers endeavoured to normalise the dialectal forms and did not propose faithfully to reproduce the forms and pronunciation of local usage. Owing to the strong traditions of regional life, dialects survive in conversation, are constantly employed in popular songs and occasionally in drama. Dialectal drama has, during the last thirty years, met with much favour even when acted far from its original centres ; and of late there has been an extraordinary revival in the folk songs and music. Dialects, however, increasingly feel the effect of the pre eminence of Italian, the language of the schools, of the courts, of the newspapers and books, but there is no sign of the disappear ance of the dialects themselves with their very attractive element of local colour.

The local vernacular of Florence is itself a dialect, and edu cated Florentines, and Italians in general, do not turn the gut tural stops into aspirates (It. casa—Flor. hasa), do not exaggerate the softening of palatal c and g (It. cacio—Flor. hasho), and the Florentine habit of avoiding the diphthongation of short e and o under stress is not accepted by standard Italian (buono and not bono, tiene and not terse). On the other hand, standard Italian is necessarily streaked with dialectal pronunciations and man nerisms whether Tuscan or of other regions. Northern Italians e.g., find it difficult to discriminate between open and closed e and o in stressed syllables (the first e of bene is open, not closed as the Milanese pronounce it) ; the stressed e of caramente is close not open as it sounds at Turin. On the contrary in the South the tendency is to pronounce all these vowels close. Northern Ital ians tend to voiced and Southerners to voiceless s; Tuscans distinguish between them, though they are not consistent for there are instances of voiced s that have become voiceless in the course of years and vice versa. As a quite recent development accents have been exceptionally marked on all stressed vowels, unless they are in penultimate syllables, but this example was not followed. It has become customary to differentiate between acute and grave accents when they are marked, the former indicating a closed and the latter an open sound. Such a tendency, which is a consequence of the union of Italy and of a desire towards a greater uniformity of pronunciation, is welcome in it self, and may point to such developments in the use of accents as have become established in France and in Spain. (G. Malagoli, Ortoepia e ortografia italiana modern, Hoepli manual.) (C. F.)