Dialetti d'Italia

Luigi Speranza

The Italian dialects are not dialects of Italian.

"The profundity of the linguistic difference between Italian dialects (however we define these) should not be underestimated. For nearly two millennia there has been very little to restrain the dialects from divergence."
--- M. Maiden

As difference between some Italian dialects, especially those more geographically distant from each other (say Turinese and Potentino), was, and still is, equal to or greater than that between modern Italian and modern Spanish, it should not be too difficult to appreciate the complexity of the task which the writer A. Manzoni was undertaking.

The problems posed by the situation became all the more urgent with the unification of Italy in 1860.

Towards the second half of the 19th century, unlike what was happening in other major countries, Italian was relatively invariant and homogeneous.

This was largely due to its having become almost exclusively a written language, ill-adapted to use in everyday discourse, and lacking much of the variegation that naturally evolves when a language is employed by a widespread speech community for a multiplicity of purposes.

It is doubtful whether at the time of Unification there was anyone who could define themselves as 'native speaker' of Italian.

It is also the case that very few citizens of the newly formed Italian State knew their national language.

There were however some immediate and very real practical problems to be overcome which could not be seen simply as a problem of 'literary conformism'.

The State:

what language would the bureaucracy use to communicate with the citizens?

Education:

how could schools and universities communicate with their students?

The Army:

how could a national army function without a common language?

What was the level of literacy in the country?

How many could benefit from formal instruction?

The first national government imposed a highly centralised political and administrative structure.

Political Administrative spheres:

the language of communication of Government and of the Monarchy

Civil servants:
- as well as administrators, also were to use the 'national language' and often had to move from their home town or village in order to take up the post wherever it might be.

State controlled activities were to adopt the standard national language .

The army: made use of the 'national language' and posted its recruits in different parts of Italy, away from their villages.

Officers too were posted away from their home town.

First World War

Education: teaching in schools and universities (posting of staff over the territory).

Schools were another major factor in the spread of the national language.

The commitment shown by the school authorities to impose the 'good' models of the literary language led to such radical stigmatisation of the local dialects (called 'weeds'), that for the first 100 years the mastery of the national language in schools was simply used as an instrument of social selection.

Internal migrations: (probably the most influential?) urbanisation from rural to urban areas andcross-regional from rural South to industrialised North of Italy helped to spread the national language.

Abolition of internal frontiers, and custom duties; the creation of industrial belts around industrial centers of the North. I

ITALY 1861: Population 26 million; 23.6% (3.5 million ) occupation: industry (mainly as craftsmen) 75%, the remaining three-quarters of the population were employed in rural and agricultural occupations.

According to some statistics around 1860 only 2.5% of the population (26 million) could actually speak 'Italian' for the other 97.5% Italian was a foreign language (600,000 geographically subdivided 400,000 Tuscans; 70,000 Romans) (But Castellani estimates 10% of population who were able to understand it with little or no instruction, consequently for these speakers Italian was a second or additional language). Italian was a 'foreign language' for people in rural (or remote) communities for whom their dialect had changed very little (uncontaminated by external contacts) over the centuries. Note also the distribution of the population:

In 1861 there were only 52 towns with a population of over 20,000 (none of which was in Venezia Tridentina, Umbria, Abruzzi and Basilicata).
20 towns with a population of at least 50,000 inhabitants:

Torino, Alessandria, Milano, Padova, Venezia, Verona, Trieste, Genova, Bologna, Ferrara, Ravenna, Modena;

Firenze, Livorno, Lucca, Roma;

Napoli, Palermo, Messina and Catania

* 12 were in northern Italy,
* 4 in the centre and
* 4 in the south.

Fifty years later (1911) the number of large towns in Italy had more than doubled, and by 1961 there were almost 100 with 17 million people (34% of the population) out of a total of 48 million. By 1961; 325 towns had over 20,000 inhabitants (46% of the total population).

It is generally acknowledged that for several reasons -difficulty of implementation and the absence of effective control mechanisms

tolerance in the use of other languages (dialects) was fairly widespread.

Fascism and its language policies

With the Fascist Regime taking power in 1922 we witness an ideological shift to the right and towards nationalism which encompassed also issues of language.

The Regime's agenda of aggressive nationalism and fascistization of the the Italian people had immediate objectives.

School policies (1923) sought to suppress the reform Dal dialetto alla lingua which was intended to introduce into the classroom dialects and folk literature (the idea of the reform was to make schooling more attractive, relevant and more effective).

the 'purification' of the national language through the elimination of all foreign words and the adoption through prescription (see France) of other selected forms considered to be more Italian (1923). By 1940 there had been established a state academy whose remit was to produce an uncompromising - if somewhat ridiculous - programme of Italianisation.

The proscription of terms such as

guichet
stop
cheque
buffet
chalet
garage
chauffeur
slalom
parquet
dessert

was accompanied by neologism

sportello
arresto
assegno
rinfresco
villetta
rimessa
autista
obbligata
tassellato
alla frutta
lei-> voi .

Most of these imaginative creations have disappeared today.

Repression of dialects (1933)

suppression of the Genoese vernacular newspaper
"Il Successo"

Opposition to all linguistic minorities with the loss of a media of instruction in border areas (Aosta, Alto Adige etc). By the 1930s Italian was imposed as the only language in both offices and in the press.

Effectively this was a process of Italianization as minority languages would disappear and with them the channels of cultural transmission.

"Lingua toscana in bocca romana"

('Tuscan tongue in Roman mouth')

to give spoken Italian not orthodox Florentine pronunciation but rather that of Rome, the capital of the Empire and centre of its political life.

Most of the Regime campaigns were high on rehtorics and low on content although pernicious in their social political implication and consequences.

It is generally agreed that the effect of the policies on the language and dialects was rather limited.

Where the Regime was very successful and the consequences can be perceived still today is in the syle of communication, propaganda strategies of mass communication high-sounding clichés.

The aim was to create a language which was " 'precise, serious and energetic instead of the pompous, wordy rhetoric of liberal regimes'. In actual fact the 'precision' proposed by the regime instead of the 'pompous and wordy rhetoric' of liberal governments was made up of empty language expressions showing more arrogance than innovation:

Se avanzo seguitemi

Osare l'inosabile

I dadi sono gettati

Popolo italiano, corri alle armi

Noi tireremo diritto

Signori, io sono romano

If I advance, follow me
Dare the undarable
The dice are thrown
Italians, rush to arms
We will go on
Gentlemen, I am a Roman


Quoted in Tosi

"The rhetoric of Fascism is part of a nationalistic evolution in the style of official language that predated the regime, and included the puristic cleansing of Italian from foreign borrowings. Leso (1978) suggests that at the turn of the century there was a combination of events leading to a sharp change of style in political speeches and news reporting. Colonialism, the irredentism after the First War, the fast developing innovations (such as aircraft and cars) and their use in everyday life, generated a sense of adventure that was captured by the nationalist ideology that inspired popular writers like Gabriele D'Annunzio. Accordingly, the style adopted by many politicians as well as by artists and intellectuals was a combination of exaggerated figures of speech describing the cultural characteristic of the country, and of patriotic slogans expressing the energy and superiority of Italians."
---- Tosi, Language and society in a changing Italy.

Fascism was the new spirit required by all Italians if they were to be successful in modern life. This new spirit was anchored in the full awareness of the rich heritage, unique in Europe, of glorious imperial Rome.The resulting repertoire is a mixture of rhetorical elements, designed to contrast the strength, energy and virility of the 'Latin' tradition:

(indomito: indomitable, valoroso: brave, virile: virile, granitico: granitic, implacabile: implacable, incrollabile: unshakeable, entusiasmo: enthusiasm, ardente: ardent), with the feeble tendencies of modern liberalism (imbelle : faint-hearted, smidollato: gutless, slombato: spineless, invigliacchito: become cowardly), and to enhance the revolutionary qualities of Fascist politics which claimed to combine Latin origins and modern life styles: incrollabile certezza (unshakeable conviction) formidabile rinnovamento (wonderful rebirth) sanità fisica e morale della nostra stirpe (moral and physical health of our race) vibrante giovanile entusiasmo (vibrant youthful enthusiasm) compatta falange di uomini coscienti e disciplinati (compact ranks of disciplined, conscientious men).


The Fascist regime was quick to appropriate the technical innovations of the radio, the newspapers and the film industry, once it realised that communication via the new media could exercise great influence on people's attitudes and beliefs. Any lasting impact on the national language was achieved by way of exposure to the rhetoric of the period and not really through the attempted imposition of a Fascist language policy. Furthermore, economic policies pursued by a Regime, anxious to stress the self-sufficiency (autarchia) of the nation as a whole starting from the regions, restricted internal movements of the workforce confining large sectors of its population (agricultural workers) in socially and linguistically backward environments.

Since for over five centuries there was little or no state monitoring we are faced with a situation of polymorphism as diverse lexical alternatives were used in the Italian classics and survived in the literary tradition. (fo, faccio (I do); vo, vado (I go); ruscello, rivo, rio: (brook) etc. see Tosi )