Celebrating Italy's Language and Heritage

Il retaggio culturale italiano

Italian Cultural Heritage

Every October the United States celebrates Italian heritage month (il mese del retaggio italiano), not just to honor the 26 million Americans of Italian descent (di origine italiana) who make up  the fifth largest ethnic group (il quinto più grande gruppo etnico) in the United States, but also to recognize Italians' many contributions.

Italians gave the name “America” (a tribute to the Florentine navigator Amerigo Vespucci) to Americans. Other Italian explorers (esploratori italiani) included Cristoforo Colombo, of course, as well as Giovanni Caboto (John Cabot), who sailed under the British flag (sotto la bandiera britannica), and Giovanni da Verrazzano, who sailed under the French flag (bandiera francese).

Italians created the first universities, law and medical schools, banks, and public libraries (università, facoltà di giurisprudenza e medicina, banche, e biblioteche pubbliche); taught diplomacy (la diplomazia) to Europe; showed the French how to eat with a fork (mangiare con la forchetta); mapped the moon (mappato la luna) in the 1600s; split the atom (diviso l’atomo); produced the first modern histories, satires, sonnets, and travelogues (storie, satire, sonetti, e diari di viaggio); invented the battery, barometer, radio, and thermometer (inventò la pila,il barometro, la radio, e il termometro); and bestowed on the world the eternal gift of music (il dono eterno della musica).

The gift I cherish most, of course, is la bella lingua. Centuries before there was an Italy, there was Italian. (Secoli prima che ci fosse un’ Italia, esisteva l’italiano.) Its roots (le sue radici) date back nearly 2,800 years when a band of itinerant shepherds and farmers settled on the hills above the Tiber. Their utterances evolved into the volgare (from the Latin sermo vulgaris, for the people’s common speech), the rough-and-ready spoken vernacular. Scrappy street Latin gave rise to all the Romance languages (le lingue romanze), including Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, and Romanian.

The first miracle (il primo miracolo) of Italian is its survival. Brutally divided, invaded, and conquered, the Mediterranean peninsula (la penisola del Mediterraneo) remained a patchwork of dialects (dialetti), often as different from each other as French from Spanish.

Italian as we know it was created, not born (è stato creato, non è nato). With the same thunderbolt genius that would transform art in the Renaissance, writers of fourteenth-century Florence (autori fiorentini del Trecento)—Dante first and foremost—crafted the effervescent Tuscan vernacular into a language rich and powerful enough to sweep down from heaven and up from hell.

This priceless living legacy (questa inestimabile eredità culturale), no less than Michelangelo’s sculptures, Verdi’s operas, Fellini’s movies, or Valentino’s dresses, is an artistic masterwork (un capolavoro artistico).

“L'italiano è più di una lingua”  (Italian is more than a language), the Società Dante Alighieri observes in the video below. “È un modo di vivere e di pensare.” (It’s a way of living and of thinking). “È uno strumento per comunicare con l’arte e la cultura.” (It’s an instrument for communicating with art and culture.)

“Riuscite a immaginare un mondo senza italiano?” (Can you manage to imagine a world without Italian?).

 Io, no. (Not I.) Neanche un mondo senza italiani. (And also not a world without Italians.)

Words and Expressions

Italiano di prima/seconda / terza generazione –- first /second/third generation Italian

ricevere in eredità –- inherit

immigrante –- immigrant

cittadinanza italiana –- Italian citizenship

doppia cittadinanza –- dual citizenship

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language.

Comments

[John Rose]

This article- in Italian- about bluejeans has a wonderful photo with it:

http://spoiltjeans.com/index.php?q=STORIA%20DEL%20JEANS

[John Rose]

Ciao Dianne e tutti i lettori,

Another world-famous item that the Italians gave us- bluejeans! Well, the word(s), in a sense, if not the actual product as we know them today. Plenty of websites tell the story of the "blu di Genova" or the French version "bleu di Genes." It's a story I won't recount here of the Genovese trading of the blue fabric and items made from it. So the description, if not the Levi Strauss-derived product of today, is also Italian! Or is it French?

[lapiubelladitutte]

L'italiano è sicuramente una delle lingue piu ricche!!

[laura]

bellissimo articolo, volevo ringraziarla con tutto il cuore per la sua generosità e amore per la mia Nazione,che sembra aver perso l'orgoglio e l'amore per se stessa... è stata una grande emozione leggere le meravigllie che ci vengono riconosciute...grazie...laura

[Elisa Picchiotti]

Thank you so much for this post! You made me feel proud to be Italian!