Becoming Italian Word by Word

What is "la passione"?

“Of course, you are Italian,” a Roman friend insisted years ago, “You have something more important than blood: la passione.”

I accepted the compliment without fully comprehending its significance. Passion, after all, can bloom anywhere. Think of France, with its culinary cathedrals; Spain, with its bullfights; Argentina, with its tango—not to mention the millions of soulmate seekers pursuing passion online. Yet these pursuits now strike me as mere imitations. How could it be otherwise? The original, including the word itself, was made in Italy.

In the first century AD, newly minted Christians, constructing a vocabulary for their fledgling religion, chose the term passio for the agony that Jesus endured to redeem a world of sinners. Etymologists trace its roots to the Latin passus, past participle of pati (to suffer), inspired by the “sacrificio di Cristo e a quells dei prima martiri” (the sacrifice of Christ and that of the first martyrs).

Healers appropriated the word for maladies such as “passion of the liver”—a diagnosis that conjures an organ engorged with rage. Medieval writers—Dante foremost among them— recognized romantic love as una passione so compelling that it could not be resisted. The Renaissance extended the definition of la passione to any all-consuming quest, most often for beauty in its infinite variety. Romantics idealized the irresistible intensity of such ardor, even when it exploded into “crimes of passion.”

Although modern English-language dictionaries acknowledge the religious roots of “passion,” they define it as a state or an outburst of strong emotion, intense sexual love, or deep desire or enthusiasm. La passione is all these—and much more.

The Dizionario Affettivo della Lingua Italians (Emotional Dictionary of the Italian Language) describes la passione as a flammable material—volatile and dangerous. When it possesses you, it causes infinitesimal, voracious particles to pulsate in the blood. You risk burning like a torch, flaming bright, and then disintegrating into embers. When you are inside la passione, nothing else can enter your mind. When it flees, you search desperately for more.

Passion—and passion alone—lifts us above the ordinary. Without passion, there would be no literature, no art, no music, no romance, perhaps none of the wonders Italians have wrought. Beyond sentiment or emotion, la passione qualifies as a primal force of nature that cannot be ignored or denied.

You will find more--much more--about this fierce drive to explore, discover, create, pursue beauty, and love and live with every fiber of one’s being in my new book, La Passione: How Italy Seduced the World. You can preorder it here or find it wherever books are sold on April 16. 

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language, MONA LISA: A Life Discovered and the upcoming LA PASSIONE: How Italy  Seduced the World. For more information on her and her Spring book tours, visit her website: diannehales.com.

Cari amici, I will be moving my blog to my new website, along with a complete archive of my previous posts.  Click HERE  to subscribe (top of sidebar).  Note that if you are already subscribed (via e-mail) to my Typepad blog, your subscription will automatically transfer to the new blog.  However, if you subscribed via RSS, you will need to do so again (using the same link as above).  Thank you!

 

 

March News from Dianne

“Imagine a world without Italy: Painting without Leonardo. Sculpture without Michelangelo. Literature without Dante. No Verdi choruses or Puccini arias. No Fellini films or Ferrari roar. Heavens uncharted, vines unplanted, tables bereft of pasta, pizza, and a Sicilian cake so divine that its bakers swore it could make the dead breathe again.”,

This is how LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World begins.

Western culture is indeed unimaginable without Italy. Its borders contain more  of UNESCO’s designated cultural treasures than any other nation. Its inhabitants created the first universities, banks, public libraries, and law and medical schools; mapped the moon (in 1651); split the atom; produced the first modern histories, satires, sonnets, and travelogues; invented the first working compass, battery, barometer, microscope, radio, and thermometer; garnered twenty Nobel Prizes; and bestowed upon the world the eternal gift of music.

But why Italy? How did a scrawny peninsula smaller than California  leave such an outsize imprint on Western culture?

After  decades of searching for answers,  I credit la passione italiana. My new book, available now for pre-order and on sale wherever books are sold on April 16, explores this primal force and its impact on food, wine,  romance, literature, art, music, religion, film, fashion--and very fast cars.

I’m excited about sharing the story of how la passione italiana seduced the world—in print and in person. Here is the initial list of places where I’ll be speaking this spring.  You can find details on the Events page of my website, which will be updated as we firm up additional dates for the summer and fall.

San Francisco:

Italian Cultural Institute, 6:30 p.m., April 17 (with Frances Mayes)

Libreria Pino, 6:30 p.m., April 24 (with Lisa Engelken)

Il Cenacolo (members and guests), noon, May 16

Marin County

Book Passage, Corte Madera, 4:00 p.m., April 28

East Bay

Stanford Women’s Book Club (private), morning, May 2

Orinda Books, 2:00 p.m., May 2

Houston

Italian Cultural & Community Center, 7:00 p.m., May 7 (with Rita Richardson of Friends of San Filippino)

New Orleans

American Italian Cultural Center, 6:00 p.m., May 8 (with Rita Richardson)

Atlanta

Ciancia Conversation Club, 7:00 p.m., May 9 (with Rita Richardson)

If you’re in Italy this June, I’ll be presenting my book at an event sponsored by the Friends of San Filippino  on Sunday, June 9, in the lovely Tuscan town of Castiglion Fiorentino and in a lecture at the British Institute in Florence on Wednesday, June 12.

I look forward to meeting many of you in my travels. Come and discover la passione italiana!

                                                                                                                                                A presto,

                                                                                                                                                Dianne

Please note: I will be moving my blog to my new website, along with a complete archive of my previous posts.  Click here  to subscribe (top of sidebar).  If you are already subscribed (via e-mail) to my Typepad blog, your subscription will automatically transfer to the new blog.  However, if you subscribed via RSS, you will need to do so again (using the same link as above).  Thank you!

Four Passionate Italian Women Artists

Win a pre-publication bound galley of LA PASSIONE from Goodreads! Click here to enter the raffle. The giveaway ends March 13.

Italy’s dazzling pantheon of artistic geniuses seems a man’s world. Yet as I discovered in researching my upcoming book, a few women with singular passion defied all obstacles and created important works of art. As a way of celebrating International Women’s Day, here are four artists whose stories I recount in LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World:

Plautilla Nelli (1524-88)

At age fourteen, Nelli, a merchant’s daughter in Florence, entered a local convent (as did many girls whose families could not afford marriage dowries) and won the respect of prominent painters of the time. Florence’s first recognized female artist, Nelli set up a studio to train other nuns to paint. Her most remarkable composition represents a first in the history of women’s art: a massive Last Supper (above), almost twenty-three feet long, for her convent’s dining hall. Thanks to a crowdfunding campaign by the Advancing Women Artists Foundation, a recent restoration is unveiling rich colors and subtle details unseen for centuries.

Properzia de’ Rossi (ca. 1490–1530)

A sculptress in Bologna, Properzia carved intricately detailed scenes in an odd and challenging medium: the pits of peaches and apricots. On one pit Properzia carved a detailed Passion of Christ that so impressed the city wardens that they commissioned a marble sculpture above a set of doors in Bologna’s Basilica of San Petronio. Properzia chose an Old Testament scene in which the wife of the Egyptian pharaoh’s chamberlain, burning with lust for their Hebrew slave, strips off his tunic—a work the art historian Vasari interpreted as an expression of Properzia’s unrequited desire for “a handsome young man, who seemed to care but little for her.” Although the Bolognese applauded Properzia’s achievement, she died nearly penniless at about age forty.

Sofonisba Anguissola (ca.1532–1625) 

As an eleven-year-old in Cremona, Sofonisba apprenticed herself to one of the few male artists willing to accept female students. At age twenty, she painted her three sisters playing chess, considered the first realistic depiction of domestic life. As Donna DiGuiseppe recounts in Lady in Ermine, a novel based on Sofonisba’s life, the young artist was summoned to the Spanish court, where she won international acclaim as a professional painter.

When she married a Sicilian nobleman, the couple moved to Paternò, but Sofonisba’s husband was killed in a pirate raid as he sailed to Spain. Two years later, as she was returning to mainland Italy, the widow’s boat was shipwrecked on the Tuscan coast. Sofonisba fell in love with the ship’s dashing captain. They married tand settled in Genoa, where Sofonisba established a school for painters. In 1615, they relocated to Palermo, where Sofonisba continued to tutor young artists until her death at about age 93.

Artemisia Gentileschi (1593–ca.1652)

Artemisia learned how to paint in the studio of her father, a friend and follower of Caravaggio. A colleague her father hired to tutor her raped the teenager. In a sensational seven-month trial in 1612, Artemisia testified under torture against her attacker, who was convicted of defiling a virgin.

Married off to a minor artist in Florence, Artemisia won high-profile commissions from the duke and duchess and became the first woman inducted into Florence’s prestigious Accademia delle Arti del Disegno (Academy of the Arts of Drawing). Most of her almost sixty known works portray women, often as the strong, passionate heroines of mythology and the Bible. All reflect her determination to “show what a woman can do.”

A cache of long-lost letters discovered in 2011 revealed that the artist herself had a passionate affair with a Florentine nobleman—a liaison her husband seemed to encourage. With many international fans, Artemisia painted in Venice, Naples and England, where she and her father decorated the queen’s house in Greenwich.

After her death at about age 60, Artemisia slid into anonymity but was resurrected in the late twentieth century as a feminist icon who overcame ignominy to gain respect and acclaim. The late Jane Fortune, founder of the Advancing Women Artists Foundation, described her as “one of history’s most influential painters.”

 

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language, MONA LISA: A Life Discovered and the upcoming LA PASSIONE: How Italy  Seduced the World. For more information, visit her website: www.diannehales.com.

 

Cari amici, I will be moving my weekly blog to my new website, along with a complete archive of my previous posts.  Click HERE  to subscribe (top of sidebar).  Note that if you are already subscribed (via e-mail) to my Typepad blog, your subscription will automatically transfer to the new blog.  However, if you subscribed via RSS, you will need to do so again (using the same link as above).  Thank you!

 

5 Secrets for Learning Italian from Manu

Italy and Italian Made Easy

Lately I’ve been spending time with a man other than my husband -- everywhere from the kitchen when I’m cooking to the car when I’m driving. His name is Manu (Emanuele) Venditti, a native Italian who lives in Australia and teaches Italian, mainly on his youtube channel Italy Made Easy and podcasts. Like tens of thousands of Italian lovers around the world, I am addicted. The reason: Manu’s passion for both learning and teaching languages.

As a 13-year-old spending a month in the United States, Manu became so frustrated when he couldn’t communicate that he devoted himself to studying languages—not just English, but also Portuguese, Spanish, French and Japanese. On a student exchange program in 2000, he fell in love with Australia and earned a degree from the University of Melbourne. While teaching private and college students down under, Manu discovered what he considers the most effective—and entertaining--medium for language instruction: online videos.

“As a person who’s learned languages myself, I have figured out what works and what doesn’t,” says Manu. “Being able to communicate to people in their native language has helped me create stronger bonds and experience the real culture of another country. I want that for my students. I want that for everyone!”

Here are five of Manu’s language-learning secrets:

1. Variety. “My entire system is based on what I wish I had when I was learning languages. I don’t believe there is such a thing as 'the perfect method' to learn a language, but I know which methods fail to deliver. Most courses focus on grammar and end up producing students who are excellent at theory but cannot communicate well or even understand Italian. Other methods focus on miming and repetition, creating students who may sound good but cannot really express their own thoughts freely. I try to cover all bases -- explaining the grammar, presenting colloquial expressions, creating natural conversations, providing material to read, etc.”

2. Engagement. “This is the reason I love video. It’s a lot easier to digest new content and to stick with studying a foreign language when there is a connection with the source of the information. Nothing beats seeing another human, talking to you and inspiring you to learn more. My job is to be that someone who helps students visually learn Italian--grammar as well as vocabulary. It’s one thing to read about the imperfect tense in a book and another to see and hear your teacher tell you a funny story, giving you a specific example while explaining the concept."   

3. Passive learning. “There is active studying and passive studying, which in my opinion is the key to success. If all you do is study for one hour, you’ll be lucky to hear Italian for 20 minutes (since you will be in learning mode to assimilate all the new concepts). What if you had Italian stuff playing all the time in the background while grooming, cooking, commuting, exercising? You might not understand much of what you are hearing, but your brain will do most of the work, and very soon you will:
                                • be able to understand more and more of what is being said
                                • start speaking with a much better Italian accent
                                • speak with real, natural Italian expressions rather than translating things into Italian." 
His advice: Spend five times as much time listening as you do studying.

4. Practice. “Most students taking private lessons fail to learn a language because the one hour they spend with their tutor is ALL the time they devote to the foreign language. Imagine becoming excellent at any sport or musical instrument by only practicing one hour a week! The Italy Made Easy Academy provides a place for learners of Italian to find a community of other motivated students so they can ask questions in our forums, help each other and form study groups. We also have a Chat service that allows students to have unlimited audio or video calls in Italian with native Italians trained to make it easy even for beginners to converse.”

5. Commitment. “Being fluent in a language does not mean speaking and sounding like a native but simply being able to speak with flow, naturally, without relying on mental translations so you can talk about anything relevant and useful to you. But no one can teach anyone else a language. You have to learn it yourself. This means that it is up to you to put in the time and the effort. The most important questions to ask are:
        • How badly do you want to speak Italian fluently?
        • How much time and effort are you going to put in?"

So why learn Italian? “Italy is a truly mesmerizing place," says Manu, "Our culture is so rich that it would be a shame to miss out on it just because you don’t speak the language.”

Click here to check out the full range of Manu’s digital courses—from quick tutorials on everyday phrases to his “Zero to Italian” classes that will accelerate your learning, regardless of your level. Just like me, you’re sure to get hooked!

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language, MONA LISA: A Life Discovered and the upcoming LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World. For more information, visit her new website: www.diannehales.com.

 

Win a pre-publication bound galley of LA PASSIONE from Goodreads! Click here to enter the raffle.  The giveaway ends March 13.

Ways to Say Thank You in the Italian Language

Thank you

Italians don’t observe the all-American holiday of thanksgiving (la festa del ringraziamento). There are Italian words, but no cultural equivalents for the Pilgrim fathers (padri pellegrini) and the American Indians (Amerindi) who came together to celebrate the harvest (il raccolto) in the new world (il Nuovo Mondo). Italians do eat turkey (tacchino) and pumpkin (zucca) but not in the traditional way (modo tradizionale) that Americans prepare them on Thanksgiving.

Yet Italian has a wonderful array of ways to say thank you: grazie (thanks), grazie infinite (endless thanks), grazie mille (thanks a thousand, literally, but it translates as thanks a million), molte grazie (thank you very much), and grazie di cuore (thanks from the heart).  

Italian appreciation (like everything else) becomes more effusive on paper. If you are writing a lettera di ringraziamento (a thank-you letter) for a gift, a meal or a kindness, you might use phrases such as: 

*Non so come ringraziarLa -- I don’t know how to thank you (formal) 

*Grazie per la squisita ospitalità -- thank you for your exquisite hospitality 

*Grazie infinite per la Sua (formal) / la tua (informal) gentilezza -- thank you for your kindness 

*La ringrazio per tutto quello che ha fatto per me -- thank you for all that you have done for me (formal) 

*Il più affettuoso grazie per...la cena, il regalo, ecc -- most affectionate thanks for...the dinner, the gift, etc. 

*Le porgo i miei più sentiti ringraziamenti -- I profer to you my most heartfelt thanks  

*Non trovo parole per dirLe quanto ci ha fatto piacere -- I cannot find the words to tell you how much pleasure it gave me 

So what do you say when someone thanks you? Here are some options: 

*Prego -- please, not at all, comparable to "you're welcome"

*Di niente -- It’s nothing 

*Non c’è di che -- Not at all 

*Ma immaginati!  Ma figurati! -- That’s all right (literally, imagine or fancy that) –

*Non dirlo neanche -- Don’t even mention it 

*Non dire sciocchezze -- Don’t be silly (to friends) 

*È il minimo che potessi fare -- It is the least I can do 

*È stato un piacere -- It was a pleasure 

And then there's my husband's favorite: L'onore e tutto mio! -- The honor is all mine.

Words and Expressions 

Ingraziarsi -- to curry favor 

Grazie a Dio -- thank God 

Grazie, a buon rendere! -- Thank you, I owe you one! 

Essere grato di –- to appreciate, to be grateful for

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language and  MONA LISA: A Life Discovered. Click here to preorder her upcoming book, LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World.  

 

 

 

Coming in 2019: A 10th-Anniversary Edition of La Bella Lingua

Celebrating Ten Years of La Bella Lingua

A book that keeps selling long after publication is said to “have legs." LA BELLA LINGUA, published in 2009, sprouted wings that carried it to readers around the world. Now I am delighted to announce a new updated and expanded 10th-anniversary edition of LA BELLA LINGUA, to be published next Spring.

More than  decade ago, when I first mentioned my plan to write a biography of Italian, a businessman in San Francisco scoffed: “You couldn’t have picked a less relevant language—except maybe Urdu.” In fact, Italian barely edges out Pakistan’s official tongue as a spoken language. But LA BELLA LINGUA proved him wrong.

Embraced by students and teachers of Italian, Italian-Americans, Italian diplomats and linguists, and those  who love Italy and its culture, LA BELLA LINGUA garnered a place on the New York Times best-seller list, inspired an acrostic in the Sunday Times and served as the subject for several dissertations by Italian graduate students.

Shortly after its publication, Italy's Consul General in New York City described the book as “pivotal” because it marked the transformation of Italian from what was once considered just another ethnic tongue to a cultural language that everyone, even non-Italians like myself, can appreciate.

In 2011 the President of Italy awarded me the highest recognition the government can bestow on a foreigner: a knighthood, with the title of Cavaliere dell'Ordine della Stella della Solidarietà Italiana  (Knight of the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity), for the contributions LA BELLA LINGUA has made in promoting the Italian language.

The most heart-warming responses have come from the readers who tell me that LA BELLA LINGUA has touched their lives, motivating them to study Italian, trace their Italian roots or embark on explorations of their own. An artist on a remote farm in South Africa credited LA BELLA LINGUA with inspiring her lush paintings of Italian fountains and gardens. A Danish woman wrote that my book stirred memories of buying Italian newspapers at the train station in Copenhagen as a girl and “chewing my way through them" because of her love for Italian parole (words).

In a scene straight out of Harry Potter, a British man described pulling his rucksack from the luggage rack of a commuter train: “‘Plop!' something landed on the seat in front of me. Staring up at me was a bespectacled lady in a gondola. The words that caught my eye and proved to be my salvation were: 'tesoro mio!' (my treasure)--two words that have never rang so true.” He credits LA BELLA LINGUA with rekindling his “thirst, quest, obsession with learning Italian.”

“It took me more than two months to read your book--essentially because I didn't want it to end,” a humanities professor wrote. “I kept it in my car, bringing it out when I stopped at a wine bar for a drink or a bite to eat. And now that I have finished--what am I to do?” A young Italian writer felt compelled to thank me “per la passione e la preparazione e l'arguzia"  (for the passion and preparation and wit) with which I described his language.

I credit the book’s enduring appeal, first and foremost, to its inspiration: Italian. Other languages may be better suited to commerce, technology, science or finance.  But no other tongue expresses human feelings and emotions more powerfully.  Italian, which has enriched the realms of art, literature, music, philosophy, cinema, fashion and cuisine, embodies civilization itself. To me, it is the language of our shared humanity, everyone's moth1er tongue. 

I extend grazie di cuore (heartfelt thanks) to all who have supported LA BELLA LINGUA. And I look forward to continuing its journey with a new edition!

Viva l’italiano!

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language and  MONA LISA: A Life Discovered. Click here to preorder her upcoming book, LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World. 

Still Crazy about Italian after All These Years

 

Ten Reasons Why I Still Love Italian

Almost a decade ago, in the first chapter of La Bella Lingua, I confessed to being an inammorata,“enchanted by Italian, fascinated by its story and its stories, tantalized by its adventures, addicted to its sound, and ever eager to spend more time in its company.”

I still feel this way.  Why?  Here are just ten of the reasons:

1. No other language is more romantic. All the Romance languages evolved from the volgare (vernacular) of ancient Rome. Yet none may have so many ways of expressing amore, from "Ti amo, mio tesoro" (I love you, my darling) for l’amore della tua vita (the love of your life) to "Ti voglio bene" for all others.

2. Everything sounds better in Italian. An ordinary towel becomes an asciugamano; a handkerchief, a fazzoletto. Garbage isn’t mere trash -- it’s spazzatura.

3. You can use your hands—a lot! In Italian hands become commas, exclamation points and question marks. Who even needs words when a tug at a bottom eyelid translates into "Attenzione!" ("Watch out! Pay attention!") and a straight line drawn in the air as “Perfetto!” 

4.  Speaking Italian is almost like singing. The reason:  its vigorous vocali (vowels). An Italian “a” slides up from the throat into an ecstatic “aaaah.” Its “e” (pronounced like a hard English “a”) cheers like the hearty “ay” at the end of hip-hip-hooray. The “i” (which sounds like an English “e”) glides with the glee of the double e in bee. The “o” is an English “o” on steroids. The macho “u” is deeper and stronger  than its English counterpart.

5. Italian may be our universal mother tongue. Dating back almost three millennia, its primal sounds—virtually identical to those that roared through Roman amphitheaters thousands of years ago—strike a chord in our linguistic DNA.  

6. When you study Italian, you immerse yourself in an Italian masterpiece. You can’t sculpt like Michelangelo or paint like Leonardo, but you can read and speak a language crafted by 14th-century poets — Dante foremost among them.

7. Italian has become the new French.  h only an estimated 60 to 63 million native speakers (compared to a whopping 1.8 billion who claim at least a little English),  Italian ranks fourth among the most studied languages in the world—after English, Spanish and French, which Italian now rivals as a language of culture and refinement.

8. Italian is “beautiful, fun and sexy.” That’s how people perceive both Italy and its language, observed Stephen Brockman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, “Why not?” he adds. “I can’t see anything wrong with that.” Neither can I.

9. Italians.The better you know their language, the more you’ll realize how right the British author E.M. Forster was when he advised: “Love and understand the Italians, for the people are more marvelous than the land.” I couldn’t agree more.

10. A new revised, updated and expanded edition of LA BELLA LINGUA, coming in 2019.  What better way to celebrate a ten-year love affair with the world's most enchanting language?

Viva l’italiano!

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language and  MONA LISA: A Life Discovered. Click here to preorder her upcoming book, LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World. 

 My thanks to Stacy Pollard for the graphic (above) that she originally created for her "Prayers and Piazza" blog.

Celebrating the 18th Week of the Italian Language in the World

The Week of the Italian Language in the World 

This week marks the eighteenth annual settimana della lingua italiana nel mondo, a global celebration of la bella lingua. Italy’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation and the Accademia della Crusca launched the initiative in 2001, with a different theme delving into an aspect of language and culture every year.

The theme for 2018 is “L’Italiano e la rete, le reti per l’italiano,” (Italian and the web, social networks for Italian).  Italian language schools and cultural centers around the world are sponsoring conferences, presentations, and special events. Click here for links to programs in several cities in the United States.

In her presentation for students at Georgetown University and the University of Maryland, the distinguished linguist Valeria Della Valle, a professoressa at the University of Rome La Sapienza and author of best-selling popular books on Italian, summarizes the language’s long history from Dante to the digital age.

“Although almost 700 years have passed since Dante Alighieri's death in 1321, 80 percent of the words of modern and contemporary Italian were already in use at that time,” Della Valle notes, “If we consider the fundamental vocabulary of modern Italian--that is, the set of 2,000 very widespread words that make up 90 percent of spoken and written communication--over 1,600 of these 2,000 words appear in Dante’s Divina Commedia.”

Thanks to Dante and other Italian wordsmiths, such as Petrarch and Boccaccio, Italian has survived as a language with strong literary roots. However, it also has continued to evolve. In the twentieth century, largely through the influence of film and television, the majority of Italians, who had long talked with each other in regional dialects, began speaking standard Italian, the national language. 

Today one of the topics most debated by the Italian media concerns damage -- real or alleged -- to the Italian language by the Internet and social media. “Many fear that what we call ‘smilies,’ that is, emoticons and emojis, will replace words,” Della Valle observes. “Some even talk about ‘a new Italian’ or a ‘liquid writing’ to underscore the fact that texts are no longer entrusted to a solid support (as was the case for centuries, when words were written on stone, parchment or paper) but to a support that is not entirely material or solid and that has made writing (and reading) lose certain characteristics.”

Italians generally have divided into two camps on this issue. One group argues that the Internet is killing Italian and cites as evidence abbreviations commonly used in texts (SMS), such as “6” for sei (also translated as “you are”) and pome for pomeriggio (afternoon). But, as Della Valle points out, speakers of all languages crunch words in texts and tweets for brevity’s sake.

Other scholars view the advent of the Internet and social media as a great opportunity for the Italian language. “The new technologies,” Della Valle suggests, “have perhaps created the conditions for creating a model of a new Italian that is informal and closer to the spoken word. In fact, it could be a stimulus to the evolution of Italian, to make it richer and more dynamic.”

Personally, I have no fears for the fate of a language that has survived invasions, ruthless inquisitors, foreign tyrants, strutting dictators, corrupt politicians, the European Union, ubiquitous English and tourist hordes. Italian was born of an insatiable hunger to express, communicate and connect. Nothing and no one can quench this urge.

Viva l’italiano!

Dianne Hales is the author of MONA LISA: A Life Discovered and LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Entrancing Language. Click here to preorder her upcoming book, LA PASSIONE: How Italy Seduced the World. 

Book News from Dianne Hales

Since La Bella Lingua was published almost a decade ago, people have often asked me what drew me to Italy. Over the years, I've realized that what intrigued and enthralled me most wasn't its language, food or art—as marvelous as each is—but la passione italiana.

I've dedicated the last three years to the pursuit of its secrets and sources. This summer my editors at the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, and I put the finishing touches on the manuscript for La Passione: How Italy Seduced the World. The official publication date is April 16, 2019, but the book is now available for pre-orders at Amazon in the United States, Italy and England, Barnes & Noble and many independent book stores.

Here is the official online profile for my new book:

"From the New York Times bestselling author knighted by the President of Italy for her writing, a jubilant exploration of how Italy transformed the Western world's most vibrant passions—from literature to art, music to movies.

No country has matched Italy's impact on culture. Just think of painting without Leonardo, opera without Verdi, fashion without Armani, food without the signature tastes of pasta, gelato, and pizza. The first universities, first banks, first public libraries? All Italian.

Dianne Hales attributes these landmark achievements to la passione italiana, a primal force that stems from an insatiable hunger to discover and create; to love and live with every fiber of one's being. This fierce drive, millennia in the making, blazes to life in the Sistine Chapel, surges through a Puccini aria, deepens a vintage Brunello and rumbles in a gleaming Ferrari engine.

Our ideal tour guide, Hales sweeps readers along on her adventurous quest for the secrets of la passione. She swims in the playgrounds of mythic gods, shadows artisanal makers of chocolate and cheese, joins in Sicily's Holy Week traditions, celebrates a neighborhood Carnevale in Venice, and explores pagan temples, vineyards, silk mills, movie sets, crafts studios, and fashion salons. She introduces us, through sumptuous prose, to unforgettable Italians, historical and contemporary, all brimming with the greatest of Italian passions—for life itself.

A lyrical portrait of a spirit as well as a nation, La Passione appeals to the Italian in all our souls, inspiring us to be as daring as Italy's gladiators, as eloquent as its poets, as alluring as its beauties  and as irresistible as its lovers."

Like any parent, I care deeply about all of my literary "children," but I am especially excited to share the wonderful stories of the Italian passions that shaped all our lives.

I write about a particular passion—for Venice, the most seductive of Italian cities—in a newly published collection of first-person accounts: First Spritz Is Free: Confessions of Venice Addicts, edited by a sister appassionata, Kathleen Gonzalez. I've thoroughly enjoyed seeing Venice through the eyes of artists, artisans, writers, gondoliers, musicians, teachers, tour guides, photographers, poets, historians, and more. You can order the book here to share in their adventures.

Another of my books, Mona Lisa: A Life Discovered, popped up recently on NBC Nightly News—part of the backdrop for an interview with the delightful sisters Natalia and Irina Strozzi, the last living descendants of Leonardo's iconic model. Click here to see for yourself if they've inherited her alluring smile.

                                                                                                            

 

Questions Every Traveler Needs to Know in Italian: What?

Che? Che Cosa?

What?

In any language “what” makes the world go round. We always want to know “what’s that?” (che cosa è quello?), “what’s happening?” (che succede?), “what for?” (per che cosa?) and “what’s the matter?” (che cosa c’è?).

In Italian the pronoun che or the noun cosa (thing) can be used alone or together. “Come vanno le cose?” (How are things?) you may ask or be asked. If you don’t know what to do, say, “Non so che cosa fare.” People may offer you the philosophical advice, "Che sarà, sarà" (What will be, will be). And if they break into the classic Doris Day song, that would be un bel che (a fine thing)!

When travelling, here’s what you should know:

What Do You Need?

Forgot your toothbrush (spazzolino da denti)? Don’t have a power adapter (adattatore)? Want an aspirin (aspirina) for your headache? The Italian phrase to use is “avere bisogno di ” (literally, to have need of). In the first person singular, you say “ho bisogno di…” For instance, ho bisogno di una forchetta pulita (I need a clean fork).

What do You Want?

"Cosa prende?"( What are you having?) a waiter may ask. “I want” translates as “voglio,” a phrase one of my first Italian teachers dismissed as “only for babies.” A polite grown-up says “vorrei” (I would like), as in “vorrei un menu”(I’d like a menu). My instructor, insisting that I learn to ask for what I want “come una signora, come una duchessa” (like a lady, like a duchess), taught me an alternative to use in formal circumstances: “Mi piacerebbe” (it would be pleasing to me). Like “Open Sesame!” it has worked magically to produce whatever I’ve desired.

What Do You Mean?

This question translates as “Che cosa vuoi dire?” (literally, what do you want to say?) If you understand someone’s words, say “ho capito” (Italians use the past tense, “I understood,” to indicate comprehension). If you don’t, say, “non ho capito.” If you’re stumped by a word, ask, “Che significa questa parola?” (What does this word mean?)

What Are You Doing?

“Che fai?” (What are you doing?) you often hear Italians ask their children or friends. To ask a stranger the same question, use the polite form: Che cosa fa? What do I do in Italy? Mangio (I eat). Vado (I go). Vado a piedi (literally I go by foot) or walk. Guardo (I look). Nuoto (I swim). Compro (I buy). Mi diverto (I enjoy myself).

What a….!

Just like the English what, che does double-duty as an exclamation. To sound thoroughly Italian, make liberal use of phrases such as “Che bello!” (how lovely), “Che carino!” (How cute), “Che confusione!” (what a mess) and “Macchè!” (not at all).

Words and Expressions

Che avete? -- What do you have? What’s the matter with you (plural)?

È una cosa da nulla –- it’s nothing

Fare la cosa giusta -- to do the right thing

Ogni cosa a suo tempo -- there’s a time for everything

Da cosa nasce cosa –- one thing leads to another

Non è cosa -– It’s not the right time; it’s not a good idea.

Dianne Hales is the author of MONA LISA: A Life Discovered and LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language.