ITALIAN: "Origins and evolution of the Italian language"

"Origins and evolution of the Italian language" in L'italo-Americano paper.

Good little article on how Italian as we know it came about!

I commented:

"

If I may, a linguist (I forget which one from my sociolinguistic studies in college) once defined a "dialect" as "a LANGUAGE without an army." ALL "dialects" are technically "languages" in their own right if their grammar (syntax), morphology (word formation) and phonology/phonetics (pronunciation) are significantly or even slightly different from their "parent" language(s).

The truth is that the so-called STANDARD (i.e., Italian, Queen's English/Oxford English, High German [Hoch Deutsch], French, Literary Arabic, Literary Greek...) is an artificial creation of the nation state, a necessary LINGUA FRANCA to unify it and maintain it. If England had allowed the Scots and the Irish to speak Gaelic and the Welsh to speak Welsh, the United Kingdom would not be the United Kingdom. To the conqueror also belong the linguistic spoils: the right to impose his standard on the conquered.

The Spaniards left the South of Italy, the French left from Savoy, the Austo-Hungarians left from Veneto, and that power national void was filled politically, militarily, culturally and linguistically by the national government whose power came from Rome. I'm sure Mussolini had as much to do with the linguistic unification of Italy as the migratory exodus from the South (illiterate emigrants learned standard Italian to write back home!), the spread of education and the media.

Today, no educated self-respecting Italian would rather speak the language of his "paese" than the national standard. The language from one's "paese" is to communicate with one's "paisani"! It's a code to connect with one's buddies and keep others out of the loop! In Veneto, a regional "language" I tried to study, EVERY SINGLE TOWN, large (Venezia, Padova, Vicenza, Verona, Treviso) or small, has a different variety of it, and it's virtually IMPOSSIBLE to come up with a true "Veneto" language. Every single town would claim that THEIR variety is the "true veneto" language! Pick one at your own peril! ;-)

The linguistic situation in Italy is highly complex, as complex as that of Spain, Germany/Switzerland, Belgium, the Arab-speaking world, China (many, many, many "languages" in China!) or India! (many, many, many "languages in India!). The socio-political aspects and issues of language are as complex as its phonology, syntax, morphology and semantics! ;-)"