The La Spezia-Rimini Line: Where Italian Varieties Collide
Where in the boot is your favorite dialect?
by Brian Alcamo
Two Italian families. Irreconcilable differences. Stop me before I start performing the entire plot of Romeo and Juliet. Epic theater aside, the set up for the iconic Shakespeare piece is also a good way to begin looking at the linguistic makeup of the Italian peninsula. Here’s what I mean.
Italian is a divided language. It is not a language defined by its country’s borders. The country’s culture is often described as campanilismo, which roughly translates to “a culture defined by bell towers.” This is to say that Italian culture and language can be highly fractured, all the way down to the neighborhood level. This is s the reason so many American travelers struggle to find a good cannolo north of Sicily. But it’s also part of the reason why Italy’s linguistic variation takes on a sharp divide a few miles north of Florence.
The La Spezia Rimini Line
A map of Italian dialects, with the La Spezia-Rimini Line in Black
The La Spezia-Rimini Line runs between the Italian towns of, you guessed it, La Spezia and Rimini. This line is an isogloss, which is a fancy word for a geographical boundary between linguistic features. The line is also sometimes referred to as the Massa-Senigallia Line, depending on whether or not the person wants to draw the line along traditional regional boundaries.
Languages north of the line exhibit features more similar to Western Romance languages (which include Spanish, French, and Catalan), while languages south of the line exhibit features more similar to Southern and Eastern Romance languages (Italian and Romanian, in particular).
Other less familiar languages that fall along these lines are Lombard, Venetian, and Piedmontese on the Western Romance side. Standard Italian, Neapolitan, and Roman fall on the Eastern Side. These languages can be divided further into two separate families, one being Gallo-Italic (North of the Line) and the other being Italo-Dalmatian (South of the Line).
This linguistic division is found in a few ways speakers pronounce words, with one of the largest distinctions being double consonants. Double consonants, or geminates, are a big part of standard Italian. They’re found in words like gemelli (twins), accademia (academy), and troppo (too much). Geminates can be kind of a pain for English-native Italian learners. They’re difficult to identify with the untrained ear, and are even harder to reproduce with an untrained mouth. If anyone ever comments on your mispronounced consonanti doppie, just tell them that your practicing your Lombard. North of the La Spezia-Rimini Line, these double consonants often become single. Other differences that you might pick up on north of this isogloss include: the dropping of word-final vowels (mano becomes man), forming plurals using the letter -s instead of changing the vowel, and pronouncing the letter c as an -s instead of a “ch” before the vowels i and e.
All of these differences are only present on the dialect level for the most part. Dialects are not the same as accents, so an Italian speaker from Milan will still form their plurals by changing a word’s final vowel. They’ll also most likely perfectly pronounce a double consonant if given the chance.
What Does This Mean For Italian?
As Italian standardizes and the world globalizes, these distinctions continue to erode. However, they provide a fun way to begin to think about the connection between geography and language. Italian is a young country, having only become a nation-state in 1861. There are still traces of its regional past everywhere. Although there won’t be any fanfare when you cross the La Spezia-Rimini line, be sure to pay more attention to the speech differences depending on where your conversation partner is from. In addition to practicing your listening skills, you’ll be sure to feel like a linguistic detective.
Thanks For Reading!
Where’s your favorite Italian speaker from? Do you think their dialect might be a little different from “textbook” Italian? Comment below, and be sure to give this post a heart!
(Thumbnail photo by Dominik Dancs)
"What's a muzzadell?" Exploring Italian American Food Vocabulary
Have you ever wondered why the Italian at your deli is different from the Italian in your textbook?
by Brian Alcamo
Let me describe to you a feeling that anyone who appreciates Italian culture has felt.
A few times, my grandpa has brought over “banellis”, a fried chickpea pancake of sorts. They’re delicious, and can be dressed up in a multitude of savory flavorings (or sweet, if you’re looking to go against your nonna’s traditions). They’re the kind of treat that’s hearty enough to trick yourself into thinking they’re healthy.
This summer, my grandpa once again brought us some “banellis” from his favorite deli in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, and I was reminded of how delicious they were. After having bought upwards of 10 pounds of chickpeas at the beginning of quarantine out of fear of not being able to go to the grocery store, I wanted to try to make “benellis” on my own.
Naturally, I went to Google. It turns out that “banelli” is the name of a rifle company, not a dense Italian pastry. I searched for “banelli chickpea” and had to scroll a bit before I could find what I was looking for: Panelle. It turns out that panelle (singular: panella) are “chickpea fritters,” and are a popular street food in Palermo, the capital and largest city in Sicily. The word is pronounced in Italian as [panelle]. Happy with my successful search, I still felt the unwelcome sentiment of being an uncultured American(o). Why can’t I just be from Italy? Why is this panelle so different from how my grandpa and other Italian Americans pronounce the word [bəneli]? The answer lies in which Italians came to America, and how their dialects differ from standard Italian.
A Brief History of Italian In the US
From the late 19th to the mid 20th century, the US saw huge numbers of Italians arriving to escape poverty, stake their claim, and try to live out the American dream. Many of these Italians came from Southern Italy and Sicily, bringing with them their non-standard regional varieties of Italian. Standard Italian was derived from the Florentine dialect of central Italy, thus the sounds and vocabulary shipping over to the US were slightly (sometimes drastically) different. For example, Sicilian is considered by many to even be a separate language. In addition to Latin, it has myriad other influences due to its changes in ruling class over the centuries. Some of these influences include Greek, Arabic, French, Catalan, and Spanish. Sicilian isn’t even the only Southern dialect, and many others such as Neapolitan and Calabrese found their way to the US as well.
All of these tiny linguistic differences combined with the influence of American English create a perfect recipe for vast differences in pronunciation across the Atlantic. Unfortunately, these differences were not always viewed with prestige. James Pasto, in his paper “Goombish” says that “Southern Italians came to the United States speaking already stigmatized dialects, developing a short-lived hybrid, Italgish, that was also stigmatized by speakers of both standardized English and Italian.”
Differences Between Italian American and Standard Italian Words
In order to discuss the differences between Italian American and Standard Italian Words, we must start by acknowledging that Italian American words typically come from a Southern Italian dialect. We’re only going to look at a few examples here, but if you want a better overview, start by checking out this blog post over on Mango Languages. To keep things simple, let’s use some vocabulary that we all know and love, food. Food is integral to Italian American culture, and is a major way in which the Italian language lives on in the US. NJ.com even has an article about “How to speak Jersey restaurant Italian.”
(Keep in mind that each person may pronounce these words differently. Even different families in the same community may have slight variations in their pronunciations. These are not strict rules, and should be used as simple guides to help you reconstruct the Standard Italian pronunciation and spelling.)
Take a look at these Italian American words coupled with their standard counterparts:
Brosciutt’ : prosciutto
Gabagool : capacolla
Fajool (think “pasta fajool”) : faggiole
Rigott’ : ricotta
Muzzarell’/muzzadell’ : mozzarella
Ganol’ : cannoli
Mortadell’ : mortadella
Sound Changes
A lot of these pronunciations come from how speakers of Southern dialects pronounce words.
What’s often happening in these differences is that the Italian American version contains the voiced version of many unvoiced Italian consonants. A voiced consonant is a consonant in which your vocal folds (commonly referred to vocal chords) vibrate while you pronounce it.
Take for instance “k” versus “g.” K is unvoiced whereas g is voiced. The process of changing an unvoiced consonant to its voiced counterpart is known as voicing. Voicing happens three times in the example of capocollo (a type of cured pork) turning into gabagool.
There are also many words that get rid of the final vowel: prosciutto becomes brosciutt’.
A Note on Plurals
When discussing Italian food items in the US, people often use the plural noun form to describe a singular quantity of something. In Italian, one cookie is un biscotto, but in English, one crunchy, Italian-style cookie is “a biscotti.” To form the plural in English, you simply add an -s to the end of the once-plural-but-now-singular biscotti. The same holds true for panini, panelle, and cannoli (singular panino, panella, and cannolo, respectively).
Here’s the rule: If the name of your favorite Italian food ends in an -i, it’s singular form will either be an -o or an -e. If the word ends in an -e, it might already be singular, or it will have a singular form that ends in an -a.
Trying it Out on Your Own
Learning Italian is a lifelong process for many. It’s a way that many try to reconnect with their Italian heritage, and to move their vocabulary beyond the names of food and slang terms (I’m looking at you, stunad (stonato)). Try delving into a specific dialect on your own once you’re comfortable enough with your congiuntivo passato prossimo and your consonanti doppie. You won’t regret it. At the very least, you’ll be even more appreciative on your next trip to the deli.
(Thumbnail photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash)
Italian Dialect Or Language
Interestingly enough, Italian dialects are not truly dialects…
The Italian language is the only official language of Italy. Until 1861, however, Italy was a loose network of small states with each having own language. One of the unifying forces at the time was the Roman Catholic Church, and this year the Sa die da Sardigna (the Sardinian National Day) Mass, was celebrated in the “limba” dialect, a variant of the Sardinian language.
While the history behind the official usage of Italian is a long one, essentially, when the Savoy Kingdom unified all these states under its crown, the decision was made that the literary Florentine variant of Italian would become standard across the country. A major factor in this decision was that Florentine literature (Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio to name a few) was read widely throughout Italy, and therefore was considered part of the national identity.
The newly standard language was taught in schools as part of a federal schooling program that made the instruction mandatory everywhere, however the usage of regional languages persisted and remain an integral part of Italy’s regional cultures.
Interestingly enough, Italian dialects are not truly dialects as a dialect is a variant of a codified language and many of these “dialects” developed independently with their own grammar and vocabularies. This would technically classify them as their own languages. Currently, there are 32 minority languages, all of them derived from the Latin.
For more info on each of the minority languages, click here!
We hope you've enjoyed learning about what denotes Dialect or Language in Italian! Ready to delve more into not only the Italian language, but the culture that it was born of? Our culturally infused group classes with native instructors are sure to put you on the path to fluency faster than you may think possible. Click below to learn more!
Gaming Grammar
Through the years, Bregni has used Final Fantasy, Trivial Pursuit, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Heavy Rain and Rise of the Tomb Raider in his classrooms, but one of the most useful games he has found to teach Italian is Assassin's Creed II…
Gaming Grammar
Using video games in the classroom have helped children growing up in the tech age become interested in learning in ways never imagineable. In recent years, teachers have even been able to leverage games that are not geared specifically for learning purposes to create experiences that resonate with students on a much deeper level. One teacher has even found a way to use the extremely popular 'Assassin's Creed II' to teach the Italian language to his students.
Simone Bregni, an associate professor at the Saint Louis University in Spain, began his journey with video games in 1975 when he was 12 and realized as he continued playing into the 1980s that his English was improving rapidly. He began incorporating video games into his labs in 1997 at the onset of a new generation of interactive adventure games in 2009 which brought astounding results to his students. Because these games incorporated immersive environments, students were able to enrich their experiences in both language and culture.
Through the years, Bregni has used Final Fantasy, Trivial Pursuit, Who Wants to be a Millionaire, Heavy Rain and Rise of the Tomb Raider in his classrooms, but one of the most useful games he has found to teach Italian is Assassin's Creed II.
"In my Italian Renaissance literature course, for example, students explore Florence as it flourished under the Medici by playing Assassin's Creed II ( which is set in 1476 Florence),” Bregni wrote in a study published in Profession. These games are used to reinforce vocabulary and grammar, and teach students to problem solve in Italian.
He has created a process called Identify, Acquire, Create (IAC) that links specific game chapters to learning goals, prepares students with vocabulary and grammar worksheets, applies them them in the relevant game, and discusses them afterwards with written exercises. In a class called Intensive Italian for Gamers, every student made progress that mirrored two semesters of a traditional Italian course in a single semester, and by the final, students were 3 to 5 points ahead of their traditionally trained counterparts.
As a lifelong gamer, it is no surprise to hear Bregni affirm that “I firmly believe that learning should be fun. The fact that it is fun does not take away from the seriousness of the activity - it's just more effective.”
We hope you've enjoyed learning how Simone Bregni has been exploring language learning through video games in Gaming Grammar! What's your favorite game to learn new languages with? Leave a comment below!
Renting In Italiano
Thinking of renting an apartment (appartamento) in the beautiful country of Italy? Here are a few terms that you must know…
Renting ”in Italiano”
Thinking of renting an apartment (appartamento) in the beautiful country of Italy? As you may have read in our previous article, Italian Casa : Caffè Price, there is an increased interest in living in Bel paese amongst foreigners. If the thought of living, and specicfically renting in Italy peaks your interest, we’d love to walk you through a few terms that will make navigating the process much easier!
First, we’ll review a few different types of contracts (contratti) that you may encounter. The process is different for a student compared to someone hoping to stay longer-term. These long-term contracts are called 'contratti di libero mercato' or in English, free market contracts, which usually last 4 years (if you find that you’d like to renew, you will generally be given the option of another 4 years). ‘Contratti concertati' (mutually agreed contracts) can be used for 3 years as a residential contract (uso abitativo) and also covers temporary use (uso transitorio) at a period of 1 to 18 months.
You should plan to see the term for a landlord (il/la locatore) in your contratti. While you may rent directly from the landlord, it is also advisable to go through a leasing agent (agente immobiliare).
Ok, so you’re ready to sign your contract, but what type of living situation do you want?
A studio? (un monolocale)
A double room? (un bilocale)
A triple room? (un trilocale)
Regardless of your style of housing, be sure to check the floorplan (la pianta del piano) to see what's included (such as a kitchen, bathrooms, etc.) and be weary of truffe (scams), particularly those that ask for a deposit in cash (in contanti). Most importantly, never pay before signing the contract and getting the keys (le chiavi) to the apartment.
Don’t be afraid to ask if the rent is negotiable (trattabile)! You may end up saving as you navigate how to pay for utilities (utenze) as well as additional service charges (spese condominiali). Once you're happy with everything, the only thing left to do is sign (firmare) and begin preparing for the move (il trasloco)!
Divertiti!
We hope you've enjoyed learning about Renting En Italiano! Want to make the process even easier?! Our immersive group classes taught by native instructors will help you not only breeze through the linguistic aspect of the renting process, but help you understand where you would be best suited to live based your desires of the cultural landscape!
Preserving the Language Of the Divine Comedy
It is no secret that ‘English-isms’ have permeated nearly every language in countries across the world. Recently, The Accademia della Crusca, have accused the country’s education ministry of implementing an emerging educational text with dozens of English words and phrases…
Preserving the Language Of The Divine Comedy
It is no secret that 'English-isms' have permeated nearly every language in countries across the world. Recently, those trusted with the preservation and protection of the Italian language, The Accademia della Crusca, have accused the country’s education ministry of implementing an emerging educational text with dozens of English words and phrases. This comes as disturbing news as the threat of “English-ification” grows ever present in the Italian language.
The committee, similar to it’s French counterpart, Academie française, has stated that it was “deeply concerned” that the text about entrepreneurship in business contained the phrases”team-building”, “start-up”, and “case history” among others when they feel that there are Italian equivalents that could have been just as effective. Because this has become “institutionalized,” according to the committee, The Accademia della Crusca contends that the education ministry needs to work to hold Italian language and culture,” in a higher regard, because “Rather than teaching students about entrepreneurship, the text seems to promote the systematic abandonment of the Italian language.”
Academie Francaise
Claudio Marazzini, the president of the academy, said the stated text would be difficult for Italian students to comprehend adding to a long list of points for the necessity to use native words over foreign ones. This linguistic compromise is not without a degree of being lost in translation as the meaning of some English words has been warped to the point where they aren’t recognizable to native English speakers. For example, "mister" has taken a new meaning as a football coach. The word, “location” has also come under fire specifically because there are three Italian equivalents (luogo, sito and posto) that could be used in it’s place.
Valeria Fedeli, the Italian education minister, however, has rejected criticism of the school text stating that her department was "committed to promoting Italian but also believed it was vital for schoolchildren to start learning English from a young age” and that “Italian borrowed words from many other languages, not least Latin and Arabic.”
We hope you've enjoyed learning about how The Accademia della Crusca are Preserving the Language Of the Divine Comedy! How do you feel about the committee's efforts to keep the Italian language as pure as possible? Join the conversation below!