Excerpt from Delancey Place

Today's encore selection -- from The Pursuit of Italy by David Gilmour. In 1861, when the Italian peninsula was finally united into a single political entity, only 2.5 percent of "Italians" spoke the Italian language. In fact, the citizens of every major Italian city -- Rome, Venice, Florence, Milan and others -- each spoke a different language. The situation was similar in the other countries of Europe:

"The posthumous role of Dante Alighieri in the development of Italian has long been treated with reverence and solemnity. The great Florentine poet was, according to one scholar, not only 'the father of the Italian language' but also 'the father of the nation and the symbol of national greatness through the centuries'. It is doubtful that Dante would have thought the second part of the description applicable to him, especially as he believed Italy should be part of the Holy Roman Empire and not a nation by itself. Yet he did write The Divine Comedy (or, as he himself called it, simply La Commedia) in Italian and extolled the virtues of the vernacular, the 'new sun' that would put Latin in the shade, in De vulgari eloquentia, a book he wrote in Latin. More . . . 

The career of Italian and Dante's role, in brief (Updated)

[Note: A much better map of Italian dialects has been supplied by our friend Peter D'Epiro (thanks Pete!). A few minor changes to the text as well.]

Back when we were reading Ovid, we looked briefly at the amazing variety of tongues in pre-Roman Italy (6th century BC), and noted that Latin was one of the smallest linguistic regions of the peninsula, as shown in this image:

Pre-Roman languages of Italy

Long after Latin became the dominant tongue, it broke into the Romance Languages, and within Italy into many dialects. The complex and "completely chaotic" story of Italian linguistics is shaped by the political history of Italy as well as by its geography.

Here's a political map before Italy was united:

Pre-Unification Italy

Dan Nosowitz offers an amusing overview of Italian's trajectory in a story from Atlas Obscura:

“One thing that I need to tell you, because this is something that is not clear even for linguists, let alone the layperson—the linguistic situation in Italy is quite complicated,” says Mariapaola D'Imperio, a professor in the linguistics department at Aix-Marseille University who was born in Naples and studied in Ohio before moving to France. The situation is so complicated that the terms used to describe pockets of language are not widely agreed upon; some use “language,” some use “dialect,” some use “accent,” and some use “variation.” Linguists like to argue about the terminology of this kind of thing.

The resulting mescolanza of dialects is shown in this map of dialects, some quite exotic sounding:*

A key role in the fashioning of more or less "Standard" Italian was played by our poet:

During unification, the northern Italian powers decided that having a country that speaks about a dozen different languages would pose a bit of a challenge to their efforts, so they picked one and called it “Standard Italian” and made everyone learn it. The one that they picked was Tuscan, and they probably picked it because it was the language of Dante, the most famous Italian writer. 

How Capicola Became Gabagool 

To Torquatus: Practice with Horace

From A.S. Kline's online Horace:

Bk I Ep V:1-31 An invitation to dinner

If you can bear to recline at dinner on a couch

By Archias, and dine off a modest dish of greens,

Torquatus, I’ll expect to see you here at sunset.

You’ll drink wine bottled in Taurus’ second term,

Between marshy Minturnae, and Mount Petrinum 

Near Sinuessa. If you’ve better, have it brought,    

Or obey orders! The hearth’s bright, the furniture’s

Already been straightened. Forget airy hopes, the fight

For wealth, and Moschus’ case: tomorrow, Caesar’s birthday

Gives us a reason for sleeping late: we’re free to spend

A summer’s night in pleasant talk with impunity.

What’s the use of my fortune if I can’t enjoy it?

The man who scrimps and saves on behalf of his heirs,

Too much, is next to mad. I’ll start the drinking, scatter

Flowers, and even allow you to think me indiscreet. 

What can’t drunkenness do? It unlocks secrets, and makes

Secure our hopes, urges the coward on to battle,

Lifts the weight from anxious hearts, teaches new skills.

Whom has the flowing wine-bowl not made eloquent?

Whom constrained by poverty has it not set free?  

Here’s what, willing and able, I commit myself

To provide: no dirty seat-covers, no soiled napkins

To offend your nose, no plate or tankard where you can’t

See yourself, no one to carry abroad what’s spoken

Between good friends, so like may meet and be joined  

To like. I’ll have Butra and Septicius for you,

And Sabinus unless he’s detained by a prior

Engagement, and a prettier girl. There’s room too

For your ‘shadows’: but goatish smells spoil overcrowded

Feasts. You reply with how many you want, then drop 

Your affairs: out the back, evade the client in the hall!  

This letter to Torquatus breathes the urbanity of Horace. At once casual, conversational, and learned, amusing, yet never to be underestimated in terms of his range of reference.

In this brief invitation to a lawyer friend, he downplays his furniture, specifies the wine (with allusions that might relate to the lawyer's family history), freely labels fiscally conservative people as borderline mad (insano), then launches into a vision of how he'll begin drinking and scattering flowers, and even let his legal eagle buddy think him less than entirely discreet (inconsultus).

This leads to the question at the exact midpoint of the poem (Horace is big on centers):

Quid non ebrietas dissignat?

What can intoxication not unseal?

The poem then turns to explore manifold modes of opening that link indiscretion with courage, confidence with confidentiality, empowerment to learn with encouragement to hope, eloquence of tongue with the accession to a kind of freedom from care.

From the promised flow of wine and talk, the poet goes on to talk about his napkins, silverware and who's on the guest list. The thought of close quarters sets up a joke about body odor.

The remarkable fluidity of the poem, its physicality, its playful scamper up and down the tonal gamut, the joy of anticipating an intimate evening with trusted friends, seems effortless -- how could anyone, even a harried lawyer, refuse the enticing summons:

rebus omissis

atria servantem postico falle clientem

                                                       then drop                      

Your affairs: out the back, evade the client in the hall!     

Mirabile dictu

Latin is back, according to the NYT:

The resurgence of a language once rejected as outdated and irrelevant is reflected across the country as Latin is embraced by a new generation of students like Xavier who seek to increase SAT scores or stand out from their friends, or simply harbor a fascination for the ancient language after reading Harry Potter’s Latin-based chanting spells.

The number of students in the United States taking the National Latin Exam has risen steadily to more than 134,000 students in each of the past two years, from 124,000 in 2003 and 101,000 in 1998, with large increases in remote parts of the country like New Mexico, Alaska and Vermont.