Italian from where and to where?

Italy is a country which has had the honour of bequeathing the world much. Be it the Roman Empire which itself gave us much. Indeed if we were to simply disregard modern and medieval Italy and all that it gave us we would still have plenty to look at in terms of the Romans alone. The Romans gave us a lot, some of which endure today. In addition to the physical and visible legacy of the Romans such as the bridge, roads they built there are the Romance languages spoken world-wide. The Spanish and Portuguese languages both originating from the Romans and thus Italy dominate one whole continent, south America. French is spoken in various parts of the world as a first language and by many others as a second language or studied in school.

The Romans are no more, or at least the ancient Romans, but their descendants survive in the form of the modern Italians who speak modern Italian. But what is 'modern Italian' and how does it differ from Latin? Well the Romans spoke ancient or 'classical Latin'. End of story, simple? Well, it's not as simple as that. The Romans were of different types, geographically and socially, and so were the 'Latins' or varieties of Latin which were uttered from their tongues. It would be fallacious to have an unrealistic image of all Romans speaking one form of standardised Latin. There was just like with the modern languages of today, the literary form and the spoken form or to use a Latin-origin word used in English, the vernacular form. Nor can we restrict the vernacular form of Latin to the Italian peninsula alone and deem the vernacular Latin or 'vulgar Latin' spoken in the then 'Hispanica' (Spain) or 'Galia' (France) as not 'Latin'. The Romans did not make such a distinction and any Roman citizen be he from Spain, France elsewhere was a Roman citizen and possessed the eligibility to become emperor which indeed some did, with Roman emperors coming from a myriad of different ethnic and regional backgrounds including Africa and the middle east with possible Semitic and Berber blood lines in their ancestry. Such was the diverse and cosmopolitan nature of the Roman empire and the inclusivity of its policy as per citizenship and as to who could acquire it.

However let us focus on the 'Latin' of the peninsula, namely the Italian peninsula. Even during the time of the Roman empire it differed, just as in the way the English spoken in Buckingham Palace is different to the English spoken in Texas, Jamaica or Sydney, though all of the people resident there are native-speakers of English. So was the case with the Romans or ancient Italians in the north, centre of the peninsula with divergent forms of the language existing. Then the empire itself perished in to history and so did with it a centralizing influence not just politically but also linguistically. With no central Italian authority there was also no authority to regulate the language or to deem what was right or wrong. The various regions of Italy be they in Calabria, Lombardy, Sicily or Piedmont all spoke their own local dialects. No one spoke classical Latin, in much the way that the other descendants of those who spoke ancient Vulgar Latin, the Spanish, Portuguese or Romanians do not speak classical Latin. Italy fragmented in to different states some of whom were very jealous of their distinct identity and power such as the Venetian Republic. Their language, Venetian, was widely understood in the Mediterranean at that time and it was a written language with its own literature and plays producing famous writers such as Goldoni, Casanova and Marin amongst others.

The Sicilians also produced many writers who wrote in their own dialect. Other parts of Italy did the same including Tuscany. It was from there, Tuscany, that the genesis of a new modern peninsula-wide Italian was to take place. Tuscany had noted writers such as Boccaccio and Petrarch amongst others, and the quality of their work was to a level that it received acclaim from people outside Tuscany and encouraged those from outside the region to adopt a peninsula wide tongue for all the people living there based on the Tuscan dialect which existed in the works of writers such as Machiavelli and Dante. For modern Italy did not exist as such. Modern Italy as we know it, as one unified state, with one government, one flag came in to being in 1861 and not with great ease. However as is sometimes the case, but not always, with one state, one government, one flag may come an accompanying call for one common official language. Even prior to unification Italian thinkers and writers had more or less decided that the Tuscan-based form of modern Italian was to be the basis of modern Italian. This was a significant development at homogenising the language of a peninsula of which  Dante himself estimated was home to at least 1,000 dialects resident within it.

Tuscan-Italian has the distinction of having the oldest language regulating body in modern Europe, namely the 'Accademia della Crusca' founded in 1583 which sought to ensure quality of the Fiorentine 'language'.  The Tuscan form of Italian gained popularity even before the formation of modern Italy for example the celebrated Milan-born writer Alesssandro Manzoni, despite not hailing from Tuscany wrote in Tuscan-Italian.

Then in 1861 the modern nation of Italy was created and it is still with us to this day. The Tuscan-based Fiorentine Italian popular amongst writers became chosen as the official national language and was taught in schools and used for official purposes. Knowledge of this language has grown rapidly as have standard forms of many different languages due to mass education, mass media and other factors.

However what will be the fate of the rapidly fading Italian dialects? Will they go the way of other ancient dialects, languages now consigned to obscurity if not outright oblivion? Many young people in the north-west of Italy particularly the industrialised regions of Lombardy and Piedmont no longer speak let alone understand their ancestral dialects and either view it with a mixture of fondness or aloofness as something that 'my grandparents spoke'. The situation is somewhat different in parts of the south where Neapolitans, who are a distinct lot and often proud of their distinct identity and cusoms view 'Napoletano' as a symbol of their identity and with pride. However will southern Italy itself undergo the linguistic homogenisation that the north west has experienced? Or will the south preserve its heritage and ensure the continuation and survival of the dialects there?

As for the north-east home to the once great and mighty Venetian Republic, a maritime empire which ruled parts of Slovenia, Croatia, Albania, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus, will they continue to preserve their own dialect? Or will it whither and fade away, to be submerged in to modern Italian.

What do you think?