The Italian Language: The Wild Story of the Beautiful Language

this is italy a small country the size of florida with so many languages that someone from here can't even understand someone from here and that's just today when things are relatively chilled it was not always this way there are so many dialects in italy that the country used to be completely dysfunctional so everyone got together had a big fight about which dialect they should choose as the official italian language and the italian that we know today almost didn't make let's start with the basics [Music] italian is the official language of italy but there are so many variations of the language that people from the north of italy often claim that they don't understand the thing that the southerners say what's more many of these are not just dialects but different languages all together which means if you head out to rural italy armed with your fresh intermediate italian skills well there is no guarantee that you will understand anything the locals are saying maybe you've experienced this yourself now remember this guy his language is romanion and some say that it's the most unintelligible language of italy very handy though if you happen to be going to san marino see although everyone understands standard italian many italians speak a different first language or a distinct dialect that comes from their home towns if you want to understand this we've got to go right back to the beginning in the beginning there was latin you knew that latin gave us french spanish portuguese italian catalan and romanian and there are various dialects of each of these languages but this is not a case of latin being the grandparent italian being the parent and the dialects being the offspring it's more like latin had a lot more kids than you thought and a bunch of these siblings all went to live in italy there were numerous states and kingdoms back then each with their own languages and traditions often in historical situations like this borders would have been drawn and you kind of get like this is my country this is your country let's keep things nice and separate and then when italy was unified in 1861 the different languages remained so today italy and its islands still have about 34 languages that are completely separate languages like sicilian sardinian and neopolitans and this is all in one country the size of florida so what exactly then is the italian language that we learn as foreigners well that's simple all of the ancient peoples of italy including pre-romans were an ethno-linguistic group that we called the italics the dominant tribe was the latins and it's thought that they migrated to italy in the late bronze age jumping centuries ahead people in italy were speaking around 1 000 dialects but latin was still being used by scholars and writers remember most people were illiterate which is why we get the separation of the scholarly latin and then the spoken dialects the first written evidence considered to be an italian language that was not latin is some legal documents known as the platychi casineers basically a property dispute it's riveting stuff but some say that this text that a monk scribbled on a piece of parchment the veronese riddle is actually the oldest [Music] who knows my money goes on the riddle anyway by the 16th century italy really needed a single national language and so with so many options how do you choose see it is an interesting thought experiment imagine today's fractured politics where everything is polarized to the point of violence can you imagine everyone coming together and agreeing on a new language for the entire country it's unthinkable but this is exactly what the italians did there were three main points of view some people wanted the language spoken in the king's court and these were important relationships like castilloni who were big buddies with the artist raphael then the purists like this guy bimbo argued that they simply had to use the vernacular of the great writers and poets just as long as it wasn't dante and i'll tell you why in a second then you've got diplomats like machiavelli who wrote an instruction book for princes i kid you not he insisted that they should choose the most elegant words out of the various dialects spoken by ordinary people these guys are literally designing the language here but just imagine for a second being part of that spectacularly significant squabble how on earth did they choose well listen to this remember dante well he was one of the great writers and poets from the 13th century and in his time the tuscan language had a pretty dialect called florentine or dialect fiorendino dante and his writer buddies spoke florentine so it enjoyed a lot of prestige poets were extremely popular back then and they were giving this dialect tons of exposure now although people were speaking in different dialects all the writing was done in latin it's just how it worked but dante was a bit of a maverick and he decided to write a huge narrative poem about his fantastic travel through hell purgatory in paradise and called it you guessed it the divine comedy but instead of writing this epic masterpiece in latin which would have been the normal way to do it he wrote it in a language that he called italian which was florentine with a twist of latin and a sprinkle of other dialects that he knew you've got to love a 13th century rebel genius haven't you and did i mention he was later condemned to perpetual exile but that's another story anyway back to the 16th century italians arguing over the language so the purists were voting for the language of poets just not dante's invented language they thought that the divine comedy just wasn't dignified enough he'd mixed elegant expressions with vulgar ones dante you rebel you but here's the thing the divine comedy was a massive success genius level people were talking about it for centuries they still are so in the end it came down to tuscan or venetian the other popular choice weirdly the guy who finally decided that tuscan wins he was the puritan bimbo and he was actually venetian so kind of confusing but there you have it the florentine tuscan dialect became the standard italian language mind you since most people were illiterate they just kept on speaking in their own dialects anyway while the educated three percent adopted standard italian but nothing was ever simple with old italy in the 18th and 19th centuries arguments and debates regime which was the correct form of italian to use and people had really strong feelings about this it was even a phrase used for this dispute la question de la lingua the question of the language after italy was unified in 1861 the tuscan dialect which remember was dante's dialect was finally made the official language but still the heat continued right into the 20th century it's kind of getting exhausting but any guesses when italian as we know it now finally became the official language of italy put your guesses in the comments and i will reveal the answer at the end but no cheating and skipping ahead whatever your guess is for the year that italian became the official language of italy punch it in now so if that's that and it's finally settled how do real italians in italy actually speak now well let's find out but if you've learned anything interesting so far in this video you might like to subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications so you hear about future videos too [Music] these days italians generally understand which part of the country someone comes from by their accent alone now standard italian is normal and it's taught in schools and we can partly thank television for that as it did a lot to unify the language in the 1950s many regional terms have even made it into the national language now coming from tuscany lombardy venice or naples sicily which gives the italian language a real flavor of the whole country now interestingly they say that only one percent of the italian population has mastery of pure standard pronunciation so if you are learning italian as a foreigner well you really have nothing to fear from having a little accent now naturally in most educational resources like my books of short stories the audio recording you will hear will be in standard italian so at least it makes it easier for you to practice your pronunciation and when it comes to pronunciation the best way to develop a good accent in italian is to listen a lot so you have to perceive the sounds first before you can produce them themselves and if you want more tips on learning italian in general then you can check out my story learning kit it'll teach you how to learn italian through stories which is really cool and it's completely free so you can check the link in the description for that today there are 68 million speakers of italian and the vast majority of them live in italy including sicily and sardinia it's also an official language in san marino the vatican city switzerland and part of austria as well italian is also spoken nearby in the south of france and in corsica as well you'll hear one of the tuscan dialect but the crazy thing about italian is how far the language is spread around the world [Music] now in my video about italian-american immigrants i told the phenomenal story of how italians ended up in the u.s but there were also big migrations to australia and south america argentina for example is chopped full of italians and sao paulo and brazil has the highest concentration of italians outside of italy so think about that for a minute you can literally learn italian while living in brazil could life get any better but it's not just south america you will also find italian in malta libya slovenia croatia and somalia [Music] so what about this language then well modern italian is a beautiful language with clear vowels and rolled ours and an unmatched use of body language what come on full of people what do i care all the romance languages italians stayed closest to latin but the modern vocabulary in syntax is a lot more like french it's just way easier to read and to pronounce it's also highly phonetic listen to this see how the sounds match the letters almost all italian words end in vowels which gives the language a lot of this kind of singing quality there are two noun genders in italian and things like articles and prepositions are quite promiscuous actually and get out to all kinds of funny business when you use them together italian also uses the subjunctive a lot more than portuguese or french do but for the most part italian is a subject-verb object language just like english and the trickiest part really is probably the verb conjugations along with the occasional tongue twister so there are some really interesting words in italian that are quite tricky to pronounce you want to try yeah let's do it all right not bad how about this ayuala there's a lot of vowels in that one perfect i can't feel my mouth muscles moving throughout and now a true tongue twister you did a better job than i did [Laughter] don't worry though most italian words really are quite straightforward to pronounce and in fact there are some italian words in dialect that sound totally weird but then as soon as you see them in standard italian they make a lot more sense so let's see if you know what this word means ready let's go no idea sounds like nothing i've heard before this was from tuscany dialect from tuscany let's try in another dialect now no nothing still nothing this was milanese uh the same word in standard italian is stupido stupido stupid so all of those words actually mean stupid exactly yeah it's interesting so the dialect words are kind of totally unique but in standard italian we understand it is that because it's from like the same latin roots so that we would understand it from english as well exactly exactly in latin it was stupidus but it's funny because we also have another word in italian which is stolto that's a high register italian that comes from another latin word that was stultus fascinating so why should anybody learn italian well believe it or not italian is the fourth most studied language in the world and if you are the creative type listen up musicians well most musical terms are in italian and you know how many italian operas there are actors imagine taking an italian cinema course in italy dante lovers it's the same italy has wonderful literature courses foodies italy well you know this it's a world leader in the culinary arts and it's the same with art fashion design architecture italian is a reference language for all of these and a lot more it's even a major language of science and engineering so if you fancy working for ferrari join the queue but in italian of course now i asked you earlier to guess when italian became the official the really official language of italy ready 2007. if you thought that was interesting you liked this video well you'll love the story of why there are so many italians in america

Channel: Olly Richards

Views: 157,882

Keywords: language learning, how to learn a language, foreign languages, learn a language, learn languages, polyglot, learn a new language, italian music, italian accent, italian language, learn italian, italian history, italian dialects, stories, story, why learn italian, modern italian, language study, roman empire, lingua italiana, romance languages, latin, most spoken languages in the world

Id: Fu6R-_85-ss

Length: 13min 48sec (828 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2021