Italian language.

ROLCAM · Posted: Sun Sep 23, 2007 7:03 am Post subject: Italian language.

Italian language is the official language of Italy and one of the official languages of Switzerland. It is also spoken by many people in areas of France and Slovenia that lie near Italy. More than 60 million people speak Italian as their native language. Italian, like English, belongs to the Indo-European family of languages. Like French and Spanish, it is a Romance language, one of the modern languages that developed from Latin.

Many words in other languages come from Italian. For example, English borrowed the words balcony, carnival, cash, costume, laundry, malaria, opera, piano, pilot, stucco, studio, umbrella, and volcano. Many other English words, such as bankrupt, gazette, and infantry, came from French, but their roots were Italian.

Italian grammar

Characteristics. The sounds of Italian are more simply organized than the sounds of English. Italian has 7 vowel and 20 consonant sounds. In addition, Italian spelling is more consistent than English spelling because each letter or combination of letters usually stands for only one distinct sound. As a result, a word is generally pronounced exactly as it is spelled. Each syllable in an Italian word is pronounced clearly and separately. The syllables are spaced evenly, and intonations extend over a wide range of pitch. These features give Italian speech a staccato (short, choppy) effect. Most syllables end with a vowel, as do most words, except for a few prepositions.

Italian and English have similar systems of grammar. In both, the nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and verbs have inflections, which are changes of form (see INFLECTION). But the Italian system of inflection is more complicated than the English system. The essential part of an Italian sentence is the verb. In English, it is the combination of subject and verb.

Nouns and adjectives. Italian nouns are either masculine or feminine. For example, the book (il libro) is masculine, and the necktie (la cravatta) is feminine. Most plurals are formed by changing the final vowel. Nouns ending with an accented vowel, such as citta (city), have only one form for the singular and plural.

Adjectives must agree with nouns in gender as well as number (singular or plural). Thus, the adjective rosso (red) has four forms: il libro rosso (the red book), la cravatta rossa (the red necktie), i libri rossi (the red books), and le cravatte rosse (the red neckties).

As in English, Italian personal pronouns have special forms to show their function in a sentence. The inflectional ending of the verb indicates the person and the number of the subject. In most sentences, a subject pronoun is not needed. But subject pronouns, such as io (I) and noi (we), are sometimes used for emphasis or clarity. An example is Lo faccio io (I'll do it).

Verbs in Italian are grouped according to the endings of their infinitives. They fall into three classes: -are verbs, such as cantare (to sing); -ire verbs, such as dormire (to sleep); and -ere verbs, such as vendere (to sell). Italian also has many irregular verbs.

Italian has seven verb moods. Each mood has a simple and a compound tense (see TENSE). The simple tenses are formed by adding endings to the root. For example, cantiamo (we sing) is the present tense of cantare.

The compound tenses combine the past participle of a main verb with an appropriate form of the auxiliary verb avere (to have) or essere (to be). Ha cantato (he has sung) uses the present tense of avere to form the present perfect tense.

Word order in Italian sentences is less firmly fixed than it is in English, especially in the position of the subject and verb. The emphasis in a typical Italian sentence tends to fall at the end. For example, the sentence My father did it can be Mio padre l'ha fatto, to emphasize the action, or it can be L'ha fatto mio padre, to emphasize the person. A written Italian sentence can be made interrogative merely by adding a question mark at the end. No change in word order is necessary, as it usually is in English. In speaking Italian, questions not introduced by an interrogative, such as what or why, are indicated by a sharply rising intonation.

Pronouns and predicate complements combine with the verb to form a verbal core. The verbal core always follows a strict word order, with the pronoun usually preceding the verb. Some examples of the use of a verbal core are: mi vedi (you see me), me lo da (he gives it to me), and me ne da (he gives some to me).

Development

Italian developed gradually from the vernacular Latin, which was the form of Latin used in everyday speech (see LATIN LANGUAGE [Development]). Italian emerged as a separate language about A.D. 1000. It consisted of several local dialects. In the early 1200's, the Sicilian dialect of the south became the chief literary language. At this time, Sicily was a great center of European cultural life. The court of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II in Sicily attracted artists and writers from all parts of Europe. After about 1250, Tuscany became the center of cultural life in Italy. The Tuscan dialect of Florence and the surrounding region then became the language of literature and culture.

The Tuscan dialect forms the basis of modern Italian. It was used by such great writers as Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, and Giovanni Boccaccio. From the 1300's to the 1500's, Italian was widely used as the language of commerce in the eastern Mediterranean area. By the middle 1500's, Italian had almost completely replaced Latin as a written and spoken language.

Many Italian dialects are still spoken. They include Emilian, Ligurian, Lombard, Piedmontese, and Venetian in northern Italy; Corsican, Roman, Tuscan, and Umbrian in central Italy; and Abruzzese, Apulian, Calabrian, Neapolitan, and Sicilian in the south. These dialects are gradually being replaced by standard Italian, which is used throughout Italy. However, many Italians speak dialects with their families and in their communities.

Modern Italian has lost much of its Tuscan character, and has borrowed words from many Italian dialects. Many influences in Italy have helped standardize Italian. They include military service, education, and nationwide communication by means of newspapers, books, radio, and television.
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Roland Camilleri

Moderator

Sydney , Australia.