Erminia wrote:

>There is no difference between the way Florentine pronounced their dialect
>and the way we speak current standard Italian. Of course the only thing
>that can vary is the accent. A Florentine will read aloud the Divine
>Commedy with the same accent Dante had. So in my classes if I have a
>Florentine student, I ask him to read for us. The reason is simple. Italian
>is a totally phonetic language: the way it is written it is the way it is
>pronounced. There is no exception to this simple rule

I don't really want to get too involved in this but the most detailed
account I can find tells a subtly, but vitally, different story:


"La «questione della lingua»
The "question of the language", an attempt to establish linguistic norms and
codify the language, engrossed writers of all persuasions. Grammarians
during the 15th and the 16th centuries attempted to confer upon the
pronunciation, syntax, and vocabulary of 14th-century Tuscan the status of a
central and classical Italian speech. Eventually this classicism, which
might have made Italian another dead language, was widened to include the
organic changes inevitable in a living tongue.

In the dictionaries and publications of the Accademia della Crusca, founded
in 1583, which was accepted by Italians as authoritative in Italian
linguistic matters, compromises between classical purism and living Tuscan
usage were successfully effected. The most important literary event of the
16th century did not actually take place in Florence. In 1525 the Venetian
Pietro Bembo (1470-1547) set out his proposals (Prose della volgar lingua -
1525) for a standardized language and style: Petrarca and Boccaccio were his
models and thus became the modern classics. Therefore, the language of
Italian literature is modeled on that spoken in Florence in the 15th
century."

Which seems to suggest the standardized literary form of Italian is based on
a model which postdates Dante by at least a century, and recall that
modelling does not mean absolute identity, amd most certainly implies that
modern literary Italian, let alone its spoken multiplicities, would not be
identical to the language Dante spoke.

david bircumshaw



----- Original Message -----
From: "Clitennestra Giordan" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Wednesday, May 23, 2001 3:50 PM
Subject: Re: Re: versículos


Florentine's Italian is indeed the so called "vulgar" Dante chose for
his Commedia and Convivio over the high Latin form he used for his other
literary works (such as De vulgari eloquentia or Monarchia). The reason is
simple: given the political content of the work he had in mind, the local
language, the Florentine, the "vulgar" would have allowed also his fellow
citizens to understand what he was talking about. And for this reason Dante
gained imemdiate success over his contemporary ( only a few years after his
death, the Commedia was already studied in many iItalian universities).
(Dante needed to be understood by everybody, since he had been exiled and
wanted to increase his popularity in order to be called back from his
bitter banishment from Florence. )

At the time , in Italy there existed many other local dialects, say,
other "vulgar" languages used also for official purposes. They were
independent "italic" languages , variations of late Latinate idioms,....
which we now call dialects).

Because of Dante's Commedia and of its successful history of reception,
this particular "dialect", the Florentine, imposed itself as a model for
those literary works which did not need to be written in Latin.

This is why the Florentine used by Dante for the (Divina) Commedia is still
the same language we speak in Italy today. It imposed itself by means of
its high literary achievements , not only by means of business-related or
political dominance. And also, because it was typified by a textual
existence, it became a kind of model to shape the national language on.

The grammar and the language you see in the current Italian text books for
language is governed by the same rules and the same lexicon. There might be
exceptions of words fallen in disuse bacause of their paricular connections
to given historical circumstances: but these words still exists in the
dictionary. So we potentially have all the tools that he himself emploied
(ah, how modern HE was, and how non-innovative we are!) The only thing we
miss to speak or write works such as the Divina Commedia is Dante's mind.

There is no difference between the way Florentine pronounced their dialect
and the way we speak current standard Italian. Of course the only thing
that can vary is the accent. A Florentine will read aloud the Divine
Commedy with the same accent Dante had. So in my classes if I have a
Florentine student, I ask him to read for us. The reason is simple. Italian
is a totally phonetic language: the way it is written it is the way it is
pronounced. There is no exception to this simple rule.

But if you are interested to know more about the history oif Italian
dialects, Dante's De vulgari eloquentia (1304) is the book to go for.