Italian Flashcards
Reasons why Tuscan/Florentine dialect began to dominate in the 14th century and became modern Italian
- Tuscany’s central position in Italy and the aggressive commerce of its most important city, Florence
- Greatest similarity in morphology and phonology to classical Latin of all the dialects
- Three literary artists who best summarized Italian thought and feeling of the late Middle Ages and the early Renaissance: Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio
Le Tre Corone
Dante Alighieri (completed Divine Comedy 1321 shortly before death, older than others by 50/60yrs)
Francesco Petrarca (early Renaissance humanist famous for love poetry)
Giovanni Boccaccio (principal work is Decameron, a merchant’s epic)
Dante’s work
The Divine Comedy (1321) shocked the literary world as the first great work of the standardisation of Vulgar Italian. He attempts to construct rules for this new language.
He theorises this work in the early 1300s in a work called De Vulgari Eloquentia.
History of Italian language
Dante, Petrarca, and Boccaccio, as fathers of the linguistic revolution, wrote in the Tuscan dialect in the 1300s but until the 1500s writers used Latin.
Intellectuals in the 1500s discussed a national language.
- Niccolò Machiavelli defended contemporary Florentine and not Dante’s
- Pietro Bembo proposed the 14th-century Tuscan as a pure literary language (wrote Tuscan grammar based on Petrarca and Boccaccia)
Accademia della Crusca, an academic body that deals with linguistics, was founded in 1582 (created first Italian dictionary 1612, based on Bembo’s idea)
Also in the late 16th and early 17th century, the scientist Galileo Galilei, creates the Italian of physics and astronomy by using Vulgar Italian
Proverb: red in the evening good weather is hoped for
Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight
Red sky at morning, shepherd’s warning
Proverbio: rosso di sera bel tempo si spera
Proverb:who goes slowly, goes healthy and goes far
Slow and steady wins the race
Proverbio: chi va piano va sano e va lontano
How does Italian compare to the origins of other Romance languages?
- Europe was a confusion of countless dialects, many from Latin, which, over the centuries, developed into a few different, distinct languages such as French, Portuguese, Spanish and Italian.
- What has happened in France or Spain or Portugal, however, is an evolution that we can define as organic: that is, the dialect of the most important city has gradually turned into the official language of the entire region.
- Internal division prevented this in Italy. As the country gradually unified so too did the language.
What was the situation in Italy before unification?
Until Italian unification in 1861, it was a peninsula of city-states at war with each other and dominated by sometimes proud princes or other European powers. Part of Italy belonged to France, part to Spain, part to the Church and finally part to whoever managed to conquer the local fortress, castle or palace.
Idiom: Good luck/Break a leg
In bocca al lupo & risposta: Crepi il lupo
Idiom: Good as gold, describing person with a heart of gold
Buono come il pane
Idiom: The grass is always greener on the other side
L’erba del vicino è sempre più verde
Idiom: Desperate times call for desperate measures
A mali estremi, estremi rimedi
Idiom: easily overwhelmed with little problems
Affogare in un bicchier d’acqua
Idiom: all is fair in love and war
L’amore domina senza regole
Idiom: the more you’re prohibited from having something, the more appealing that thing is
I frutti proibiti sono i più dolci
Idiom: I know what I’m talking about
Conosco i miei polli
Idiom: reviving a relationship gone sour. It’s just never the same
Minestra riscaldata
Idiom: be straightforward and speak one’s mind, regardless of the possibility of upsetting or insulting someone
Non avere peli sulla lingua
Idiom: when you’re left with a bad choice alongside another equally horrible option
Trovarsi fra l’incudine (anvil) e il martello
Idiom: You’ve made your bed, now lie in it
Hai voluto la bicicletta? Allora, pedala!
Idiom: Let’s call a spade a spade
Diciamo pane al pane e vino al vino
Idiom: refers to a person who has a good head—someone not only bright, but one who possesses a lot of good sense
Ha molto sale in zucca
Idiom: to describe somebody full of life—someone with a vibrant personality and a sunny disposition that lifts everyone’s spirits
È tutto pepe!
Idiom: when something fits you perfectly
Ti sta a pennello
Idiom: means someone is trying to accomplish too many things at once
Fare troppi atti in commedia
Idiom: Break the ice
Rompere il ghiaccio
Idiom: Spit it out, speak up
Sputa il rospo (toad)
Idiom: Caught red-handed
Colto con le mani nel sacco
