Learning
Learning, hopefully, is something we never stop doing. Throughout my twenties, I learned several new techonologies (new to me, anyway) to aid in the job I was doing. I learned a lot about component-level electronics, I learned how to write code, I learned a lot about the composition of plastics. I learned a lot of esoteric shit that made me a better lighting guy.
You know what’s really hard to learn? Something you already know how to do.
Case in point: I am currently enrolled at the Language School of the Italian Cultural Institute of San Francisco, La Scuola di Lingua dell’Istituto Italiano di Cultura. But- you ask- don’t you speak Italian? Well, I do and I don’t. Italy as we know it today is divided into 20 regions that all have geographic and historical context.
Historically, meaning from the time of Caesar and before to the 1800s, these regions were all independent city-states, at times under the control of the roman empire, the church, the French and Spanish crown, but always demarcated, and never considered one. Some had great fame on their own, La Serenissima, or the Republic of Venice, existed for over 1000 years and sent Marco Polo to China. But these places were divided by geography, mainly mountains: the alps to the north, which trickle down into the north to divide those landlocked regions; and the appennines below- but also by culture and by language. Most of the languages in the north evolved from the language of the Senators: High Latin. Many had neighbors influence them a great deal- Valle d’Aosta and Piemonte show a great inluence of French. For example, bagna càuda- warmed oil with anchovies served with crudite- is eaten there, and the dialect shares the words with Provençal. The Venetians hung on to the letter X, greatly influenced by the Phoenicians, and Istrian- from across the Adriatic- is a romance language influenced heavily by slavic Croatian. In the south, Vulgar Latin was the model: Sicilian is one of the oldest romance languages to wander out of Vulgar Latin, spoken as far north as The Cilento, in southern Campania, to say nothing of Napolitana, Pugliese, Alto Calabrese and dozens more. In structure and cadence- not to mention accent- these languages share very little with the Standard Italian spoken today.
So what language do they speak in Italy today? Mostly, they speak an updated and standardized dialect of Tuscan, spefically one native to the city of Florence, home of Dante Alighieri, and a direct descendent of the language used in the Commedia Divina. It shares some cadence and vocabulary with Southern Italian languages, but has deep roots in the literary and political culture of central and northern Italy. So, now that we’ve covered all that, do I speak Italian, or don’t I? Well, the answer is: I do, but not terribly well. I also speak quite a bit of Sicilian, specifically the dialects of Palermo, and to a lesser extent those of Messina. What I do speak well is Sicilian heavily dialecticized by Italian and of course Siculish, which is common among Sicilians in the diaspora. Why do I speak this language? Well, because I spoke some Italian and some Sicilian when I came to work in the diaspora, and that’s how they all talked. It wasn’t a study so much as happenstance.
Why am I telling you about this? Well, beacause learning how to do something you already ostensibly know how to do can be very frustrating. When I say a sentence in class that I have said 1000 times to native speakers, and heard them say the exact same way another 1000 times, and get corrected- it’s a drag.
Case in point:
What can you do? I’m very romantic- some would say quixotic- and I like the idea of an independent Sicilian culture, including its language. But the fact of the matter is that nearly everyone alive in Sicily speaks Italian, and if I want to travel there and see the shops and cook with people, I know more than enough Sicilian to figure out the local color- IF I speak really excellent Italian. So here I go.
