On Fri, 26 Jan 2001 10:53:30
John Alexander Blyth wrote:
> I've only been on a brief trip to Italy (10 day choir tour in '94) but was
>struck by not only the different kinds of "Italian" but also the way in
>which even a Roman may make fun of Florentine pronunciation peculiarities.
I know: Florentine pronunciation has been "making fun" for most of Italy. Some
Florentine comics wouldn't have become so successful without it.
>The gondoliers of Venice are, I'm sure, completely unintelligible to
>Italians from other regions. From the Ethnologue (online) and other
>sources, I note that the variety in Italian is such that each dialect is
>more distinct than, say, Danish is from Swedish. There is such a thing as a
>standard Italian, but everyone speaks it (who can) with their own accents
>and vowel qualities, and half the population apparently speaks something
>else at home.
That's an important point: that "something else", that we call "dialect". I
don't know in other countries, but here Dialect is spoken at home and with
friends, relatives... And Italian (with, obviously, dialectal variations) in
public, with people we don't know.
It's a tradition assigned to extinction, because last generation almost don't
use it. And the next won't at all.
Dialect: not to be mistaken with "dialectal variations" of Italian. On the
last, we can speak of vowel qualities, length of the doubles, consonants
qualities...
but with the first you are right: Danish-Swedish....
>The standard is supposed to derive from Tuscany, around
>Florence, though it's really a sort of idealized Tuscan, shorn of more
>local peculiarities.
Yes, it's the right definition: "a sort of idealized Tuscan". The local
peculiarities are those comic ones that make Romans (and others!) joke.
>suspect that the success of two children of Modena, Pavarotti and Freni,
>has made some impact in ideas of Italian pronunciation, at least
>internationally. (Where is Paolo Conte from anyway?)
Paolo Conte? Do you mean the jazz-pop composer and singer? He's from Asti, in
Piemonte (extreme N-W of Italy).
About Modena, the pronunciation defects are: wrong stressed e and o (that
region is perhaps the worst about stressed e and o), bad sound of "z" and "s",
a little short double consonants.
bye
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