ITALY (LANGUAGE.) 



dal 1789 at 1814 (Paris, 1824, 4 vols. 4to, and in 

 French, 5 vols.); the Anna.ll d 'Italia dal 1750 (con- 

 tinuation of Muratori), compilati dal Abbate A. Coppi 

 (3 vols., Rome, 1825); Bossi's Storia d' Italia anticae 

 moderna ; the Memoires sur la Cour du Prince En- 

 gine, et sur le Royaume d Italic, pendant la Domina- 

 tion de Napoleon, &c. (Paris, 1824); also, Leo's 

 Geschichte der Italienischen Staaten (4th vol., Ham- 

 burg', 1830), and the historical works which are 

 mentioned in the subsequent article on Italian Liter- 

 ature ; also, the above-mentioned work of Lullin de 

 Chateauvieux (Letters on Italy). This author in- 

 vesti gates the causes of the decline of Italy, and 

 describes regions which are not visited by most 

 travellers. His comparison of the Italian system of 

 agriculture with the English is interesting. 



Italian Language. The boundaries of the Italian 

 language cannot be given with precision. In the 

 north, towards Switzerland, Tyrol, and the other 

 neighbouring countries, the valleys in which German, 

 Italian, and dialects of the ancient Roman language, 

 are spoken, alternate with each other. Even the 

 sea is not a definite limit. On account of the early 

 extension of the Italians over the islands of the 

 Mediterranean, including those of Greece and the 

 coasts of the Grecian main land, it is not easy to 

 determine where the last Italian sound is heard. It 

 is spoken, more or less corrupted, in all the ports of 

 the Mediterranean, Christian and Turkish. Of late, 

 however, the Italian language has lost ground on 

 many islands, as, for instance, on the Ionian islands, 

 (q. v.) The origin of this beautiful and most harmo- 

 nious tongue, is also lost in obscurity. The general 

 opinion, that the Italian originated from a mixture 

 of the classical Latin with the languages of the bar- 

 barians who overran Italy, is erroneous. The Roman 

 literary language, which the scholar learns from 

 Horace and Cicero, was not the dialect of the com- 

 mon people. That the former could not have been 

 corrupted by the mixture of the barbarous languages, 

 is proved by the fact, that Latin was written in the 

 beginning of the middle ages, long before the revival 

 of learning, with a surprising purity, considering the 

 circumstances. After the language of common life 

 had been entirely changed by the invasion of the 

 northern tribes, in its whole spirit, rather than by the 

 mere admixture of foreign words (a consequence of 

 the change of the spirit of the people) , then a new 

 language of literature was formed, though the classi- 

 cal Roman still continued to be used. The new 

 language was opposed to the variety of dialects which 

 had grown out of common life ; the formation of it, 

 however, was slow, because the learned and the 

 poets, from whom it was necessary to receive its 

 stamp and development, despised it as an intruder 

 on the Latin, which was venerable as well by its age, 

 and the treasures handed down in it, as on account of 

 the recollections of former greatness, with which the 

 suffering Italians were fond of flattering themselves. 

 Even down to the present day, that idiom, the melody 

 of which carries us away in the most unimportant 

 author, is not to be found as the common .idiom of 

 the people in any part of Italy.* It is a mistake to 

 suppose that Boccaccio's language is to be heard 

 from the lips of Tuscan peasant girls, or Florentine 

 porters. Eren the Tuscan and Florentine dialect 



* The sweetness of this tongue, which often e' ves tn a 

 passace a charm independent of the meaning of the words, 

 and resembling that of music, it, in our opinion, no where 

 PO apparent as in Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered, and many 

 stanzas have struck us as attracting the hearer irresistibly, 

 though some of them have no particular charm in the 

 meaning of the words. This also gives the Italian improv- 

 visator a great advantage over one who attempts a similar 

 performance in another language, in which he i* entirely 

 thrown upon the meaning of what be sajn. 



differs from the pure language of literature, whicli, 

 during the first centuries of Italian literature, ia 

 found purer in the poets of Sicily and Naples than in 

 the contemporary writers of Tuscany. The circum- 

 stance, that the most distinguished Italian poets and 

 prose writers were born in Florence, and the autho- 

 rity assumed by later Tuscan academies, particularly 

 the Crusca (q. v.), are the causes why the Tuscan 

 dialect, in spite of its rough gutturals, which are 

 intolerable to the other Italians,f became predomi- 

 nant in the language of literature. Dante, the 

 creator, as it were, of Italian prose and poetry, and 

 whose works are full of peculiarities of different dia- 

 lects, distinctly maintains, in a treatise De vulgari 

 Eloquentia, that it is inadmissible to attempt to 

 raise a dialect to a literary language. Dante, indeed, 

 distinguishes in the lingua volgare (so the language 

 was called, which originated after the invasion of 

 the barbarians) a volgare illustre, cardinale, auli- 

 cum, curiale ; but this sufficiently proves that he 

 held the opinion above stated. Fernow (in his 

 Roman Studies, Book viii., No. 11) mentions fif- 

 teen chief dialects, of which the Tuscan has six 

 subdivisions. Those dialects, in which no literary 

 productions exist, are not enumerated. The Italian, 

 as we find it at present, in literature and with the 

 well educated, is essentially a Latin dialect. Its 

 stock is Latin, changed, to be sure, in its grammar 

 and construction, by the infusion of the modern spirit 

 into the antique, as the character of the people under- 

 went the same change. A number of Latin forms of 

 words, which, even in the time of the Romans, 

 existed in common language (as, for instance, o 

 insteajj of urn, at the end of a word), have been, by 

 the course of time and revolutions in literature, ele- 

 vated to a grammatical rank ; and the same is very 

 probably true of forms of phraseology. In many 

 instances, the Italian exhibits changes in the Latin 

 forms, which have evidently taken place in the same 

 way, in which common people, in our days, corrupt 

 the correct modes of speech by a rapid, or slurred, 

 or mistaken pronunciation. This is partly the rea- 

 son why the Italian has changed so considerably the 

 proportion of the consonants to the vowels in Latin 

 (from 1-2: 1, the Latin proportion, to ri : 1, the 

 Italian proportion^); and this is one, of the chief rea- 

 sons of the great and uniform harmony in the Italian 

 language. A careful investigation will show that, 

 in fact, little admixture of Teutonic words took place, 

 but that it is much more the Teutonic, or modern 

 spirit, which changed the language so considerably.^ 

 The study of Italian has been carried on, in modern 

 times, with great zeal, and a recurrence to the 

 old writers, has much diminished the influence of the 

 French models, so general after the time of Alga- 

 rotti. The principles, according to which purity is 

 now judged, have been clearly laid down by count 

 Julius Perticari, son-in-law to Monti, in the work 

 Amor Patrio di Dante (Milan, 1820), which power- 

 fully opposes the presumption of the Tuscans in 

 claiming to be in possession of the only good Italian. 

 This work was considered, for a long time, the pro- 

 duction of Monti, who, by his Proposta di alcuno 

 Correzioni ed Aggiunte al f'ocabolario delta Crusca, 

 gave sufficient reason for such conjecture. To render 



t The bean-ideal of Italian is set forth in the saying, Lin 

 gua Toscano in bocca Romano, (the Tuscan dialect in a 

 Roman mouth.) 



t See the article Consonant. 



