La Dolce Lingua – part 2 Posted by Serena on Feb 19, 2010 in Italian Language
In my blog ‘La Dolce Lingua’ I wrote: “Now I don’t wish to start a controversy about the expressive merits of one language over another”, ecco, come diciamo in Italiano ‘ultime parole famose’ (as we say in Italian ‘famous last words’).
Well, I had a feeling that this might be a controversial topic for the very reason that language is such a personal matter, it’s so much a part of who we are. There have been some very interesting and enlightening comments added to the first part of this blog, and there is certainly a lot of food for thought. We are in the realms of linguistics, philosophy and aesthetics, aiuto, non sono altro che un umile blogger!
Aesthetics is perhaps one of the most controversial areas of thought, after all ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, a beautiful English expression for which I can’t think of a good equivalent in Italian! My main theme in part one of this blog was the inherent ‘musicality’ of the Italian language, and I chose the Jovanotti lyrics because a. I wanted to use an example from contemporary culture rather than a famous lyric from la musica lirica (opera), and b. these lyrics clearly illustrate one of the important ‘technical’ reasons for the inherent musicality of the Italian language, i.e. the preponderance of words ending in vowels. I am aware, of course, that song lyrics, poetry, and literature are always better in their original language. For example, the famous lyrics ‘Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away’ by Paul McCartney when translated literally into Italian would be ‘Ieri, tutti i miei guai sembravano così lontani’. Try putting the Italian words to the rhythm of the original song and you’ll end up giving yourself a hernia!
However, to quote once again from my first blog “you have to take into account the tonality of spoken Italian, and who can say how much of this is part of the language itself and how much is simply inherent in our cultural temperament.”
For me this is probably one of the keys to the subject. What my friend Vilma was saying is hard to express in a blog for the simple fact that you would have to physically see her explaining her point of view, you would have to see how she uses her body when she speaks. What Vilma meant is not to do with the actual sound of the words piacere and pleasure, but how they are expressed. For Vilma, piacere is something she expresses not just with her heart but with her face and body. N.B. we are not discussing the verb piacere as in ‘mi piace la lingua Italiana’, but piacere as in pure and simple pleasure, i.e. che piacere! (what a pleasure!).
Yes, as you may have noticed, when we Italians speak we like to use our whole body, not just our mouths! In fact, my husband Geoff always maintains that he first really fell for me when he saw me say the word parmigiano, because of the incredibly sexy way that I moved my body when I said it. He believes that if you wanted to devise a terribly cruel torture for an Italian it would be to put them in a straight jacket and make them talk about food!
Speaking of talking, so to speak, we have a love hate relationship with our telefonino (cell phone): we love to use it as often as possible, but we hate to only have one free hand to speak with. This obviously leads to some very dodgy driving when using one’s mobile phone because it necessitates steering with one’s knees.
In the summer when there are more tourists about, one of Geoff’s famous tricks is that of spotting his fellow (English) countrymen and women from a distance, before he has heard them speak. Friends of ours have been incredibly impressed by his rate of accuracy, how does he do it, is there some secret Masonic code? “No”, he says, “I just look out for the total lack of body language, we English try so hard not to stand out from the crowd that we end up standing out from the crowd”.
Stay tuned for part three in which I try to teach you a bit of non-verbal Italian!
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Comments:
Vince Mooney:
Salve Serena:
‘Piacere’ was one of the first words I learned in Italian. My plane was diverted from Milano to Genoa because of fog. So Alitalia just gave me a train ticket to Milano and dropped me off at the Genoa train station.
I was totally on my own. I couldn’t find anyone who could speak English but I kept hearing the word ‘piacere’ spoken to me. I thought it was a city like Piacenza which I had read somewhere on a marquee. I kept thinking “I don’t want to go to Piacere. I want to go to Aviano.”
Since then I always think of ‘piacere’ as being a happy, smiley, musical type of pleasure. However, I don’t think of ‘pleasure’ as even being an English word. To me ‘pleasure’ is a beautiful French word. I can just ‘hear’ a suave Frenchman saying ‘pleasure’ in a very sensuous drawn-out fashion.
To better compare Italian to English, I would choose the words ‘butterfly’ and ‘farfalla’. The sound of saying ‘farfalla’ just seems like a butterfly gently floating through the air. ‘Butterfly’, however, sounds like, I don’t know what it sounds like actually, except it sounds like English.
I saw a funny skit on TV many years ago in which two Italians were speaking on the phone. Each Italian had a English translator listening to the conversation and then providing the body language to go along with the Italian so the Italians, (as if they were speech-impaired), could understand the conversation – which by the way, was being spoken in Italian. It was hilarious.
Vince
Nathan:
As far as the comparison between “pleasure” and “piacere” I would add that saying the two words in front of a mirror really showcases the difference in expressiveness. “Pleasure” can be said without moving even your mouth much, it just spills out. “Piacere” requires the entire face to light.
Jeannet:
Salve Serena,
“La dolce lungua” part 2 :
Umile? good gracious. Questo blogger è pieno di spirit e umanità e in i suoi blogi una eccellente
insegnanta! Looking forward for part 3 non-verbal
Italian. Jeannet
jb mcmunn:
PMFJI, but I just happened to stumble across this blog and saw the discussion. I think there are several factors that enhance the beauty of spoken Italian:
1. Although all the male/female singular/plural considerations are a PITA, they lend to the ASSONANCE of the sentences. Assonance is a string of vowel sounds that create internal rhyming in a sentence or phrase.
For example: In Edgar Allan Poe’s poem, there is the line “Hear the mEllow wEdding bElls” — 3 short “e” sounds in a series.
So we have:
I ragazzi Italiani (several “i” sounds in a row)
Le ragazze Italiane (several “e” sounds in a row)
I nostri ragazzi
Le nostre ragazze
La tua ragazza
Il suo ragazzo
and so on.
2. When speaking Italian you have to move your mouth and jaw more, which IMHO creates rounder and fuller sounds.
3. The pauses with the double consonants add a certain cadence to phrases that you don’t see in English.
Nonetheless, I think they could get rid of either “tu” or “voi” and make things a little easier without hurting the sound at all. 😉
Serena:
Salve jb mcmunn, Grazie per il tuo contributo.
Your examples were much better than mine and explained what I was trying to express really well.
A presto, Serena
Serena:
Ciao Vince, I really enjoyed your comment, it reminded me of a nursery rhyme that my friend’s daughter sang to me:
Farfallina, bella e bianca
vola vola poi si stanca
vola là, vola qua
poi si posa su un fiore
She sung it to the music of Frère Jacques.
Serena
Muriel:
‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’ = non e’ bello cio’ che e’ bello ma e’ bello cio’ che piace.