Getting Around Italian on a Few Bites - Italy for Tourists - page 89

Chapter 1
Getting Around Italian on a Few Bites
A Bite of Italian Geography, History & Dialects
The Italian Peninsula is located in the southern part of Europe and is divided into 20 regions,
some of which are very famous all over the world, such as Tuscany (Toscana), Sicily (Sicil-
ia) and Sardinia (Sardegna).
Within any region there are many different dialects: sometimes one for each city or even
small village. There is only one region in Italy that has no dialect: Tuscany. Actually in the
past there was a dialect in Tuscany too, but for cultural, economic and historical reasons, the
Tuscan dialect became the Italian language, thus, we could say that the Italian language is
the Tuscan dialect - even if today there are a few exceptions especially in the pronunciation
of some letters and words. Why did the Tuscan dialect win against all the other dialects?
Let's go back to the Latin language! In the Roman times, there were two kinds of Latin lan-
guages: the written one and the spoken one. With the fall of the Western Roman Empire and
the formation of the Roman-Barbarian kingdoms, the written language became the adminis-
trative language, while the spoken Latin merges deeply with the local dialects, creating new
languages, the so-called “volgari” languages. Dante started writing in the Tuscan language
- in the “Volgare Toscano” - instead of Latin, that was the only language used to write, but
that was also completely unknown to non-educated people. Thanks to Dante, even “com-
mon” people, could start to learn how to write and read, because someone was finally writ-
ing the language they could understand.
In the 14 th century, the amazing literary production of the great Tuscan poets such as Dante
Alighieri, Giovanni Boccaccio and Francesco Petrarca had an extraordinary influence on lit-
erature all over Italy, so that the Tuscan dialect spread to most of the Peninsula. In fact, some
writers from other regions started using it too, for example Sannazzaro from Naples, and
Boiardo from Emilia Romagna.
The Italian language was born, but already from the end of the 14 th century, the “Volgare
Toscano” changed a little bit, detaching from the official language. For many centuries, till