Tag Archives: dialect

Oct 26 2017
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Contemporary, Culture and Society, Language and Linguistics

Interregional encounters in Italy

Agnese Bresin   University of Melbourne

One of the many intriguing aspects of Italy is the diversity that characterises its regions: traditions, cuisines, political histories, economic dynamism and more. This variety includes language of course, not only the presence of Italian dialects – sister languages that developed parallel to Italian from Latin and often mutually unintelligible – but also the way Italian is spoken in different regions with the distinctive vocabularies, pronunciations and sentence structures that make up what linguists (e.g. D’Achille, 2002) call italiani regionali. So what happens when speakers move across regions, interacting with colleagues and customers who, for example, use different forms to express the same meanings or the same forms to express different meanings? How do personal experience, common knowledge and stereotypes help communication in those interregional encounters?      Continue reading →

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Mar 22 2015
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Contemporary, Culture and Society, Language and Linguistics, Literature and Translation, Religion

I papiri di Carmelo Campanella

Chiara Ottaviano   Cliomedia Officina (Torino)

Carmelo Campanella e il suo papiroCarmelo Campanella è nato a Ragusa nel 1931 e ha vissuto fino a pochi anni fa in campagna allevando bovini. In tarda età ha scoperto di essere custode di un “patrimonio” di valore: era il 2000, l’anno del giubileo, e si trovava su un pullman diretto a Roma insieme ad altri pellegrini. Per intrattenere la comitiva, qualcuno si era impossessato del microfono e aveva cominciato a recitare qualche strofa in dialetto di non so più quale storia di santo, ricevendone grande apprezzamento. A quel punto il sig. Campanella, superando la timidezza, ha pensato di offrire all’auditorio un piccolo saggio della sua straordinaria memoria e del suo vastissimo repertorio di storie e di “cunti”, di canzoni e di preghiere, di motti di spirito e indovinelli, quasi tutto in versi e in dialetto siciliano. E’ stata l’ammirazione suscitata in quel gruppo di sconosciuti, così racconta, a renderlo improvvisamente consapevole del “tesoro” posseduto. Da qui la determinazione nell’intraprendere la sua avventura culturale, ovvero la trascrizione di tutto ciò che aveva impresso nella memoria a cui attribuiva rilevanza e valore, ritenendo che quel tesoro dovesse essere salvato per le generazioni successive e quindi condiviso. La scrittura era il mezzo.

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Jun 07 2013
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Contemporary, Culture and Society, General, Language and Linguistics, Literature and Translation

Diego Marani on language addiction

Brigid Maher   La Trobe University

Last week Diego Marani, novelist, translator and inventor of Europanto, spoke to a capacity audience at the Italian Cultural Institute in Melbourne about how he got hooked on languages.

Diego Marani in Melbourne

Diego Marani in Melbourne

In a conversation about language, identity and what it means to be European, he discussed the way his writing explores the question of multilingualism, an important issue in an expanding and globalized Europe. Diego Marani has dedicated much of his life to studying languages, both for professional purposes – he worked as a translator and interpreter for the European Commission, where he is now multilingual policy officer – and per diletto. Once he started learning languages, he couldn’t stop. The rush he felt upon being able to adopt a new identity along with the unfamiliar sounds, structures and meanings of a new language soon became something he couldn’t do without.

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