Let's take ours again series of articles on the Italian language by the glottologist Daniele Vitali which in two interventions, the one we propose today is the first, focuses on the dynamics of transition from spoken to written language which leads to the perception of a pre-eminence of the latter.
In fact, in the first years of life we have a exclusively spoken relationship with the language, but then at school we learn the alphabet. Thus, among the dictation, little thoughts and "E come ivy" pictures hanging on the walls, we begin to internalize the idea of the pre-eminence of the written word. Now one might wonder if this is in Italian passage is easy or difficult compared to other languages.
Let's see how Vitali addresses this issue.
Adolescent discussions about Q
"In when you can really hear the Q”, my high school classmate once said. I expressed doubts and ventured that we could even write when and the pronunciation would not change. “It's not true!”, she was scandalized, “in when you hear the Q and writing it with a C would be ignorant." Now, my intent was not to deny that it would be ignorant to write “cuando” in high school, but rather that the use of Q had a phonetic reason.
In fact, if we really heard different sounds between "when, picture" and "heart, school", or between "water" and "disorder", we would never be wrong, not even in first grade. If, however, there is a lot of disapproval towards the exchange between Q and C it's because it's a widespread mistake. Why is it so common to confuse the two letters when we learn to write?
The etymology
Because, as is normal, we follow the ear rather than the origin of the words: “when” and “picture” are pronounced /kw/ in the same way as “heart” and “school”, and if they are written differently it is only because the first two had Q in Latin ( Quando and quadrus ), while the remaining two had C ( cor and schola ).
In short, Italian spelling has differentiated based on etymology, without considering that Latin spelled it differently due to the different pronunciation, while in Italian /'kwɔre, s'kwɔla/ are pronounced just like /'kwando, 'kwadro/.
He makes mistakes even in adulthood
Now that we can know how others write thanks to email and social networks, it is easy to see that, in adulthood, Italians do not misspell "heart, school".
On the other hand, however, you can see many others errors due to writing by ear”: “I'm here, come here, don't you know, a man, the cherries”. Please note that these examples are not interferences of regional accents, but rather a result ofarbitrariness of the rules spelling.
Truncation and elision
It is generally believed that “what is” is an error indicating grave ignorance: in front of a vowel we write "un amici" by truncation of "uno" and "un'amica" by elision of "una", since in front of a consonant we have "un Cat" but "una gatta". Since we say "a certain suspicion" and "a certain sadness", then we must write "which is", because "which" is a truncation of "which". Again, it would be a mistake to write "oneself" because there is no risk of confusion, while it would be permissible to write "oneself" because it could be confused with "if (you) yourself".
Similar Byzantinisms, which we are forced to follow in order not to pass off as ignorant (but I refuse the second precept and always write "self" with the accent), occupy an enormous amount of time at school, despite the commonplace according to which "Italian is the easiest language in the world because read as it is written".
Easy language and difficult language
Since our primary use of language is the spoken one, not the written one, it would be more correct to say that “Italian is written as it is pronounced”. Even so, however, this does not seem too true, as we have seen in the case of "heart" and "picture".
The ease then does not come from writing alone: Turkish passed from the Arabic alphabet to the Latin alphabet precisely to make its spelling more adherent to phonetics, but it remains a language with very complex grammar, and with a lexicon substantially devoid of any support for us. Europeans: for all these reasons, despite the sacrosanct orthographic simplification, it remains a difficult language (always for Europeans, obviously; for Turkish-speaking peoples it is another matter).
The other way around, Italians perceive English as a simple language due to its poverty of verbal forms, but finding the phonetics easy would seem a bit reckless: English. of England /'hɒbɪ/ vs. English of Italy /'ɔbbi/ “hobby”.
Of course, Spanish is quite easy for Italians, a language directly related to ours and with an often transparent lexicon. However, it is not all sunshine and rainbows, due to some grammatical complications and a large number of fake friends even spectacular; furthermore, a simple language for us can be an ordeal for anyone who does not speak a novel language, let's say a Japanese or an American.
The relativity of easy and difficult
The ease of language is, in short, a concept largely relative and, curiously, it is not intercultural: in Brazil everyone is convinced that the Portuguese is very difficult, and they are surprised that a foreigner wants to learn it despite the arduous work that such an undertaking will certainly require.
Now, on a grammatical and lexical level, Portuguese is not that much more difficult than Spanish, but it certainly is on a phonetic level.
This in turn caused a series of orthographic complications that made the little Brazilians suffer when they sat behind their school desks: their idea that Portuguese is so impervious is the result of the identification of the language with only the written level (of rest, when they try their hand at the spoken language, their fluency is such that it would be nice to interrupt them to ask with feigned innocence: "but how can you speak such an abstruse language so quickly?").
What about French and English? We'll see it in the second part next Sunday.
. . .
Daniele Vitali, from Bologna, was a translator for the European Commission for years. He has to his credit various glottology works on languages and dialects, including “Linguistic portraits: the Romanian” (Inter @ lia 2002), “Do you speak Italian-Luxembourgish? Notes on the language of the Italians of Luxembourg” (Inter@lia 2009), “Russian pronunciation for Italians” (with Luciano Canepari, Aracne 2013), as well as the great “Dizionario Bolognese-Italiano Italiano-Bolognese” (Pendragon 2007 and 2009, with Luigi Lepri), “Emilian dialects and Tuscan dialects. Linguistic interactions between Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany” (Pendragon 2020) and “Mé a dscårr in bulgnaiṡ. Manual for learning the Bolognese dialect” (Pendragon 2022).
