The Italian Language: The Wild Story of the Beautiful Language

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⏱ TIMESTAMPS:

0:00 - Italian’s Origin Story
0:36 - Italian Languages & Dialects
1:30 - Before Italian
2:32 - Italian is Born
6:25 - Language Wars
7:22 - Modern-Day Italian
8:39 - What Countries Speak Italian?
9:05 - Italian Migrations
9:43 - What Does Italian Look & Sound Like?
12:56 - Why Learn Italian?

📜 SOURCES & ATTRIBUTIONS:

“Italia settentrionale” & “Mezzogiorno” by Mnemoc are licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

“Monument to Dante Alighieri (Florence).jpg” by Clément Bardot is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

“Switzerland Linguistic EN.png” by Tschubby (translation by Lesqual) is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

“Australia (orthographic projection).svg” by Ssolbergj is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

“South America (orthographic projection).svg” by by Luan is licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

“ARG orthographic (+all claims).svg” by Addicted04 is licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons

“Libya (centered orthographic projection).svg” by M.Bitton is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons

“Somalia (orthographic projection).svg” by TheEmirr is licensed under CC BY via Wikimedia Commons

[izifish]

Fun fact. The word “ciao” to say hello is not from latin but from Venetian dialect. At the beginning was “Sciao” means Schiavo (slave) and when people used it meant “ti sono schiavo” (i am your slave) in a friendly (and strange) form of kindness

[bluesisyphe]

I attended a Liceo Classico in downtown Rome and I was always told that Dante was the creator of the language, but Manzoni was the one who curated Italian and fought for "la questione della lingua", mixing formal Italian with vocabulary from latin and different dialects. Furthermore, don't know if this is true but I remember it is, the television was fundamental and had a massive impact in the spreading of standard Italian in all regions when it arrived in Italy. Btw at Liceo Classico (a kind of Italian high school), we study for 5 long years latin, greek and Italian, with respective literature. It was very interesting back in the days to see how the language has grown throughout the centuries.

[Aoi_Haru]

Just for the sake of knowledge/curiosity, Dante named his poem "The Comedy". It was Boccaccio, another famous writer (The Decameron) almost contemporary to Dante, who started calling it "The Divine Comedy" as a tribute to its greatness and that name stuck to this day.

[areswalker]

"Nothing was ever simple in older Italy"
Scratch that, nothing is ever simple in Italy, period 😂 great video, you were able to summarize everything without being confusing

[manulanci]

We also have “problems” to understand similar dialects in a range of 20/30 km. 😅

Every little-middle size town you visit have his variations of lot of words, so you can understand about the 80% of a speech but you will always find some word you don’t understand.

Just an example for the other Italians here in comments: I’m from Rimini and I’m able to speak and understand “my” dialect, but if I go to Cesena (30 km) or Ravenna (50 km) I surely miss a good 20% of dialect terms.

And I’m pretty sure this is a common problem in all areas of Italy 😂

[giannicottogni]

I'm Italian, I grew up and currently live in Piedmont region.
In 1988, during the last year of high school, we went on a school trip in Trieste.

And while we were on a bus in Trieste, a lovely white-haired old lady told to a classmate of mine: "Hey, id1ot, please ring the bell" (to request to stop at the next bus stop).
My classmate, a very polite boy, was astonished and replied: "please...?"
And the lady: "Id1ot, please, ring the bell."
My classmate was speechless and just rang the bell.

And then we discovered that the word "picio", that means "id1ot" or "d..k" in piedmontese dialect, means "little one" or "kid" in Trieste's dialect.

[sovietleader]

I'm learning Italian as my second language and I think it's cool to learn about the history of it

[claudiodidomenico]

Thank you for this video. As a speaker of abruzzese (in the Neapolitan language group) it's really refreshing to see an English speaker correctly understand and explain that Italian dialects are really different languages that all come from Latin.

[alessandrocheccarini]

Italian is spoken in Eritrea too! Asmara is called the Little Rome

[marcoschagas]

As a speaker of Brazilian Portuguese, it's impossible for me not to love the Italian Language and how it sounds. It just feels like home.

[linguaEpassione]

Ciao Olly, what an incredibly informative video and what a pleasure to be in there! Always fun chatting with you!

[aspiretoinspire]

The longest ITALIAN WORD IS 30 LETTERS.
This may be the funniest of them all. The Germans are renowned for their love of long terms and phrases, but they are not the only ones who like to push the envelope. Today, is the Italian dictionary’s longest word, clocking in at 30 letters and 13 syllables. The term has an acronym of PNEI and refers to the study of nervous, immune, and endocrine system functions. Okay, so it’s not longer than “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”, but you have to admit, it’s still a pretty monstrous word.

[f_yu]

just a quick correction, that serves more as a trivia: dante titled his work, "la commedia", the adjective "divina" was added by critics in later years

[ilarianannini]

The story behind the word "bischero" is a great one. Bischeri was the family name of a wealthy family living in Florence in the XIV-XV csntury but of foreign origins. They owned buildings just in the back of what today is known as the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore. At the time the cathedral was just a giant building site and the city council needed more space to build it. A big sum of money was offered to the Bischeri but they declined the offer. They wanted more money. The council raised the offer more and more but the avid Bischeri always refused. A fire mysteriously spread during a night, burning down the Bischeri's buildings, incinerating warehouses and the goods inside.
Bankrupted, they had to sell what remained for a small sum. Later they left the city but their family name remained, turned into an adjective...bischero! lol

[kitty]

Italian is a beautiful language: very musical and very expressive.

[giovannidalpozzolo]

The incredible thing is, 700 years later an italian can still understand every word of the divine comedy (though it still feels rusty and some parts need some context to make sense), and appreciate its rhymes.

[PEriani]

A fact that I find funny and interesting is that operas were written in Italian, even by foreigner composers (like Haendel and Mozart), whilst in Italy still every region had its own language. It was like a super-partes language (a lingua franca) spoke to understand each other.

[oravado]

This videos fills us with even more passion to keep making our videos about Italy 🇮🇹💙

[hjordatube]

Io sono Italiano e mi domando perché sto vedendo questo video 😃. Anyway great video as usual. 👍

[flaviofatone]

Sono sorpreso dal tuo gesticolare per un intero video proprio quando parli della lingua italiana.