Tuscan VS Standard Italian: Is Tuscan The Same as Standard?
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 เม.ย. 2023
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Hey Noble ones! So is Florentine or the Tuscan language the same as standard Italian? In other words the language we teach to foreigners who wish to speak Italian?
Italian (italiano [itaˈljaːno] or lingua italiana [ˈliŋɡwa itaˈljaːna]) is a Romance language of the Indo-European language family that evolved from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire. Together with Sardinian, Italian is the least divergent language from Latin. Spoken by about 85 million people (2022), Italian is an official language in Italy, Switzerland (Ticino and the Grisons), San Marino, and Vatican City. It has official minority status in Croatia and in some areas of Slovenian Istria.
Italian is also spoken by large immigrant and expatriate communities in the Americas and Australia.Italian is included under the languages covered by the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Romania, although Italian is neither a co-official nor a protected language in these countries.Many speakers of Italian are native bilinguals of both Italian (either in its standard form or regional varieties) and a local language of Italy, most frequently the language spoken at home in their place of origin.
Italian is a major language in Europe, being one of the official languages of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and one of the working languages of the Council of Europe. It is the second-most-widely spoken native language in the European Union with 67 million speakers (15% of the EU population) and it is spoken as a second language by 13.4 million EU citizens (3%). Including Italian speakers in non-EU European countries (such as Switzerland, Albania and the United Kingdom) and on other continents, the total number of speakers is approximately 85 million.[13] Italian is the main working language of the Holy See, serving as the lingua franca (common language) in the Roman Catholic hierarchy as well as the official language of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Italian has a significant use in musical terminology and opera with numerous Italian words referring to music that have become international terms taken into various languages worldwide. Italian was adopted by the state after the Unification of Italy, having previously been a literary language based on Tuscan as spoken mostly by the upper class of Florentine society but it ultimately differs from it. Almost all native Italian words end with vowels and has a 7-vowel sound system ('e' and 'o' have mid-low and mid-high sounds). Italian has contrast between short and long consonants and gemination (doubling) of consonants.
#tuscan #italian #pronunciation
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Mandarin, eh? Preparing for the new overlords? Lol
@@batmaninc2793 Nah, I'm just fascinated by the challenge of a tonal language, and find Mandarin to be the most beautiful sounding to my ears of all tonal languages.
Just a small correction. The "TH" sound in Spain is not only used in Madrid, its actually used in almost every region from north to south, the only notable exceptions being some parts of Andalucia and the Canary islands. there's people outside of those two regions that don't use the "th" but its so rare or limited to such small areas that it isn't even worth pointing out when tying to make a general statement.
Yeah, that part of the video commenting on Spanish was very much mistaken. However, it may have its basis in people pointing out that a typical Madrid accent produces the sound even more than most Spaniards, rendering a final-D as the "th" sound. (So that "Madrid" would be pronounced "MadriTH" or "MadriZ")
@@Tommat194 isnt madrid pronounced /maðri:/ in spain? like ciudad /θiuða:/
@@win_ini Dropping the final -d is mostly a feature of southern dialects or fast speech. Standard Spanish would be [maðrið], but ironically most people from Madrid would use the non-standard form [maðriθ] o [θiuðaθ]. And in areas where the -d is dropped the vowel doesn't turn long, it's only stressed [ma'ðri].
@@Tommat194 If you wanna see an even more exaggerated use of "th" look up "ceceo" where both the 's' and 'th' sound are pronounced as 'th'. It happens in some areas of Andalucía as well. But I get what you mean with the Madrid one being a bit more exaggerated. I still felt like I had to address Metatron's mistake cause I'm from the north (Galicia) and we very much use the 'th' sound as well, though there are some people along the coast that don't pronounce it, like I said in my original comment its so small that it isn't worth pointing out when just making a general statement
@@trout6629 oh yeah, I definitely heard of the ceceo, I was just trying to think of why Metatron might have said that. But yeah, sé de propia experiencia que la gran mayoría de los españoles usan la distinción, por eso me chocó un poco cuando dijo que era algo exclusivo de Madrid jajaj
Debunking language myths is one of your best video archetypes
In Toscana (o in Italiano erudito o letterario) "codesto" non viene usato al posto di questo ma ha un significato differente : "questo" serve per indicare qualcosa vicino o che appartiene a chi parla, "codesto" per indicare qualcosa vicino o che appartiene a chi ascolta.
It's a bit similar to how standard Swedish is based on the Stockholm dialect but is still different. Although I've never heard anyone use standard except in movies from the 50s and older.
...and everyone on state TV and radio news up until a few decades ago, by law.
Somewhat similar, but not completely. First, Florence is not the political capital of Italy. Next, Italian is based on Florentine, but on the one before the plague of 1348.
In SFI and Svenska Som Andra Språk kurs is in use standard Swedish besed on Stockholm dialekt. And only little slang språk 😁
People in Tuscany still actually use "codesto" as we studied in grammar proper, meaning far from the speaker, close to the other person, as opposed to "questo". And accurately, hard as it is to believe for other Italians...
Agree 100-percent.
Many, many years ago I said something to my friend (in Italian) in Milan. He later told me NOBODY in Italy uses this word-that is was “ancient.” Unfortunately, I don’t recall (and neither did my friend in Milan recall) what this word was! Maybe it was codesto or maybe something else. 🤷
Many years later, I told my father this story and he agreed that Tuscans do have the tendency to use “ancient” words.
@@lucchese20 there are many, but more than being ancient, they're simply words from the Florentine language; the perception other Italians have comes from them only encountering words like "lapis" or "desinare" in 19th century literature. Tuscans themselves, on the other hand, are generally unaware of this, and debates are common where Italians argue wether a word is Italian or not, a d tuscans always win, cause all these words are present in Italian dictionaries, despite being used only locally.
@@Clayjar444 Yes, I recall Italian dictionaries sometimes have “(tosc.)” to designate a word is used or originates in Tuscany.
What is lapis?
The dative doubling also happens in romanian.
Mie (A me) imi (mi) place (piace). Mie imi place = A me mi piace.
Versus the usual "Imi place = Mi piace", where "Imi = A me mi".
It occurs about 3 times out of 5 and you're guaranteed to hear it as an emphasis of ME (as in "it pleases ME, I don't know about you).
Fascinating parallels!
Also similar in Spanish. A mi me place.
As a Spanish speaker, I find it funny how “a mí me gusta” in Spanish is completely correct, while in Italian “a me mi piace” is not. Neat!
For sure. I also found the differences with how things are said (or written?) between Spanish and Italian to be quite interesting. 👋🏻
I'm an L2 Spanish speaker with a near-native mastery, but yeah, I totally agree!
"a me mi" is stereotypically the thing that one corrects with a child - which hints at how it is not terribly intuitive. I remember my wife telling me about it, and then when our kid hit 3 he started saying it and we'd have to correct him. As an Italian learner, I struggle with other versions of these pronoun contractions (e.g., glielo - it/him to him).
That kind of consonant extension also exists in Finnish, for example "mene pois" (go away) sounds like "menep pois" and "mene ulos" (go outside) sounds like "meneʔ ʔulos" (with a glottal stop). The reason is similar too, in older Finnish there were words ending in -h and -k, after they were lost, the gemination remained. Not all dialects have this gemination, but standard Finnish does.
Maksaalaatiko 🤮
Well, the "th" or "c" pronunciation and other specific Tuscany sounds are an etrurian civilization heritage.
@peppermint210 Really?
I always thought my Tuscan dialect speaking family members sounded buzzy and nasal. You make it sound so much more eloquent. 🤣 I think the accent gets a little heavier in the rural areas just outside Firenze.
More videos on regional Italian languages/dialects! I absolutely love watching these videos.
Where are you from if I may ask?
@@atlantis4516 Bulgaria/Canada!
@@user-lz3om9qc2u thank you
YES please
Tuscan "Gorgia" does also apply to [b], which becomes [β] ("la barca = "la [β]arca"); to [d], which becomes [ð] (" idillio" -> "i[ð]illio"); and to [g], which becomes [ɣ] ("la gatta" -> "la [ɣ]atta"). However, there are significant variations in pronunciation from one city to another. There are three main Tuscan dialects, divided in a vast number of vernaculars: "Western Tuscan" (spoken in the provinces of Pisa, Lucca, Pistoia, Livorno), "Central Tuscan" (spoken in the provinces of Firenze, Prato, Siena, Grosseto) and "Eastern Tuscan" (spoken in the province of Arezzo and in some parts of Umbria bordering with Tuscany). In Western Tuscan, especially in the vernacular spoken in Pisa and Livorno, the [h] sound is totally absent and the intervocalic [k] tends to become [x] or it is elided ("la casa" = "la 'asa" or "la [x]asa"); sometimes a [k] placed between a vowel and a [r] becomes [x] or [g] ("la crosta" -> "la [x]rosta" or "la [g]rosta" . Always in Western Tuscan, [kw] placed at the starting of the word tends to become [v] ("questo qui" -> "[v]ésto [v]ì"). In Eastern Tuscan, there is no phonosyntactic doubling, just like in the regional languages of Northern Italy, and the "Gorgia" is way less marked; the fading of the "Gorgia" does happen also in the northernmost Western Tuscan vernaculars (Lucca) and in the southernmost Central Tuscan vernaculars (Grosseto). In coastal Western Tuscan and in Eastern Tuscan, but not so much in Central Tuscan, there is also a tendency towards rhotacism: [l] followed by a consonant tends to become [r] ("altro" -> "a[r]tro", "il cane" -> "i[r] cane"). Finally, the doubling of the personal pronoun and the elision of [t] do exist only in some Central Tuscan vernaculars like the Florentine one. Usually, it's quite easy for a Tuscan speaker telling from which city another Tuscan speaker comes, or at least from which part of the region he/she is, beacuse the differences in pronunciation, intonation, grammar and lexicon between Tuscan vernaculars are quite small but well perceptible.
Agree that the vernaculars in Livorno, Pisa and Lucca are different that the one spoken in Firenze. Not sure sure the vernacular spoken in Grosseto (where my cousins live) is similar to the one spoken in Firenze-if I understood your excellent comment correctly. 👋🏻
@@lucchese20 Of course "Fiorentino", "Maremmano" and "Senese" do sound different from each other, despite all being classified as "Central Tuscan" vernaculars by linguists. The same is true for "Pisano", "Lucchese" and "Pistoiese", all of them classified as "Western Tuscan" vernaculars but well distinguable from each other. In "Maremmano", the Gorgia phenomenon is way weaker than in "Fiorentino", and in "Maremmano" there is also no elision of [t] and no doubling of the personal pronoun, but is still considered a Central Tuscan vernacular.
@@emanuelegemignani7802 Thank you Emanuele for your explanation. Also have cousins in Lucca with the surname Gemignani. 👋🏻
Io so casentinese, il rotacismo qui è standard. Anche l'articolo il, si dice semplicemente r. " Ho r libro".
L'è sistematico qui, nell' aretino invece un esiste.
Solo noi e sulla costa si usa così tanto, arezzo valdichiana ecc no
16:45 Bipity bopity boopity, bupity ba!
As a minor correction: codesto is used in a different context from both questo and quello.
Questo - this, something close to both listener and speaker.
Codesto - this/that, something close to the listener but far from the speaker.
Quello - that, something far from both listener and speaker.
I learned Italian like a year ago and I never heard about Codesto. Grazie mille.
@@fixer1140 It's almost obsolete in most of the regions, but in some of them it's still used.
Since Tuscany is so popular, how about a video on the Etruscans?
Also, all I want to do is learn general Italian, and hopefully be understood most of the time.
Great idea! 👍🏻
I'm having flashbacks of those hilarious dubs of Studio Ghibli movies and NGE made by Gualtiero Cannarsi.
p.s.: Can't wait to see the Florence/London video.
BEAST-GOD!
Very interesting how languages develop their standardized versions. In Bulgaria the closest to the standard Bulgarian is the Tarnovo dialect (which is the historical capital of the second BG Empire) and not the Shopski dialect (where the capital was chosen after 1878).
Fascinating details.
Love these videos. I recently began studying portugese but the sao paolo variety or cariocas. I was amazed at the overlap in certain italian dialects so much so my trip to sicily had me using portugese verbs with relative substitution.
I am glad you've finally decided to make this kind of content. I've always found you very easy to listen to and wanted to see your educator side a bit more.
Great video! Very fascinating.
thanks for making the knowledge you're giving so easily digestible
I could watch your videos all day. Your brain definitely works the same way mine does. Love it!
Grazie. Hai soddisfatto le mie curiosità su quest'argomento!
This was beyond informative. It helps so much with comprehension of native Italians. 👍🏻👍🏻
Greetings Metatron! As a person learning what I know now is (Standard Italian) this video was very mind blowing 🤯🤯🤯
Great job keep it up 👍
Grazie mille per questa spiegazione formidabile. Auguri dal Belgio!
I think I get what you mean by hepta vocalic. In portuguese we have the same thing. The letters o and e can be pronounced and/or be written as ô/ó and ê/é. I guess I have an advantage too lol
Wow! Thank you very much! I think you are the first guy talking about the Tuscan dialect and Standard Italian in that much detailed level. 😊😊🙏🙏
Sounds similar to what we have in Welsh
A thing called treiglo
The Soft Mutation
c > g
p > b
t > d
g > -
b > f
d > dd
ll > l
rh > r
m > f
The Nasal Mutation
c > ngh
p > mh
t > nh
g > ng
b > m
d > n
The Aspirate Mutation
c > ch
p > ph
t > th
To add the topic, in media like cartoons or anime which are italian dubbed we tend to change the slang or accent of different characters with regional dialects, otherwise they'd be incomprehensible in our language. Examples are the orks of Warhammer 40000, which are usuallu dubbed with thick Roman/Napolitan dialect, and Willie from the Simpsons series which has had always been dubbed with a Sardinian dialect.
Correct. My cousins in Italy also made this point. 👏🏻
Muito interessante!! Um abraço do Brasil. Grazie mile!
Thanks for this. I've learned about this subject from my various TH-cam Italian teachers, but occasionally it's nice to hear an end-to end discussion of it. And you're right, I hadn't connected some of these pronunciation patterns so completely to the latin root words.
We have strong connections to Siena and I spend a lot of time watching their local TV stations, especially around Palio time. The Tuscan accent is on full display, and you can always tell the local broadcasters from the national ones, because many of the local ones don't completely use Italian Standard for local news consumption. Always reminds me of the time-worn exaggerated joke I heard from a Sienese friend: "qual'e la tua bevanda preferita? Hertho, e La Hoha Hola".
09:00 When I was in Italy in 2018. Many of the nothern italians used the english th sound when a Z was written. Like grathie instead of grazie. It appeared around Ferrara if I remember correctly.
Yep, you’re right. That sound is in romagnolo accent and it’s definitely [th]. They mostly use it instead of [ts].
Raff what a great video! If I may suggest, it will be very cool and interesting if you make this into a series with the difference between standard Italian and other regional varieties. For example standard Italian compared to Napoletano, Venetian or Sicilian!
It is important that you understand first that "Venetian," "Neapolitan," "Sicilian," etc., are other true languages derived directly from Latin and not dialects of Italian. So, it makes sense that two different languages, even of the same subgroup, are really different.
It is another thing to want to discuss the way Italian is spoken in different regions, with different accents and preference in the use of different words or verbs, in accordance with the different Romance languages spoken in the area.
If you are interested, there is a channel called 'ILoveLanguages" that uploads videos on Language and Dialect comparisons(speech and text examples). They have uploaded videos on the aforementioned languages.
I'd never realised where the two pronunciations of "z" came from 🤯🤯
I've noticed a similar thing in the sounds in Romanian:
"ti" in Latin => "ț" (e.g. "Constantia" => "Constanța")
"di"/"de" in Latin => "z" (e.g. "Deus" => "Zeu")
Zeu? Is it mutating into Greek?
Tuscan-Scots bilingual hybrid here. We also use 'la mi' mamma', 'la tu' nonna', 'i'mmi babbo' etc: rather than saying 'mia madre' ('my mother'), 'mia nonna' ('my grandmother') or 'mio padre' ('my father') as in standard Italian, we (Tuscans) often say 'the my mum', 'the my gran', 'the my father' etc (using the heavily Tuscan 'babbo', omitting the 'L' from 'il' and the 'o' from 'mio', and often saying 'la THu' nonna' for a perfect storm of extra-Tuscan intensity). I thought I'd point out this amusing wee nugget without thereby implying that this phenomenon "should" have been mentioned, as describing every aspect of Tuscan would require a gargantuan video. And yes, I found myself rather sheepishly thinking "oh heavens - guilty as charged" for each feature of Tuscan speech discussed. (Fun fact: we also say 'brache', pronounced 'brahe', for knickers; pants; unmentionables; underwear; smalls - mutande, diobono).
Yes-“le brahe’ reminds me of my what my mother (from Lucca) always said! 😅😅
Grazie Metatron per il video!
I'd like to mention that the labbambina effect might not really be due to an over-application of RF, but because of the realisation of /b/ in some varieties of Italian. I do this, too, by the way (Roman accent). You should check whether you do it with "la donna" or "la gonna". Do you get laddonna or laggonna? I don't. I've been told that these varieties do not have non-geminate b's (except clusters with consonants, not including liquids, where you cannot have structurally support geminates in the syllable)
Laggonna is absolutely how people say it in Catania. While laddonna doesn't happen, laddoccia does happen in Palermo.
I love this video, it would be amazing if you could do similar stuff on other regional varieties of Italian! Oh and what happened to the Tuscan /p/?
Grazie per il video. Sarebbe bello in un prossimo video menzionare come al nord ci sia un uso eccessivo del passato prossimo in contrasto con il sud italia dove si tende ad abusare del passato remoto. Ancora grazie per i suoi contenuti.
it would be great to link that to the same phenomena (but inverted south-north) in Spain
Just a notice: near the north coast of Toscany people speak an accent with is quite different than what most Italians associate with Tuscan. I guess that about half the rules that you mention in the video do not count in the provinces of Lucca, Pisa and Livorno. In Pisa and Livorno in particular they sometimes pronounce the l is ir. Il for example would pronounced as eir and Savoldi as Savoirdi.
maybe your best academy video sofar. so interesting!
just a small correction. It is most of Spain that uses "th" sound for "c", "s" sound is the minority, basically Andalusia, Murcia, the part of Alicante I am from and Extremadura.
Bravo !
Thank you for this great video. I am a second generation Italian American. I grew up hearing Neapolitan. I can read, write, and speak standard Italian. I am trying to learn to read Neapolitan. As you know there are many Neapolitan words that use two letters, for example: fà cchiù forte. Do you have any videos on the Neapolitan Language? Thank you, D
This video was super interesting like always Metatron!
I'd like to comment on something though, at 8:59.
I'm no expert in regional Italian accents but I've seen some people from Veneto that have the /th/ and /dh/ when speaking the dialect, but I think it's quite rare and I'm not sure if it carries over to Italian.
Llegué acá investigando el significado de mi apellido :-) tremendo video, mil gracias!!!
hello metatron, can you do a video on languages that have cases?
Looooove that video! So true! Bisous d'Alsace !❤️😘💐👍👍👍
Basically standard German is based on middle and south german varieties but "in the mouth of a north german ( Hannover) so lexic inspired by middle and high German as opposed to low German but pronounced in a North German low German way
I think it would be interesting to show how the regions went from Classical Latin to their respective dialects. A lot of it is probably due to the various post-Roman occupations etc. but I wonder how much was due to the original culture i.e. Tuscan w/Etruscan vs Sicily w/the Greeks & Carthaginians
as someone who has been using lingq i concure that it is really good
Fare un video sulla lingua veneta 🙌🏻🙌🏻🙌🏻
I was going to ask since you also did a video on mandarin putonghua 普通话 vs beijinghua 北京话 if you would say the difference between Tuscan and standard Italian is greater than that?
Because from this video, it feels Tuscan is muuuuch farther different to standard than beijinghua is to putonghua
You should make some videos teaching Sicilian sometime
Being and"adopted" Milanese for the last fifty plus years I remember coming across a commentary on Manzoni that highlighted the difference between the language used between the first and second editions of "I Promessi Sposi" that said that while the first edition's language was only a strengthening (potenziamento) of basic Tuscan the second edition's language became the florentine usage of 19th century educated persons. A small question for you. Do you know when and why the "j" (i greco) was dropped from Italian orthography.? I've got seme old books where it is used and even had a Genoese friend called Giorgio Baj.
BROOO a correction, the TH is native to Nuorese Sardinian :D so there are other italians that have it
Noooo! "Codesto" is not a replacement of "questo"! While "questo" means "close to the speaker", "codesto" means "close to the listener"!
So, if a Tuscan wanted to appreciate your desktop wallpaper, he'd say "Mi piace codesto sfondo." In comparison, if he downloads it and uses it on his own computer, he would say "Mi piace questo sfondo."
Ciao DevilMaster and thank you for the comment. I suppose I could have expressed myself more clearly on the video, however, I'd like to underline that what I said still holds true. According to l'Accademia della Crusca: " Nel sistema a due elementi, quello cioè dell'italiano utilizzato in tutta Italia esclusa la Toscana, codesto è comunemente sostituito da quello e, meno spesso, da questo, eventualmente rafforzato da un possessivo di seconda persona".
Note that they specifically say that codesto can be rendered in standard BOTH as questo and quello, whereby Questo is more rare. (but still correct).
You are right that in Tuscan you have 3 elements of reference, a bit like Japanese, questo codesto and quello, where codesto refers to "close to the listener", but standard Italian only has two options, namely questo and quello, both being acceptable renditions of codesto.
We find the same conclusion on Treccani, where they write: " Fuori di Toscana è di uso raro o letter. (tranne che nella corrispondenza ufficiale e nell’uso burocr.), ed è per lo più sostituito da questo o da quello anche nell’uso scritto."
So, once again, as you can see, both "questo" and "quello" are correct renditions of the Tuscan codesto, hence my translation of codesto into questo, is also ultimately correct.
@@metatronacademy I still find it odd that the Accademia della Crusca would find "questo" an acceptable substitute of "codesto", since one is close to the speaker and the other is not, so "quello" would be a better approximation. But again, they tried to peddle "stàndaro" as a replacement of "standard", so I'd take their positions with a grain of salt.
Unless they are taking a descriptivist position instead of their usual prescriptivism, in which case... yeah, some people use it like that.
Using "codesto" and "questo" interchangeably makes me think of an imaginary skit where a comedian (you may imagine Roberto Benigni) pranks a doctor by pretending to remove his own eye, handing a glass eye to the doctor and saying "Dottore, mi fa male codesto occhio!"
Mostly Italian doesn't have the proper 3-way word as Tuscan or Japanese.
@@DevilMaster Stàndaro è una porcata, su questo ci troviamo. Detto questo, trovo l'Accademia della Crusca comunque corretta nella circostanza della traduzione in italiano, perché anche se in toscano codesto ha un signfiicato ben specifico, quando la parola viene "tradotta" in italiano, un cambio di utilizzo capita. Quante parole per esempio di origine italiana vengono usate diversamente nelle lingue riceventi come l'inglese e vice versa? La realtà non è sempre la traduzione piu pura, ma quella piu di uso. Poi se un giorno l'Accademia della Crusca decide di provare a riagganciare codesto solo a quello, sarò il primo a sostenerli. Per capirci, un esempio è il plurale di orecchio. In italiano corretto il plulare è orecchie, SOLO se si parla della coppia. In una frase del tipo "tutti i pazienti con gli orecchi destri infiammati si rechino in ambulatorio" il plurale è orecchi, non orecchie. Quanti in Italia sanno questa cosa però?
That gorgia toscana phenomenon sounds very much like Grimm's law.
Yo meta !!!
Do you do private lesson for Japanese ?
Not bad...but I wonder if the question was more for the transition from the Tuscan dialects into the Standard? I mean every standard language reference starts with something like, "Standard is based off the Tuscan dialects made famous by Dante..." but then we look at Dante's Italian and even modern Tuscan Italian, and we are like....and how did this happen?
Great video as always!
As a cockney learning Italian, I’d be VERY interested in that video, Raff!
In the US there is a sort of standard English originally started on TV and Radio.
I enjoyed this very much. I learned my Italian growing up in the Tuscan countryside, so my Italian contains many of these elements, although some I'd never heard before. (Perhaps some of these may only be used around Florence, and not in the rest of Tuscany). This is the first I'd heard that "spengere" wasn't actually Standard Italian. (And I may not even have been fully aware of the existence of "spegnere" before. You learn something every day). And hearing "mi garba" was a real blast from the past. Hadn't heard that in a long time. Now that's a good word.
One thing you didn't mention was the tendency to add an "ol" syllable at the end of words, although this may have been a country vs city thing rather than a Tuscan thing. So an ant was a "formicola" rather than a "formica," and a big tree was a "querciola" rather than a "quercia." On a more scatological level, I learned only a few years ago that "stronzolo" wasn't a real word.
I always liked "a me mi," even though at school the teachers were constantly correcting us on it. It wasn't just unnecessary, it was flat-out wrong. I wasn't aware that this was a regionalism. I thought all Italians used it. To me it seemed to have a slightly different meaning from "a me" or "mi" alone. Like it was emphasizing the personal opinion aspect of it. The effort to stamp out its usage struck me as really pedantic. It's clearly part of the spoken language, so why not accept it? This reminds me of how in English the language police get so upset over double-negatives, not understanding that rather than cancelling each other out, they add emphasis.
Regarding 'formicola' ('little ant'; or 'formihola' as it would be pronounced in my birthplace), you can see from my username that I'm Tuscan! For the legions of non-Italians that will be adoringly reading this comment and lapping up every drop of its glorious pedantry [], formichina' - 'formica' ('ant') plus 'ina' (diminutive), plus the 'h' to keep the 'c' hard like a 'k' sound - is the diminutive of 'ant' used all over Italy (including Tuscany), but in Tuscany we have the additional option of 'ola', which I assume (but I shouldn't investigate further because it's past four in the morning and I should probably Be Sensible and go to sleep) derives from the 'ula' (or 'ulus') diminutive in Latin, as in 'ursa' ('bear') -> 'ursula' ('little bear'; 'bearlet', if you will), or 'malleus' ('hammer') -> 'malleolus' (tiny wee dainty hammerlet). As for the 'a me mi', a me mi sa tanto che potrebbe essere simile al francese 'moi, je vais' or 'moi, je suis' ('as for me, I'm going / I am...'). It has an emphatic function, as you point out, even if it's grammatically redundant from one perspective ('me, I go', 'me, I am' in the French examples and 'as for me, I like' for 'diamine, a me mi garba'). And indeed, in Tuscany we often use 'te, tu sei' or 'te, tu vai' (which is basically 'you [accusative], you [nominative] are/go') to emphasise that unlike some other individuals, YOU are, or will go, thus or thither. 'Io vo' in biblioteca, ma te tu dovresti andare alla discoteca' ('I'm off to the library, but you, contrariwise, should betake yourself to the discotheque' - a somewhat absurd sentence which nevertheless demonstrates the mechanism). Vo' a dormire, diobono. :) And so to bed.
20:39 In Spanish is perfectly normal. In Argentina we say Me gusta /place, I like it, and A mí me gusta/place , (place is used in literarture and in Spain) some people may not, but I like it. Garbo in Spanish is elegance, tiene mucho garbo, presence and arrogance, but also joyfulness. The diminutive -illa like cama - camilla, casa - casilla, ventana - ventanilla , may come the latin -culus -culae
Fornus fornículus , horni hornículus hornilus, hornillo I'm guessing how the suffix developed .
Can you make a video about Ligurian/Genovese which is similar to Portuguese
Very interesting. I have a question. Who was the first person to speak standard Italian?
8:58 What about Venetians? I thought they also have the dental fricative /th/
Coould you do one on the italian accent shaping argintinean s9anish?
Alt, momento. At 9:25 you're saying something quite misleading. It is not just in the Madrid area were they pronounce Z and CE CI with the English th. It is in all of Spain but the south (Andalucia) and part of Extremadura. Giusto per precisare. Also, for some reason in Lecco and its surroundings, we too have a tendency to soften the G intervocalica. It is not as soft as the Tuscan one, though.
Mi piace la tua metodologia e capisco che ti rivolgi in inglese agli studenti. Ma con tematiche piuttosto avanzate come questo potrebbe essere che se non le capisci in italiano probabilmente tanto vale che non lo sappi per niente. Le doppie sono una cosa della quale mi rendo conto, ma veramente non le sento. Probabilmente non perderò mai il mio accento papale da Benedetto XVI. Ho un fortissimo accento austriaco/bavarese in tutte lingue che parlo, compreso non solo l' inglese ma anche nel tedesco. Mi sono abituato. E diventato il mio marchio. In inglese suono come Einstein, in italiano come Benedetto e tutto mi ricordono quando torno anche a distanza di mesi ed anni. Potrei sempre fare il doppiatore di Schwarzenegger.
"Codesto" is not a variant of "questo": while "questo" denotes something close (either physically or figuratively) to the speaker, "codesto" means something close to the listener - and "quello" is something far from both, so "questo qui", "codesto costì" and "quello lì". In Sardinian (campidanese variant at least) it's just the same with "custu/cussu/cuddu". :)
Please analyze the speech of the most famous Tuscan in history: Ezio Auditore da Firenze
Therapist : Italian Grimm's Law doesn't exist, it can't hurt you
Tuscan gorgia :
I observe a certain gorgia effect in the Talian dialect we speak in the Serra Gaúcha, in southern Brazil, but in the /f/ when in an intervocalic setting
still can't wait for the Talian epsiode of "Can an italian understand...."
What about using the plural ‘gli’ - is it used in all regional languages?
I was about to say! In Spain it is very common for the "c" to become "th" - very good video I didn't know about this! Considering it closely, I then immediately thought "hey what about folks from Barcelona?!" A very good friend of mine in the past when I was young (who I actually dated for a while) was a young lady from Catalonia and she obviously spoke Spanish as well as Catalan. I remember attempting my very weak Spanish (having lived in the USA for about eight years at that point, my English was pretty bad much less one language I learned in school - Spanish) with her and being blown away by her pronunciation. Her "c" would become a sort of soft "t" just by example. She was very complimentary of my Spanish - which I think was her being very polite or happy anyone even tried, but it was a lost cause - not to mention she was fluent in Serbian LOL
Regarding the Tuscan "t", I was originally hoping/thinking it would be like Romanian pronunciation of our Cyrillic ц written as ț of course - but that didn't make much sense on my part just wishful thinking lol - being so close to Italy growing up you'd think I wouldn't be so ignorant, but I sure was wrong :D
Thank you, Raph, for another fantastic learning opportunity for me!
So the town of Grosseto speaks the best accent ? Or Viterbo ?
Look at Corsican and La scuola siciliana of Jacopo Da Lentini and you know where Dante and Boccaccio designed the stuff
Italian, Tuscan and Corsican are twin languages. Conjoincted twin languages
Yes, but the Italian language has an army, a navy and an air force. The other two don't have them. Moreover, Italian is not the language of a specific region. It is a centuries-old intellectual construction.
So much so that, before the French invasion, written Italian was also used in Corsica, while people commonly spoke their different regional language (just as in the rest of Italy). Today, Corsica is no longer culturally Italian, but then it was.
@@giorgiodifrancesco4590 not that nonsense again...
If you really want to banalize dialectology so much, at least tell they have mass media and schools
@@giorgiodifrancesco4590 Italian is not "constructed" , has a long history of transformation and evolution which is ongoing. Standardization doesn't undermine the validity
@@giorgiodifrancesco4590
Italy had a proto-italian koiné which later was more and more influenced by litersry florentine and from alps to sicily diglossia ruled. Including Corsica
@@giorgiodifrancesco4590 Corsican like Tuscan had its own linguistic history, which kept it so close to italian to be fair intellegible (way MORE than the geographically close Sardinia).
Saying Corsican is close to Italian to make the two twin languages, is no political claim. The last word about self determination belongs to Corsicans only
The KPT thing is interesting because Finnish also has something called consonant gradation, which affects those same sounds but in a massively different way; In Finnish (and Estonian), if a word has those letters/sounds, in some cases it changes or even disappears completely. For example, to say "At / on the beach", the word "Ranta" ("beach") becomes "Rannalla". Or a verb like "Lukea" ("to read") completely loses the K when conjugated for first and second person pronouns ("I read" = "(Minä) Luen", "You read" = "(Sinä) Luet", "We read" = "(Me) Luemme"/ "Luetaan", "You (pl) read" = "(Te) Luette"). It even applies to names, too.
How do you distinguish this “weak” C in “ci” from what would be spelled “sci”? They sound the same to me in the Tuscan accent.
"sc" is longer than weak "c". For example scena and cena sound different (I know the vowel is also different)
Isn't unvoiced th sound used by older speakers of Venetian on the countryside? I got surprised when you said that Florentine language is the only one that has TH sound in Italy...
As for Spanish, final th or at least a sound close to it can be also find in Mexican Spanish spoken by upper classes in Mexico City.
Doubling the pronoun with piacere sounds totally ok in Spanish :D
Brilliant. Born in Milan but left at 2, senior university year in Florence, and yes, accept part of my soul is Italian, and the language is THE most beautiful language in the world.
ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh You are from Palermo, I lived there for 4 years. It is insane
I would say that the “TH” in Spanish is not only in Madrid but all of Castilian speaking Spain minus the small hold overs of “se seo” pronunciation in pockets of Andalucía
Generally, I can understand most Italians in cities. In isolated places, like the Alps, it gets more challenging. I was, however, really startled last year to find a Florentine cab driver almost incomprehensible. I assumed that I'd understand everyone. Nope.
Standard Italian is a linguistic planning,in fact is inspired by late medieval Tuscan but is phonological cleaned by some Tuscan phonetics like the “tuscan gorgia” (the aspiration of C like Casa is pronounced Hasa) and in digraphs -gi and -ge in Tuscan sound like the French pronunciation of J;but there are also differences in the vocabulary more formal in standard Italian compared to Tuscan that is more dialectal,and some differences also in the use of some verbal tences.
Just a note that the “Tuscan gorgia” is not very common in other parts of Tuscany but strongly found in Firenze and perhaps Siena. 👍🏻
Technically codesto in Tuscan is used a third adjective/pronoun different from questo and quello,standard italian decided to have only questo and quello,tuscan maintained all three adjectives/pronouns.
Exactly, like ese, este and aquel, ovaj onaj and taj, koko soko and asoko etc. etc.
All these videos about italian dialects has made me want to learn italian simply to hear what its about
So i should learn Italian in the South of Tuscany ? Toward Rome ?
Is the voglio to vo' contraction peculiar to Tuscan, or just an archaic poetic device?
io vo is I go, io vado!
The main reason it is said that the Italian language is spoken in Tuscany is because the cradle of the Italian language is in Tuscany. Dante Alighieri has always been considered the father of the Italian language. Another reason is the vocabulary used in Tuscany : Old Tuscan vocabulary is often found in Italian vocabularies. For example, the 'old' Tuscan farmers to say a stick, say cavicchio. Does the word ''cavicchio'' exist in another part of Italy than in Tuscany? As for ''accent'' you are right though, you should also talk about open or closed vowels according to the regions. For example , the name Daniela in Tuscany is said with an open e instead the Milanese and in northern italy close it. Thanks for your video
Credo che in Ssrdegna esista la th. In qualche posto. E nel Vèneto anche. Non è generale, ma esiste il suono sordo th inglese, θ.
I've always found it strange that Roman pronunciation tends to be heralded as the closest to standard, because Romanesco does share a fair bit in common with Tuscan. Even the weakening of the G and the C...
So intervocalically the /c/ can become [h], the /t/ can become [θ], and you said the /p/ is also changed sometimes, but to what? Did that just fly by me (in that case I'm so sorry for my low attention) or was it not included in this video?
The /p/ can become [ɸ]. It also happens with /b/, /d/, and /g/ among some speakers although it isn't as common ([β], [ð], and [ɣ] respectively).
If you're interested in hearing more examples of the Tuscan varieties, here is a link: th-cam.com/video/yBS63Im9g2U/w-d-xo.html
Gorgia toscana really would make for some fun content as each area is quite different. I learned this personally from going to a few places in Tuscany.
The /c/ becomes /ç/, it's /k/ that becomes /h/ or /x/ or disappears.
En la Romagna y en Le Marche siempre escuché decir Babbo.
An excellent explanation! I absolutely love the sound the of the Tuscan language - I remember hearing it when we used to visit my in-laws who lived just outside a village in the hills of rural Tuscany. They were both from the North (Milan and Veneto), but everyone else in the area spoke Tuscan all the time - including a host of local words. I remember one of the farmers there, who was already in his 80's, used to drive around in his little Piaggo Ape - or Lapino as he used to call it.
l'apino = piccola ape
@@simoz78 I know. He affectionately referred to it as Il Lapino
@@raylewis395 This reminds me somewhat of 'il locio', referring to male specimens of 'oca', 'goose'. It putatively comes from 'l'ocio' ('the ocio', where 'ocio' is a supposed male version of 'oca') and was dialectally combined into 'locio' in a similar way to 'l'apino' -> 'il lapino'. (Source: I'm a Florentine, but also half Scots, and thus a native speaker of Tuscan and English - though regrettably not Gaelic, ochoin, ochoin).
I wish i could speak another language cuz languages r fascinating
17:23 *in Brindisi 😜
No, a Brindisi è corretto
Fantastic video! I have loved it.
I, personally, believe I have quite a decent - may I say bilingual? Ah, controversy - italian (mind you, Turinese acent and so forth). Last summer I took my family on a journey by car from the north to the south , we have friends at La Puglia (That's the heel of the boot and it's a LOVELY region)
I was very comfortable with my italian until my friend and me went together to buy some groceries. The conversation he had with his concittadini was in deep pugliese and I must say I felt completely IGNORANT because I totally understood NOTHING, which I loved and felt very deeply humbling.
Italy is a fantastic country. I am used to accents and idioms on other languages I speak, Spanish, French, English - tetralingual ou quadrilingual? Ah, controversy again - and whenever I travel I always manage to understand whatever the region, be it Andalousian, Catalan, Galician, Scottish, Ch'ti or deep Marseillais accent. I get meanings.
Italy? From savant to doomed analphabet in an instant. Lo adoro!
The doubling of the dative happens in Spanish too, "A mí me gusta"