Dear travellers,

If we consider its origins of the Italian language, it should not surprise us, as long as we appreciate not only its playfulness but also its complexity. ​Unfortunately these days everything pushes us to simplify, but the Italian language is an example of joyful complexity yet to be discovered.

Italian was in fact born as a high, versatile and profound language: ”It is an invented language shaped by poets and writers over the centuries. It can be formal, burocratic and noble but it is also oriented towards creativity and verbal play, the extraordinary capacity of metaphorical expression. italian for the richness of its rhymes, introduced by poets, from the Dolce Stil Novo, from Dante Alighieri, Petrarca, Boccaccio, from grat writers, intellectuals and illustrious philosophers, rejuvened today by music, to rap music”.

(Professor Jossa, Royal Halloway University of London).

Thanks to Italy’s central role in the Bel canto tradition, over the centuries the Italian Language spread to the international world music, particularly Opera. The librettos were written  in Italian, due to its natural musicality and phonetic characteristics that many found fascinating. A language prone exprerssing emotions and feelings.

Knowing and speaking Italian as a second language certanly means dealing with a different culture but aboveall it is to accept the challange of its complexity – just like stumbling over the subjunctive is a common risk for many italians too but then being able “to sing it” one day be … Like a melody for the soul!

Languages all are “living beings” that change and evolve over time and keep on evolving. The Language we speak and you students listen and study, is unfortunately going through a very difficult time.

Our way of living, is strongly influencing the way we express ourselves and use the grammar. The spread of the internet and social media is severely influencing and impoverishing our language – the lexicon used as “replicants” or used as “skilled manipulators” to stun or disrupt, as in politics, in commercials, in public debates but also in strictly private conversations, in relationships.

​A popular song from the ‘60 song:

Us as italians are certanly part of the problem, we don’t love our language at all, maybe becouse we don’t know its beauty intimately. We are damaging the Italian language by abandoning the subjunctive for the imperfect, with the irregular usage of reading and writing skills, resulting in lexical and syntactic impoverishment.
So our much admired beautiful language shrinks every day more.

On the contrary words ego-referred and assertive abound everywhere, contemptous of grammatical rules and good dialogue: words compete to take first place, often they aim to hurt and annihilate the receiving end whose only purpose is to win, proving they’re right.

Thankfully for those that love the Italian language there still something we can do that is – using our beautiful Italian language every day, not with pride, but with awareness, with curiosity and with gratitude to those who created it over the centuries and made it a masterpiece!

Giuseppe Ungaretti, poet

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Have a good trip… I’ll see you in the South!

Cinzia