La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language

La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language

Dianne Hales

Language: English

Pages: 336

ISBN: 0767927702

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


“Italians say that someone who acquires a new language ‘possesses’ it. In my case, Italian possesses me. With Italian racing like blood through my veins, I do indeed see with different eyes, hear with different ears, and drink in the world with all my senses…”

A celebration of the language and culture of Italy, La Bella Lingua is the story of how a language shaped a nation, told against the backdrop of one woman’s personal quest to speak fluent Italian.

For anyone who has been to Italy, the fantasy of living the Italian life is powerfully seductive. But to truly become Italian, one must learn the language. This is how Dianne Hales began her journey. In La Bella Lingua, she brings the story of her decades-long experience with the “the world’s most loved and lovable language” together with explorations of Italy’s history, literature, art, music, movies, lifestyle, and food in a true opera amorosa—a labor of her love of Italy.

Throughout her first excursion in Italy—with “non parlo Italiano” as her only Italian phrase—Dianne delighted in the beauty of what she saw but craved comprehension of what she heard. And so she chose to inhabit the language. Over more than twenty-five years she has studied Italian in every way possible: through Berlitz, books, CDs, podcasts, private tutorials and conversation groups, and, most importantly, large blocks of time in Italy. In the process she found that Italian became not just a passion and a pleasure, but a passport into Italy’s storia and its very soul. She offers charming insights into what makes Italian the most emotionally expressive of languages, from how the “pronto” (“Ready!”) Italians say when they answer the telephone conveys a sense of something coming alive, to how even ordinary things such as a towel (asciugamano) or handkerchief (fazzoletto) sound better in Italian.

She invites readers to join her as she traces the evolution of Italian in the zesty graffiti on the walls of Pompeii, in Dante’s incandescent cantos, and in Boccaccio’s bawdy Decameron. She portrays how social graces remain woven into the fabric of Italian: even the chipper “ciao,” which does double duty as “hi” and “bye,” reflects centuries of bella figura. And she exalts the glories of Italy’s food and its rich and often uproarious gastronomic language: Italians deftly describe someone uptight as a baccala (dried cod), a busybody who noses into everything as a prezzemolo (parsley), a worthless or banal movie as a polpettone (large meatball).

Like Dianne, readers of La Bella Lingua will find themselves innamorata, enchanted, by Italian, fascinated by its saga, tantalized by its adventures, addicted to its sound, and ever eager to spend more time in its company.

Venice's Hidden Enemies: Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City

Passion on the Vine: A Memoir of Food, Wine, and Family in the Heart of Italy

Rome: A Cultural, Visual, and Personal History

Florence & Tuscany (Regional Travel Guide)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

painstakingly carved in wood, he expected a compliment. Instead the blunt Brunelleschi (1377–1446) asked him why he had put the body of a peasant rather than that of the divine son of God on the cross. “If it were as simple to create something as to criticize, my Christ would look like Christ to you and not a peasant,” Donatello snapped. “Take some wood and try to make one yourself.” Brunelleschi, trained as a goldsmith and clock maker, did exactly that, bringing his crucifix to “the highest

Criticized for a lack of majesty and grandeur in his pretty paintings, he knew the perfect tutor: the ferociously solitary Michelangelo, who had locked himself in the Sistine Chapel to paint scenes from the creation on its ceiling. When Michelangelo, squabbling with the pope, stalked off to Florence in 1511, the sculptor Bramante, who had the keys to the chapel, smuggled his friend Raphael in for a clandestine visit. After viewing the work in progress, Raphael immediately added a Michelangelesque

films—first appeared in the early twentieth century, most Italians spoke in dialect; many were illiterate. Italiano standard remained the language of the privileged, the politicians, and the priests. “After the lights went down, people would call out, ‘Who can read Italian?’ and someone would shout out the titles,” recounts Professor Sergio Raffaelle (also dapper) of the University of Rome, a scholar of language in Italian cinema. “When talking pictures came out in 1930, theaters became

teachers told me. “You can take an Italian lover, or you can watch Italian movies.” I wisely chose the latter, although the stark black-and-white “neorealistic” films that I viewed week after week turned out to be almost as wrenching as an emotional entanglement. These movies, produced from 1945 to 1952, were revolutionary, with no heroes, no happy endings, no Hollywood stardust, and often no professional actors. Directors and scriptwriters, ammucchiati (heaped together), as they put it,

screw all the girls while the rest of us schmucks have b.o.? In the following century, The Satyricon by Gaius Petronius (A.D. 27–66) lived up to the double implications of its name: a satire, from satura for medley and satyr for a mythical creature with male human traits and animal ears and tail. The narrator’s name, Encolpius, means “in the fold,” or more explicitly “in the crotch.” He fights with his friend Ascyltos (Unwearied) over the affections of a boy named Giton (Neighbor) in language

Download sample

Download

About admin