Praticare l’Italiano

Lesson 2

by Mariagrazia Pia

Common saying …. from the taste buds! The wisdom and madness of a people of artists and sailors!

Here is summarized, without religious references, the Ethics, the peasant Morality, of those who think of the essential in their lives and in economic difficulties, which the Covid19 pandemic has perhaps made it less shameful to mention, even for those who accompanied bread with precious foods and the wines were recommended by sommeliers!

Understanding the meaning of this sentence, pronouncing it in Italian, means being or remembering to be Italian: the essential, what is vital, is what cannot be altered, counterfeited. We are not just talking about GMOs or about the fight against sophistication in wine, of which Italians are proud producers and exporters. The wine, then, must not be watered down .... the Truth has its alcohol content!

“Nell’acqua che non vuoi bere… anneghi”!

We cannot forget the water, but the water of our Italian grandparents was sometimes from the well, rain from gutters that are not always so clean .... Better, the wine that was healthier for fermentation. Drinking from rivers, near streams, could be dangerous, if grazing or wild animals had just immersed themselves in them ... you could get sick! Yet in the water you do not want to drink ... you drown: fate, tragic, leads you to face what you wanted to avoid and, at times, this people of fishermen and sailors, metaphorically, drown.

It is important to understand this popular saying of generations ago, when people were still leaving for America, (“Merica” as those who did not think they had to take a language course to emigrate said ....)

One cannot fail to mention Dante, the sad experience of exile for him, of emigration for others ....

BREAD TO BREAD AND WINE TO WINE

Spring 2022

Of course, prophesying the need to get used to nonTuscan, unsalted bread is a warning for everyone, even today, in times of cultural, technical-scientific and gastronomic globalization: it tastes of salt, it burns the food of exile, of distance, it doesn’t matter if it’s tastier…. It is understood that exile from one’s city, from one’s homeland is painful, even 700 years after the death of the Poet.

“La vendetta è un piatto da servire freddo”

I cannot guarantee the Italianness of this sentence, but we must always alternate hot and cold dishes and our linguistic menu is also a game of understanding and identification of an Italy which, despite being among the most industrialized countries, maintains a peasant soul ... as well as artistic and seafaring, by explorers, migrants, scoundrel, also in his finding a solution, but also the Time ... of revenge!

“L’olio viene sempre a galla”!

How many Italian-Americans who remember expanses of olive trees, from Liguria to Sicily, recognize their provenance from acidity, color, processing! Well, it shouldn’t be me, a Piedmontese, (among the vineyards, with olive trees that now appear, as decorative trees, more than anything else, like palms and even banana trees amazed to exist in the bush), that the oil, the problem, the lie, pain…. always comes to the surface! Lighter than water, even if it does not seem colored, you imagine it dense, capable of going to the bottom, of being forgotten!

Even atheists know that the wicked never finish his job well, something leaves it to chance: the “good devil”, to save on his household supplies, leaves out that accessory! The water for the pasta boils more slowly, the aromas and flavors evaporate, the food of life will be more tasteless.

“Il diavolo fa le pentole ma non i coperchi “!

That may be why they invented pressure cookers… so as not to leave the devils… to put their hands on their negligence and their attempts at good food… of Life.

“Donne e buoi dei paesi tuoi!”

Here is an Italian saying, peasant, from North to South, which today could be accused of discrimination, even in a society, even the Italian one, now multi-ethnic and multi-racial, interreligious and gastronomic, which is really an excellent way, to make us all feel curious. inhabitants of this planet, at any latitude. Curiosity about food and drink can unite as much as English monolingualism, the Internet and the web! Only the saying remains, that women are something you take from home… wherever you go. Or it happens that first he made them similar to you, yoked to your habits, your idiosyncrasies…. Certainly a sentence of a shameless machismo, but we are in times when we want equality, we could also say…. “Men and oxen of your countries”!

Certainly the “pio ox” of the poet Carducci is no longer fashionable: one could speak of cars, of clothes instead of the ox that tastes of work, of yoke and abstinence from the pleasures of the most daring bull ...

Except that there are phrases that remain in the unconscious of Italians and that also culture, globalization, life experiences will leave unforgettable and perhaps with fatal consequences. “Women and oxen from your countries… sometimes they are not nations, they are really, regions, provinces the limit of choice!

I’m Italian….it also means remembering that we have a peasant tradition, before being an industrial one, that we have been divided for centuries and subjected to foreigners and that a unified history since 1861, with Rome as the capital in 1871: complete unification with the First World War is little compared to nations that have had centuries to unite, speak to each other in the same language, not just literary, to merge aware and happy with other peoples!

We are still dialectal in mentality, with a very flat and incomplete average spoken and written Italian and the Accademia della Crusca, born in the 17th century with its vocabularies, must always defend us from attacks from both local languages, which in any case are ours, as well as from xenophilia, which we have in the blood! If we can quote in another language, we feel more cultured!