“SPEAK AS YOU EAT!”

by Mariagrazia Pia

Isan Italian proverb to make it clear that our language must be sincere, genuine, like a food whose recipe and ingredients we know.

So I will propose a "tasting" of Italian words, of idioms, trying to warn against common mistakes for foreigners, hoping to arouse nostalgia in those who do not write or read in Italian, do not speak and understand it, but he knows that, in his family origins or in those of his friends and acquaintances, this conviction circulates: “I'm Italian”.

On 14 September 1321, the father of the Italian language, the great poet, Dante Alighieri, died in Ravenna. In celebrating the seven hundred years of his death worldwide, we ask him for a living word on the Italian of the twenty-first century, not the language of the classics, of the fourteenthcentury poets. Here, by magic, he gives us two words to reflect on: "paura /fear", "noia/boredom".

After seven hundred years they are still the words of our daily life: only the term "paura" has remained as it is not only in our vocabulary, but in our hearts, needless to say what it is, on a global level, in these two years.

Instead "noia" is almost becoming a luxury, but not in the original meaning, in which we read it in Hell: it indicated "angoscia/anguish", "tormento/ torment", "dannazione/damnation". By now getting bored is a sign of decadence, a state of mind for the rich, for the privileged, to be ashamed of. Unfortunately, we are back to boredom as torment, to anxiety, to the anguish of Dante's journey, when he said he was lost in the dark forest and did not understand how it was possible, "pien di sonno/full of sleep" when he entered!

Here too we often do not realize how we ended up in the worst of our real nightmares, both individually and collectively: reason "dormire/sleeps"!

Being able to say I'm Italian is also recognizing that this poet, seven hundred years after his death, speaks to us at a universal, world level, also globalized, reinterpreted and celebrated in the various continents, but certainly Dante Alighieri and The Divine Comedy for an Italian of origin, (even if now of the third, fourth or fifth generation in the USA and America) is something other than all those who are not Italians.

There is an emotion in pronouncing his name and the title of his Divine Comedy, which makes your eyes shine, like drinking Chianti, even if you live in Colorado, as the writer of Italian origin, J . Fante in "The Confraternity of Grapes": this is how immigrants continued to feel Italian, tasting the wine they produced so far from Tuscany, with that Catholicism that seemed to be unaffected by other religious confessions, with that sense of family that is a bond that can strangle, but which is also an allItalian way to feel that one belongs to truly transgenerational places, traditions, memories, which the recent Philosophy deals with.

"I'm Italian" is truly an awareness that involves the five senses, not just culture, it does not stop at the knowledge of the language and literature, art and history of a nation so recent that it has only existed since 1861 and completes only since 1919!

For this there will be literary and geographical, gastronomic, artistic and historical stages, but also anecdotes and, who knows, jokes, jokes that only an Italian can understand and that I will teach to understand who is not.

Because being Italian means knowing that food is not just a matter of habit, but a tradition, a nostalgia! So even the way of joking is particular, we know how to tell private facts as if we were looking from the window of our house, towards that street that is almost never a metropolis, even the metropolis we make it into a country!

Love is something serious, tragic, magical, difficult and the family does not always accept it or is part of it! Just as politics and economics are not only topics for experts, but everyone is talking about them and wants to have their say! And every year we invent a name for a party without verifying that the people and strong ideas are always the same, but we like names, secessions, parliamentary groups, so we also need many synonyms to understand, to to deceive, to dream and also to betray.

Here this column with words will also bring ways of being and seeing, not only from Italy, but of seeing Italy and the only certain thing, even in the seismicity of our peninsula, is precisely geography, the orography and hydrography, for the rest we have a variety of plant species and ecosystems that reflect our variety of expression, still linked to the multiplicity of dialects, which young people do not speak, but which hear and are always Italian, despite the spread English and Anglisms: we understand that they are part of our blood even if we do not understand them and speak more.

Even the "digital natives" know it and feel it!

This is why I imagine a banquet, not a paltonic, philosophical symposium, but a nice table of traditional families, you don't get up, children, until you reach coffee ! At each course, at each issue, I can well wish: Bon appetit!

First tasting: let's introduce ourselves! (Lesson 1)

Warning: in Italy it is correct and polite, a sign of culture, to address adults, strangers, giving the "lei/you", not the "tu/ you" or voi/you.This is how children turn to their teachers, and so should all people, even peers, who do not have relations of familiarity or friendship. When there are age differences, the younger person always addresses the older person with the "Lei" unless invited to express themselves with greater familiarity.

I assume that a reader of I'm Italian asks me questions for the Italian course.

Reader : Good morning Mrs. Pia, I would like to ask what the scan progress.

M. Pia : Welcome. The column will be present at every issue of the quarterly I'm Italian magazine.

Reader : Could you tell me what the objectives of the course are?

M. Pia : Certainly. The readers of I'm Italian approach not only the Italian language, but the way of thinking, of behaving verbally, in daily conversation, in different situations, in the understanding of some simple written indications.

There will also be curiosities, hints of history and literature, Italian art, quotes, translated into English, but to be memorized also in Italian. For example " Lasciate ogni speranza voi che entrate / Leave all hope you who enter": it is a verse from Dante 's Inferno , but our high school students write it on the doors of the classrooms, to make the teachers understand that they are entering Hell!

Learning Italian verses and proverbs by heart is very useful, it makes you feel Italian, like: “Non dire gatto se non l’hai nel sacco / Don't say cat if you don't have it in the bag! "Is used to respond in kind when someone, for example in a presumptuous way, believes that he has achieved the goal!

Or we still use to justify even a betrayal with the verse used by Francesca da Rimini in Canto V of the Inferno: “Amor ch'a nullo amato amar perdona” ! It means that if a person is much loved, he can only give in to temptation!

In short, Italians are good at quoting, at justifying themselves with culture, with phrases that no longer even remember who they are, but they are useful!

Reader: Will it also entertain us, will it be able to intrigue us?

M. Pia: Of course yes, it is a promise! It will be a little… as you say all you can eat: at a fixed price of the magazine everyone will taste what they can and find in the variety of which they can satiate, until the next issue.

Reader : Among us there may be readers with allergies, literary or historical intolerances, linguistic difficulties…. What will you do for these people?

M. Pia: In Italy I have been an Italian teacher for 23 years! And I don't just teach native speakers, but students from all over the world who live with their families in Italy and have not often chosen to live there. So I'm also prepared for hostilities, for the dish that returns to the chef in the kitchen because it was rejected. I hope you will report what is wrong, it will also be a way to use Italian.

I will teach you the phrases of rejection, of protest, such as polite compliments and thanking ... Excuse me, thank you, please, please, could you kindly re-explain, maybe I didn't understand, it wasn't very clear, it's really difficult, we don't care, let's give up ...

In short, you will get used to using Italian tones also to express a feeling, a request for help, for explanation, for advice!

Reader : Thank you, then we look forward to your next lesson. Leave us a sentence to remember by heart?

M. Pia Sure. I would propose "Mi'illumino d'immenso " by the poet G. Ungaretti! For a landscape, a love, a moment of happiness, a book read, a film, the smile of your child ...

See you at the next lesson or tasting of Italian style!