PRACTICE ITALIAN
A PRACTICE ITALIAN by Mariagrazia Pia
few days before the feast of the Italian Republic (on June 2, 1946 there were the first universal suffrage votes, including female suffrage), I wonder what it really means to be Italian: we are still parochialists, linked to our country village or to the city of province or regional capital, we belong to our single Region, yet, as well as Italians, we are in Europe, among the founders of this idea which was by G. Mazzini (Young Italy and Young Europe), both conceived in the first half of the 19th century by a republican like him, who had, in spite of himself, to accept that the Unification took place through the kings of Savoy and that Italy was a monarchy! In short, being Italian means being republicans, Catholics, partisans, anti-fascists, pro-Europeans, workers, because the new constitution since 1948 states that our Republic is founded on work, a right, not just a duty and if there is no work, it is unconstitutional, State must guarantee it! Is it really so? Then there is the family! This entity that cannot be questioned, can expand, shrink, can accept that the guardians of minors are called only parents and not father and mother, but it is always family! Instead, the Latin origin of the term gave to the pater familias, the head of the family, the power over wives, children, animals, things, slaves and family did not mean consanguinity, but property, the property of those “famoli” or servants, slaves!
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I’M ITALIAN - SUMMER - 2022
