Specials

If it is true that in the U.S. the acquisition of knowledge is a consumer good, how can we motivate students of any ethnicity to choose Italian as a second language? We will try to give several responses. Italian is the language of reclaimed identity for those third, fourth, or successive generations of Americans of Italian descent. This is true, but it is not enough. Nostalgia and lack of confidence in oneself, in one’s own “ubi consistam”, are not sufficient justifications, and moreover, they refer to only one ethnic group within a population of three hundred million Americans.

Italian is the language of culture, art, music, history, and law. Yes, but this is also not enough, because all of these beautiful things can be learned from texts in different languages. Italian is the language of the most beautiful game in the world: soccer. Yes, but Americans, despite their creation of a strong group of soccer moms, have not yet submitted to the collective insanity of goleadors and the subtleties of the game. Italian is the language of the country that – according to Americans – has the most refined sense of lifestyle, fashion, design, and food. This is also true, but not enough. It is still not enough.
But why, then, should American students learn Italian? We will try to give another reason that is not often cited. From a linguistic point of view, Italian is a concise (or “synthetic”) language while English is an analytic one. With the conjugation of verbs and the endings of nouns, in Italian there is no need to constantly use personal pronouns and possessive adjectives so that the listener understands what is being said. Therefore, in studying Italian, we give our mental faculties a differently structured way of thinking, a different tool with which to solve problems and find solutions. Our brains gain an extra gear. One could argue that Spanish and French also have a similar linguistic structure. Certainly, but they do not have the sound, harmony, and musicality of the most beautiful language in the world. Spanish has the hard and inhaled sounds of castanets and nobility. The French language explodes its grandeur through the nose and throat. This is not so for the Italian language, which sings of the beauty that surrounds it, the beauty that Italy created without interruption from prehistory until today. Italy is the only country in the world that has never stopped producing masterpieces, which amount to over 60% of the world’s total according to the U.N.’s statistics. And perhaps Italy would not have succeeded if the progression from Latin to the language of Dante Alighieri and Umberto Eco was not accompanied by a gradual, continuous choice of the sweeter, more lyric, or more onomatopeic sounds for its new vocabolary.
Our language has even succeeded in absorbing words imposed by centuries of invasions, returning them to the people who conquered us and reclaiming them in our own speech.
These reasons are never mentioned, but they are perhaps most important in the Italianization process which is intent on accumulating culture not as dry knowledge, but as understanding of oneself and of one’s own “becoming,” in a world that is increasingly less conscious of an individual’s value and more vulnerable to second-rate forms of individuality.

*Vice Secretary General of CGIE (General Council for Italians Abroad) for Anglophone countries