Tag Archives: italy
Beppe Grillo revisitedby Mario Fusco
Over the last few years, as an unavoidable consequence of online reporting and blogging, there has been a general degradation in the language of public discourse. For instance, the unmistakable reliance on automatic spell checkers is evident in many stories, and there has been a general relaxation of the rules of grammar, sometimes at the expense of intelligibility.
So, why does the observation above have a place on an Italian blog? Because of the following excerpt (“Crazy days in Rome with papal and political void”, Associated Press, under the byline Victor L. Simpson):
Yet perhaps the biggest gatecrasher of all is Beppe Grillo, who has upset the established order by riding a self-styled “tsunami” of disgust with the powers-that-be and grabbing a quarter of the parliamentary vote.
Italian Creativity! by Mario Fusco
So, what if you’re a library and have a few thousand books you need to recycle, and are in need of a nice new checkout desk? And of course you have a limited budget (everyone has a limited budget these days!)
Well, you get creative and avoid buying a new desk, using THAT money to replace the recycled book with shiny new bestsellers, as shown in the pictures below!
Italian Library Desk
Book Desk
It certainly gives a new meaning to the phrase ‘book desk’. Now, what if a patron wants to check out the book located four books to the left, six books down, and three books in? Definitely a challenging architectural problem!
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Acqua Alta a Venezia by Mario Fusco
Different reactions to the recent flooding (acqua alta) in Venice.
Tristezza
Allegria
Indecisione
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The Evolution of the Italian Language, alas! by Mario Fusco
Italian Language Revisionism
It is no news that, for several years, separatist tendencies have become apparent in Italian political and social life. The “rich” North sees itself as a bastion of probity, industriousness, and fiscal responsibility, and profess that they are tired of picking up the tab for the shiftless, corrupt, crime-ridden South. The South sneer at the Northerners’ sanctimoniousness, and point out that the backward state of the South is in large part a consequence of the policy of despoliation and neglect that followed the annexation of the Southern Kingdom by the Kingdom of Sardinia in 1861. And, they rightly add, corruption is not an exclusive of the South, witness the scandals rooted in the very inner sanctum of the Northern League involving Bossi, Il Trota, and other personages of the Lega. More extreme Northern groups avow that they would like to see a divided peninsula, a northern Padania and a southern who-knows-what, from which presumably they could draw cheap labor, sort of like Mexicans in the US or Turks in Germany, but without the language problem.
And speaking of language, Italian, the language of Dante and Petrarca, is being corrupted and bastardized by the controversy. The letter “k”, missing from the modern Italian alphabet, is increasingly being reintroduced to produce the sound we all know, heretofore produced by the letter “c” or the combination “ch”. In extreme manifestations even the letter “q” gets replaced by “k”, resulting in a written language that is, at first glance, unrecognizable by Italian speakers. The tendency to do this appears to be localized in the extreme North of the country, so that it seems another mechanism for diversity and separation. Amateur psychologists and linguists could go far speculating on this predilection for the letter “k”. Here we’ll just note that experts in these matters tell us that the letter “k” occurs in German 1.3% of the time, in English 0.7% of the time, in French 0.1%, in Spanish and in Italian 0%. The widespread use of “k” to replace the present instances of “c”, “ch” and “q” in Italian would result in a frequency of occurrence of the letter ”k” of approximately 2.2%, satisfyingly outdoing, at least linguistically, those lucky Germans, who are so much more “northern” than us Italians! (But not outdoing the Ku Klux Klan, who are at 30% in their name!)
Below is an example such k-pregnant prose, reproduced unedited from a website best left unidentified.
Unlawful to die in Italy! by Mario Fusco
Cimitero di Carinola
Not for the Mayor of Falciano to find a mundane solution such as contracting with Carinola to bury Falciano’s dead in Carinola’s cemetery, or of building a new cemetery for Falciano. Better not to allow anyone to die: more humane, more cost effective, and ecologically sounder. No penalty is specified for contravening the anti-death city ordinance, and it is known that at least two elderly residents of Falciano have shamelessly contravened it already.
Your virtual gateway to Italy by Mario Fusco
Benvenuti! Here you will find information about Italy and all things Italian, from language instruction to Italian restaurant reviews, from Italian events in the Bay Area to travel tips, from Italian food recipes to glimpses of Italian life.
Browse our posts: they run the gamut from general culture to the history of Italian immigration, from interesting tidbits about Italian products and Italian lifestyle to fascinating historical details about places that you have never heard of. We go from big cities such as Rome and Naples to achingly beautiful mountaintop hamlets such as Dozza and Bertinoro. Brush up your Italian skills with our weekly Grammar Tidbit, or access our free online Italian Grammar, complete with pronunciation guide and most used phrases and words.
And let us hear from you. If you have an interesting story to contribute, if you have a question, if you have a compliment or (alas!) a complaint, let us know, and we will respond.
ARRIVEDERCI!
Italy in Europe
Leonardo again – and the Bank of America? by Mario Fusco
Banks are not well-loved, these days, for reasons that are familiar to all of us. But here’s a story that shows that even banks may on occasion exhibit a social conscience and an artistic sensibility. The article below is a fragment (in free translation) from a longer article which has appeared on the Corriere della Sera, the newspaper of Milano.
The Codex Trivulzianus, one of Leonardo da Vinci’s earliest manuscripts, part of the collection of the Biblioteca del Castello Sforzesco in Milano, will be restored. The Bank of America Merrill Lynch Art Conservation Project will finance the restoration. This will not be the Art Conservation project’s only enterprise: 20 works of art and artifacts of great cultural and historic value, gathered from 19 countries, have been selected for restoration.
DIGITAL RESTORATION – The Trivulzian Codex, a collection of Leonardo’s drawings and writings, is comprised of 55 folios dated between 1478 and 1490, and it is one of the most significant documents of the Italian Renaissance. It is a unique testimonial to the eclecticism of the Italian artist/inventor: it contains notes, drawings and studies of religious and military architecture (amongst which a sketch for the cupola of the Duomo di Milano), but also analyses of the Italian language and observations on the literature of the time. Using cutting-edge software capable of producing virtual copies of Leonardo’s technical designs, the restoration project will result in a digital version of the manuscript which will remain impervious to the passage of time and will facilitate academic research, while rendering it more accessible to the lay public.
So, kudos to the Bank of America, and never mind the tax writeoffs they will take. They are doing a good thing for all of us.
Codex Trivulzianus
Codex Trivulzianus
Leonardo da Vinci by Mario Fusco
Vitruvian Man
Such an undisputed genius was the Italian polymath Leonardo da Vinci, whose contributions as a scientist and artist truly boggle the mind. A description of the achievements of this Renaissance Italian must perforce include hyperbole, but this time amply justified and probably even short of the mark.
Leonardo lived from 1452 to 1519, was born in a hamlet near Vinci, and apprenticed in Florence in the bottega of Verrocchio. Most of his professional life, however, was spent in Milano, under the sponsorship of that city’s ruling family, the Sforza. A complete characterization of Leonardo’s professional curriculum would include sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, inventor, anatomist, and more.
Everything Italian on one site!
Looking for Italian language instruction? Organizing a trip to Italy? What about finding the greatest Italian restaurant in the Bay Area or that ultimate recipe just like your grandma used to make? Or perhaps you spent too much time watching the game (alas!) with your buddies, and need a little Italian bauble to soothe your lovely wife’s ruffled feathers. All of these things you will find on our website. We have consolidated the contents of a couple of earlier sites to provide you with a seamless Italian experience.
Along with the new commercial elements there remains, on this site, the original focus on art, culture, and history. And we intend to grow: the ultimate aim is to provide all Italophiles of the Bay Area, and beyond, a one-stop electronic storefront that will provide intellectual stimulation alongside material possessions for gracious living. Our sister site, finestItalian.com, continues unchanged, though it, too, is slated for some enhancements.
So please come visit often, drop us a line, let us know how you feel. Buy some Italian art once in a while, or an Italian pendant for your sweetheart, or a gorgeous ceramics bowl for your holiday table. But even if you don’t, we hope to hear from you.
The Founding of Mantova
Sant'Andrea, Mantova
This version of the founding myth is reported in Virgil’s Aeneid. A competing version tells that the city of Mantova gets its name from Manth, the Etruscan god of the dead in the Thyrrenian pantheon. Virgil’s version of the myth is also found in the Divine Comedy, in Canto XX of the Inferno, in which Dante himself and his Mantuan guide, Virgil, encounter the seers. Pointing out one of these souls Virgil describes the Mantuan countryside, the Lake of Garda, and the course of the Mincio, which flows into the Po at Governolo, and then asserts, with reference to the legend of Manto:
“Fer la citta’ sovra quell’ossa morte;
e per colei che ‘l loco prima elesse,
Mantua l’appellar senz’altra sorte”
“The city was built over those dead bones;
and for she who first chose the place,
Mantua it was named with no other choice”