SDLC 105 Journal #6

[Chelsea Prough]

Knowing a language's history can definitely impact how you learn that language, because it provides you with a wider view of understanding. History allows you to compare the language you're studying with the language it descended from, and allows you to see how it transformed along the way. It's also useful to see how your language spread throughout the rest of the world. In my case, studying Italian, history plays a major role. Italian is a Romance language descended from Latin. Out of all the Romance languages, it is the most linguistically similar to Latin in terms of vocabulary. This was helpful to me as a student. I learned Italian originally in elementary school when I lived there, but my middle school back in the US required us to take Latin. Knowing how Italian worked really helped with Latin grammar and similar words, and then I was able to understand Italian vocabulary better because I could relate the Latin roots to them. When I studied Italian for a second time (in college, and then living in Italy again), my four years of Latin background helped make it relatable in addition to the Italian basis I already had. Latin was spoken commonly on the Italian Peninsula until the early 14th century, until the Florentine dialect began to take precedence. This later developed into standard Italian. Italian is also a language characterized by many dialects. This resulted from all of the different regions in the Italian Peninsula being separate kingdoms until Italy's unification in 1861. At that point, Italian derived from the Florentine dialect took precedence as the "mainstream" standard--although only 2.5% of the Italian population could speak that standard language in 1861! Today, knowing standard Italian can help (somewhat) in seeing how the dialects differentiate. Two variations are so different that they're considered "official regional languages" (Sardinian and Friulian). I lived in Sardinia when I was young and didn't experience this too much in the particular area where I lived, but there was definitely a distinction inland in some of the much older towns. Fortunately, both of the areas I lived in Italy (northeast Sardinia and Rome) spoke the central Italian dialect, which is most similar to standard Italian. One of my favorite Roman sayings is the greeting "salve" (pronounced sal-vay), which shows the extent of Latin's effect on Italian...the Roman salutation is also "salve" (pronounced sol-way)!