Camilleri: "The dialect does not exist, the League wants to go back centuries"

by Federica Fantozzi
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Andrea Camilleri, author of detective novels whose protagonist, the charming Montalbano of Vigàta, he has a very small victory. He sponsored the revival of the Sicilian dialect, scattered freely within its pages and landed well, a little 'away and sometimes unwillingly, in the minds of readers. Including those (many) of the Lombardo Veneto.
Camilleri, the League re-launches his mind: the dialect at school, in place names, food labels, in the subtitles of TV dramas.
"The dialect is not only important, is the lifeblood of our Italian language. But in and of itself is meaningless, if not in the language. Especially the teaching of the dialect in school is a nonsense. You see, in Italy the risk was the loss of the dialect. But you can not go the opposite and choose a language dialect.
What is the risk that you run? Isolation? Fragmentation?
"The dialect does not exist. There are, as Pirandello, the spoken. In Sicily there are as many as there are cities, and is different from Catania dall'agrigentino which is different from Palermo. When I wrote The move of the horse, I did help from a Genoese to translate her dialect. And yet the Genoese, I wrote to clarify: it is that of a particular area of Genoa. "
So who has learned some 'of Sicily, the' pirtuso 'to' picciriddro ', his novels about what he learned in reality?
'A speech that certainly enriches the language and communication. But mine, among other things, the Sicilian is bogus. "
In short, we must reverse the hierarchy of facts?
"It is good to preserve and study the dialects, but the language has been going on since receiving words, images and sounds from the periphery toward the center. Otherwise it is the Italian who died. O becomes the colony, as has the English words or too technical that no one understands. "
That the League is a boutade, a regression or a warning?
"For me it is a wake-up call. It should not be taken as a simple boutade. With Berlusconi prone, ready to fulfill 90% of wishes Bossi, they become dangerous to be ridiculous. Classes will return to the first of the of Commons, a running back over the centuries? Well. But it is un'idiozia total.
So, do you agree with Professor Asor Rosa Without the frame of the national language dialects become folklore, an impoverishment and a return to the past?
"But of course. It is a very serious mistake in opposition. "
Beyond the literary inventions, the world would work a completely "local" neighborhood where each speaks in its own way? 'Alone. And then serve a passport to go to Trastevere by Meadows. But on. That this debate is born during the 150 years of the unification of Italy I find repellent. The Italian unit has a thousand faults, but delete them back is pure folly. "
Zaia contends that the Neapolitan craftsman selling coral in Thailand should not lose his mother tongue or embarrassment, and schools and institutions have a duty to help him.
"I escape the terms of reasoning. The craftsman has to sell its products in Italian that customers do not understand. The common ground of understanding is Italian, as is the Constitution. The Charter does not say that Italian is the official language because it is natural, of course, elementary. "
What then remains of his land? And as you passed?
"The family dialects are spoken. Are preserved through daily use. But we can not impose in any way. "
Zaia proposes to use for food premises, next to the Italian in the original also. So the foods that Adelina prepares for Montalbano could have dual label: 'purp' next to octopus, 'pasta' ncasciata 'alongside a pasta al forno,' passuluna for black olives. What do you think?
"Of course. I propose to label the politicians who make these proposals. Place of origin, level of education and local name.
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15 August 2009
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