Journal of Italian Translation

36
Journal of Italian Translation
called tovaglia da tavola. And these differences in vocabulary were not exceptions
but the rule. I also brought home words of other lives, for which
we had no equivalents and no experience, such as ananàs (pineapple), banana,
dátteri (dates). When I went to middle school, where I was taught by
teachers who had studied Latin and Greek for many years, I discovered
that some of the words in my vernacular were from Greek--catoia, collura-and
that some had retained the ancient pronunciation for the oi diphthong
vasilicoi for básilico. Later, when I read La Divina Commedia, I learned that
some of the meanings still current in my so-called dialect but no longer so
in modern Italian were used in Dante’s time: stipare, for instance, for putting
things away in a stipo (cupboard).. The language has a vocabulary that’s
different from Italian, a smattering of French and Germanic words, as well
Italian words whose endings are closer to Latin; in addition, we pronounce
the first syllable of the word mamma as a nasal schwa, and have a nasal
tight rendering of other phonemes.
We don’t trill or roll our rs. We say them against our teeth. Our metaphors
are different: while in Italian stir-fried vegetables are affogati
(drowned) in my mother tongue they’re startled; our syntax is the same
with few exceptions: we use the possessive as a suffix, instead of a separate
word before the noun, not mio padre (my father), but pátrema. Again, when
I say my dialect, my vernacular, I mean the spoken, not written tongue, of
my home town. Not my province, my region, but my hometown.
Mastering Italian, the living language we had to use at school and
with strangers, was the biggest challenge of my life between the ages of
five and fifteen, and the beginning of what would turn out to be a long
trans-lation, a life-long picaresque journey. As long as I lived in my hometown,
I was always translating. One language at school, one at home and in
the neighborhood. We were expected to speak Italian with the people from
out of town, translating sometimes for them if they did not understand the
shopkeepers. It was only when I went away to school at the age of ten to
attend a college prep school—my town did not have one at that time—that
I switched to Italian for good.
Still, I enjoyed listening to the poetry recited in the mother tongue.
I’m thinking of the satirical poems written for carnevale, the verses of exaggerated
praise improvised for certain new year’s celebrations, as well as
the serious dialect poetry which was sometimes published in the paper.
It’s a thrill even today to hear anything literary in that language. An unusual
occurrence. It’s hard to find poets let alone books. People were discouraged
and even punished for speaking the mother tongue, or rewarded,
as I was, for using the Italian language correctly, and they were never asked
to write in it. The vernacular is by definition unwritten. Even so, some poets
chose to write in it. Unfortunately, they seldom found an audience outside
of their towns. What Luigi Bonaffini has done in this country in his
anthologies of dialect poetry, collections which offer the original mother
tongues, as well as the Italian versions and the English, is indeed a rare