WALSERSPRACHE - The four main objectives of the Alpine Space ...

VERS UNE “LANGUE” DES WALSERS: LA PERSPECTIVE DIACHRONIQUE ET COMPARATIVE
them. The Walsers have elected Titzschu, their ancestral language, as the aptest verbal
medium to pass on their civilisation. It happens however their language is on the brink
of extinction and therefore it needs revitalizing. To do so the narrow boundaries of an
oral-only approach must be overcome and this language studied from an historical perspective.
To achieve this historical dimension we need delve in writings and Alagna
Valsesia, Piedmont, has them in abundant supply. An entire collection of writings about
a grammar and dictionary of Titzschu were found in a recently bought historical mansion.
They belonged to a group of intellectuals and mountain climbers, among whom
Giovanni Giordani, Antonio Carestia, Giovanni Gnifetti and Giuseppe Farinetti. They
founded a literary circle. Elisa Farinetti and Paolo Viazzo described their achievements
in two different books. Besides the grammar and dictionary, several other pieces of writing
(literary translations, essays, private letters, notary deeds, etc.) have surfaced and
they have been placed at our disposal by the Farinetti family. We have not as yet been
able to publish them, but we have drawn words from them for insertion in our dictionary.
The presence of such a large number of writings and the pristine state of Titzschu in
Alagna Valsesia turn the equation around, and we can certainly avail ourselves of these
major findings to draw a time-differentiated portrait of this language. Alagna in particular
owes this older pattern of language to its unique geographical emplacement. When
studying words, we reject the proposition that words in this community were moulded
after Italian, a language with hardly any penetration here. If anything at all,
Piedmontese should be taken into account. Comparing the endings of words under investigation,
we come to the conclusion they are of the oldest possible Germanic stock. We furthermore
encounter verbs with two infinitives, one of which must be from a much older
form and thus a key to a time-differentiated study of this language. Be as it may, one no
longer can study Alagna’s Titzschu as a mere oral form of language. Basing ourselves on
the documents we have, we drew lengthy and detailed dictionary entries, unthinkable of
before. Very seldom words had to be created from scrap, since most of the time they
already existed and this language is a match even for major official languages.
Whenever creating a new word one has to strictly abide by the rules of neology and
ensure its acceptance by language informants. We cannot avoid enriching and updating
this language at a time of mass-communication. Language informants however are
not solely responsible for every entry, since they themselves fail to remember every word
of their language. At any rate, they must not be made to work with two languages, as if
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