I am an outsider in Italy. My Jewish heritage makes me look like an Italian outsider. But I don’t have any Italian blood in my family tree. It didn’t make sense for me to concentrate on my outside status for this month’s Italy Roundtable topic of FOREIGN.
Instead, I am doing something I love – geeking over Italian language history. It’s what I call “Italian language geekery”.
Although I find etymology fascinating, looking at alphabets takes my mind back to words. I was intrigued when I discovered that the Italian alphabet did not have the same number letters as the alphabet I grew to sing. It wasn’t until I started writing this article that I began to really dig into the history. It was very interesting to me. I hope you do, too.
Public domain photo by bernswaelz
My teachers always considered this good news: There are only 21 letters to the Italian alphabet. Although the English alphabet doesn’t have five letters, they are almost always used to “loanwords”, which are words of foreign origin that Italians have adapted, such as “yogurt,” or “jeans,” and “webcam.”
Another thing to note about the five letters that don’t make up the official Italian alphabet: Mussolini banned them in 1929.
Let me take a moment to explain.
Italian Alphabet
Italian is a direct descendant of Latin. It may be the closest living Romance language that Latin is, depending on who you ask. The ancient Latin alphabet was derived from the Etruscan alphabet. It is a descendant of the Cumae alphabet which comes from the ancient Greek alphabet. The Greek alphabet contains 24 letters. However, the Etruscans increased that number to 27. The ancient Romans reduced it to 21 letters, which they used to create the Latin alphabet.
While the 21 letters of the ancient Roman alphabet don’t correspond directly with the 21 letters of the Italian alphabet, I love the symmetry of numbers. It makes me believe there was some logic and reasoning behind it.
Here’s a list of all 21 letters in the Italian alphabet with phonetic pronunciations.
| A | kah) | Q (coo |
| B – (bees) | I | reh) |
| C | L (EH | leh) | S (EH | seh) |
| D | meh) | T |
| E eh | N (EH | neh) | U oo |
| feh) | O | V (vee or voo) |
| G [jee] | P – (pee). | tah) |
These are the five letters not included in the official Italian alphabet:
- gah)
- K – kappa (KAH | pah)
- yah voo or vee)
- X– icks
- kah or EEP
For those who are observant, the Italian name for “Y” is the “Greek “. And “kappa,” which is the Italian name to the letter “K”, is the Greek name. As I mentioned, these five letters are mostly borrowed from foreign languages (principally Greek), and are used primarily as “loanwords”, such as the ones I just discussed. Names can also be loanwords. Although there is no “J” in Italian alphabet, it’s common enough for Italians to be able to pronounce my name.
It is difficult to say that those five letters are from “foreign languages” because all the dialects and regional languages that are still widely spoken in Italy are, in a way, “foreign languages”. Jesolo is a small town located near Venice. Juventus, a popular Turin soccer team, may also be known to sports fans. These names are not Italian, but come from regional languages.
Today, languages and dialects from regional areas are more than just accepted. They are celebrated and sometimes . This wasn’t always true. It wasn’t that long ago that the dominant belief was that foreign was better than Italian. Foreign was bad.
That’s why 1929 was so difficult.
Banning Foreign Words
Censorship has been a powerful tool dictators have used to their advantage in many places and at different times. Censorship was one of the first measures they took to strengthen and consolidate their control over Italy when Benito Mussolini, the Fascists, rose to power in Italy in early 1920s.
Mussolini’s government, which was entirely composed of Fascists at this point, was nationalist to an extreme. It promoted “Italianization in everything to ” prevent polluting the Italian cultural.” On July 23, 1929, less than 70 years after the country’s first unification, the Italian government prohibited the use of foreign terms.
Perhaps you are already able to see where this is heading and why this particular piece of censorship was more problematic in one country than another. It was estimated that only 12 percent of the total population spoke in 1922, the year Mussolini became Prime Minster of Italy. Twelve percent. The rest spoke, you guessed, a wide variety of regional languages. Some of these had little or no resemblances to Italian and were all considered “foreign.”
Ostensibly, the goal was to increase the number of citizens who speak the official language. Fascists desired words from English, French and other foreign languages to be out of common use. However, dialects and other regional languages were placed in the same category with English and French. It was strictly forbidden to speak dialects or regional languages.
We are back at the beginning, as five letters were banned by the Italian government.
The letters were not banned per se. However, because they were used only in languages that the Fascists considered “foreign”, they were effectively blacklisted. Italian words were created where none existed before. Names were altered.
Some of these changes have remained constant. In Italy, Mickey Mouse is still known as “Topolino”, or “Little Mouse” today. Fascism was the first to ban dubbing foreign films into Italian. This was done to prevent foreign words from entering the ears of Italians. While many Italians speak their native languages and dialects, the Italian language is almost universally spoken throughout the country.
The censorship did not last and the five banned letters, along with all associated banned words, are now allowed in Italy. It was not codified in 2007 as the official language for Italy, but that’s another story.
Italian Language
These are some other things that I have written about the Italian language.
-
How Dante Created The Italian Language - Why You Don’t Say “Ciao!” in Italy
- is required for phone conversations
Italy Roundtable: Other Voices
See what my fellow bloggers are discussing this month! Follow me to each post. Please leave comments and share with your friends. Tune in next month to see another topic on Italy Blogging Roundtable!
- ArtTrav Refugees to Tuscany: Questions and Preconceptions
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- Italofile – From Foreign Language to Lingua Franca: Italian Immersion Programs in Italy
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