Presented the “Dictionary of San Marino dialect”, initiative Ente Cassa Faetano
Safeguard and pass on the language of our tradition, a fact of words, images, sounds of a whole world that risks becoming extinct with the succession of times and generations. On the spur of this urgency Ente Cassa di Faetano, in collaboration with the Democratic Recreational Club of Corianino, publishes the first Dictionary of San Marino dialect. A monumental project, which required over six years of work, and which collects 3,310 Italian words corresponding to 5,855 dialectal terms, for a total of over 9,000 voices, 580 popular sayings and idiomatic phrases and an appendix with tables and insights on names of person, location, typical dishes and trades, for a total of over 53,000 overall data. The dictionary was presented last night to the large audience present in the ECF Conference Room – and via video link – in the presence of the Secretary of State for Education and Culture Andrea Belluzzi and many guests from the San Marino cultural and scholastic world. The curator of the work, Graziano Bartolini, retraced the genesis of the work, underlining how the credit for this project goes to the many collaborators who contributed significantly to its drafting. In particular, Stefano Palmucci and Francesco “Checco” Guidi who collected and revised terms of Città and Serravalle and all the precious informants involved in the various steps of the research. Introduced by the precious essays by the Vice-President of the Fredrich Schurr Institute, Professor Gilberto Casadio and by the language and glottology expert Alex Michelotti, the text maintains a simple approach, written by imagining as a user like a child who knows nothing of dialect. “We did the same work as the workers in the archaeological sites – says Bartolini – cheno, they take away the baskets of sand and when they find something they highlight it, whether it is the archaeologists who say whether the find found is authentic or not, if it is interesting. or not, if it deserves to be exhibited in a museum. ” A work therefore that, while recovering the past, looks to the future, given that “this dictionary will show its full range in a hundred years!” as Professor Valentina Rossi will affirm in her speech. Professor Gilberto Casadio, one of the highest authorities in the study of the Romagna dialect, was asked to explain to the public the origin of the dialects, a topic which is also explored in the Dictionary. “Those of our peninsula – underlines Casadio – are almost all a transformation of Latin, but not of the classical one that is taught in school, but of the popular one, which did not say ignis but focus (fire). The difference between the various Italian dialects derives precisely from the fact that Latin, the language of the new ruler, was then modified according to the language previously spoken by the different peoples ”. Casadio underlined the richness and depth of the dialect, explaining how this also welcomes contaminations from other languages, as in the case of matra, the madia, a word that derives from the Greek mactra (a pan in which bread was kneaded), which arrived in our depth area with the Byzantines. Afterwards, professor Alex Michelotti, expert in languages and glottology and scholar of the San Marino dialect, brought a technical study, useful for understanding the complexity of San Marino dialects, where significant differences are recorded even between neighboring and connected areas. “The drafting of a dialect dictionary represents a monumental challenge primarily in terms of the transcription of words, because the spelling rules of the Italian language are not adequate for all the sounds of the dialect.” Michelotti continues “This problem is particularly evident when it comes to similar but orthographically different sounds, such as the length of vowels, a variable that plays a fundamental role in determining the meaning of certain words. The vowels of the dialect are in fact more numerous than the Italian ones: only in the linguistic area of San Marino there are 12 against the 5/7 of the standard language! ” Valentina Rossi, a teacher of history and philosophy and an expert in San Marino history, instead addressed the role of the dialect in the San Marino culture and the importance of safeguarding it. “Discovering that the Ente Cassa di Faetano supported this enterprise gave me enormous pleasure. For a long time I have found myself reflecting on the value of the dialect, on the heritage it contains and on why we are losing it. I myself have noticed that I understand the dialect very well but I don’t know how to speak it. Only when I grew up did I realize that there was a leap in the family: in the boom of the 1960s, parents were told that it was necessary to pass on Italian to their children, as a way to enter modernity. So my parents speak to each other in dialect – it is their language of communication, of “love” I would dare to say – but with us children they speak in Italian “. After some historical hints, Rossi focused on the importance of the San Marino poet Pietro Rossi, and then affirmed that “in a society where even family times have changed, children are increasingly” nourished “by the communication tools they have in hand, but the need for affective communication remains! The dialect will evolve, it will become different but daily communication will have its own code “. The video of the presentation will soon be made available to all on the social channels of Ente Cassa Faetano and Banca di San Marino. From Monday 8 November it will be possible to request a copy of the San Marino dialect dictionary: from Ente Casa di Faetano at the Banca di San Marino branches for customers and account holders. In addition, the ebook version of the Dictionary is being finalized, created in a responsive formula for better consultation through the various devices, a tool that will be able to be published again.
Cs Ente Cassa Faetano