“Safeguarding and passing on the language of our tradition, a heritage made up of words, images, sounds from a whole world that risks becoming extinct with the succession of times and generations.
On the thrust 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 took over six years of work, and that collects 3,310 Italian words corresponding to 5,855 dialectal terms, for a total of over 9,000 entries, 580 popular sayings and idiomatic phrases and an appendix with tables and insights on personal names, places, typical dishes and professions, for a total of over 53,000 data overall.
The dictionary was presented last night to the large audience present in the ECF Conference Room – and via video link – in the presence of State Secretary for Education and Culture Andrea Belluzzi and many guests from the cultural and educational world of San Marino.
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 the City and Serravalle and all the valuable informants involved in the various steps of the research. essays by the Vice President of the Fredrich Schurr Institute, Professor Gilberto Casa precious and by the expert in languages and glottology Alex Michelotti, the text maintains a simple approach, written imagining as a user. “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, since” this dictionary will show its full range in a hundred years! ” as Professor Valentina Rossi will affirm in her speech.
Just to the professor Gilberto Casadio, one of the highest authorities regarding the study of Romagna dialect, was asked to explain to the public the origin of the dialects, a topic that is also explored in the Dictionary. “Those of our peninsula – Casadio underlines – 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 light up 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 sideboard, word that comes from the Greek mactra (a pan in which bread was kneaded), which arrived in our area with the Byzantines.
Following Professor Alex Michelotti, expert in languages and glottology and passionate scholar of the San Marino dialect, brought a technical study, useful for understanding the complexity of the San Marino dialects, where there are significant differences even between limited and closely connected areas. “The drafting of a dialect dictionary represents a monumental challenge primarily on the front 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, history and philosophy teacher and expert in San Marino history, he instead dealt with 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 in the family there was like a jump: 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 notes, Rossi focused on the important figure of San Marino poet Pietro Rossi, for Poiammarinese affirming how “in a society where even the times of family life have changed, the children are increasingly “fed” by the communication tools they have in their hands, but the need for affective communication remains! The dialect will evolve, it will become different but daily communication will have its own code“.
It will soon be made available to everyone the video of the presentation 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 Dictionary of San Marino dialect:– at Ente Casa di Faetano – at the Banca di San Marino branches for customers and account holders.
And then the ebook version of the Dictionary is being finalized, made in a responsive formula for a better application across the different devices, a tool that will allow you to update the publication.
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