The dawn of Italian

It was probably around the turn of the 9th century that one monk from Verona, taking a break from his copying chores, wrote a riddle on the margin of a parchment: 

Se pareba boves

alba pratalia araba

albo versorio teneba

negro semen seminaba

The Indovinello dates to the late 8th- early 9th century, A.D. and is followed by a small thanksgiving prayer in Latin: gratias tibi agimus omnip(oten)s sempiterne d(eu)s. 

Riddles were a popular pastime in the middle ages, but the Indovinello Veronese (lit. 'Veronese riddle') one of a kind in that it is the first in our possession in a language that contains Italian words, albeit in its local variants. The lines of this riddle tell us of a somebody who used a pair of cows ('boves') to plow white fields ('alba pratalia') holding a white plow ('albo versorio'), sowing a black seed (negro semen). 

Who is this guy? What is he doing? Read the original text of the monk for yourself and try to find the object it hints to: 

He led two cows / plowed white fields / drew a white plow / sowed a black seed. 

This guy is the writer himself, the monk. The two cows are his fingers which draw a white pen (the white plow) across the pages (the white fields), marking the paper with ink (negro semen). As short as poetically insignificant as it may look, it stands at the turning point between Latin and italian. 

These lines were written in codex LXXXIX (84) of the Biblioteca Capitolare in Verona, Italy. The parchment, a palimpsest discovered by Schiapparelli in 1924 contains a Mozarabic oration by the Spanish Cristian Church (a document in a romance language developed in Spain by contact with the Moorish culture, probably from Toledo).
It was then brought to Cagliari and thence to Pisa before reaching Northern Italy, where it was re-used once again by our monk. 

Similar documents emerge at about the same time abroad, but most of those outside Italy written at this time are already emancipated from Latin syntax and grammar (France's Serments de Strasburg dates to 842). The later development of Italian has been indicated as one of the causes for its archaic traits that also survive into the spoken language. Italy will have to wait one more century for its language to come of age. 

In 1924, when it was first discovered, though, the Indovinello was hailed as the birth certificate of the Italian language. However, scholars today point out that its language is yet too much indebted to Latin to be called Italian although many of its elements are definitely Italian. 

In any case, these few lines are a milestone in the history of the language since they capture the time when vulgar Latin was turning into something entirely new and, short though they are shed light on the way that this was happening: it a point of non-return in the spoken language of the times. 

Though some words still stick to the Latin grammar ('boves' with an -es for the plural masculine, 'alba' with -a for plural neutral) most are indeed distinctly Italian, with no cases and the endings of Italian verbs: 'pareba', 'araba', 'teneba', 'seminaba' (for Lat. parebat, arabat, tenebat, seminabat) indicate the falling of final T in the spoken language of the time, while 'albo versorio' and 'negro semen' (notice -o for the Italian masculine) instead of singular neuter "album versorium" and "nigrum semen" show the emergence of the modern masculine. 

It is remarkable to note that 'versorio' is still the word for "plow" in today's Veronese dialect. Cortellazzo and Paccagnella say that the pl. -es of boves can be considered Ladino (a minority language of Veneto, Trentino, Friuli) and therefore romance rather than Latin, but the etymology is still disputed. It is not, however, typical of eastern romance languages (as modern Italian) since the group favors -i/e over the -es ending for the plural.

'Albo' is already vernacular, since it. blanco > bianco is a later German import (Latin would have "album" anyway).  At any rate, the -um is already gone, and the -o stands in its place.

'Pareba' and 'teneba' seem to hint to old Venetian rather than Latin (today's dialect has further sonorized the "b" in a vocalic environment, as in Italian: pareva, teneva). However, the telling signs of linguistic change are the suppression of Latin cases and endings. 

This is the most visible sign of the deep mutation from a synthetic (where the function of a word is given by a suffix attached to its end, no matter where it stands in the sentence) to an analytical language (where such function is given by a specific place in the sentence, or word order, usually S-V-O) and it looks like we are at a pretty advanced stage a this point. 

But strong morphologic and phonetic similarities between Latin and Italian remain, and unfortunately this very short riddle is the only of this kind and is not followed by similar writings from other parts of the country at this early stage. 

Comparing classical latin to Italian 

While the dynamics involving the switch from synthetic and analytic grammar have been exemplified in the previous chapter, it may be useful to dwell upon a few excerpts in Classical Latin to see how far grammatical change has gone to from the early stages into Italian: 
 
1) Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui, ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur. Hi omnes lingua, institutis, legibus inter se differunt. Gallos ab Aquitanis Garumna flumen, a Belgis Matrona et Sequana dividit (...) ( (Caesar, De Bello Gallico). 

(2) Clarorum virorum facta moresque posteris tradere, antiquitus usitatum, ne nostri quidem temporibus quamquam incuriosa suorum aetas omisit, quotiens magna aliqua ac nobilis virtus vicit ac supergressa vitium parvis magnisque civitatibus commune ignorantiam recti et invidiam. (Tacitus, De vita Iulii Agricolae liber) 

(3) Illorum brevissima ac sollicitissima aetas est, qui praeteritorum obliviscuntur, praesentia neglegunt, de futuro timent: cum ad extrema venerunt, sero intellegunt miseri, tam diu se, dum nihil agunt, occupatos fuisse. Nec est, quod ad hoc argumento probari putes longam illos agere vitam, quia interdum mortem invocant (...) (Seneca, De brevitate vitae)

The words or parts of them that are close to Italian are in italics, though an allowance must be made for -ct- and -pt, -x-, -ps-, -mn- words that in any case can be classed as part of modern (Renaissance) Italian and will have their consonant pairs assimilated to -tt, -ss, nn / gn etc later. 

Many more similarities are masked by the fact that similariities are better spotted when they appear in the ablative singular: in (1) you would have 'parte', 'una', 'flume' (old) if the words were in the ablative case, while in (2) you would see 'claro', 'facta', 'nostri'... and in (3) something similar would apply to aetate (old it.), ven(n)er(o), pro(v)ar(e), l(u)nga.  

A few more examples will suffice: 

1) omnis abl. omne > O.I. onne, MI ogni, but divisa, lingua, nostra are quite the same in both languages 

2) clar-orum (abl. claro) became OI claro, then 'chiaro', but invidia(m) is MI/PI 

3) Illorum (abl. s. illo) has turned into the article [il]lo, brevissima is also MI/PI and so is the -issima/o still used to make superlatives. 

4) Bellissima is as much a feminine superlative in Latin as it is in Italian

The Italian superlatives, formed by adding -issimo (m) /a (f) to the adjectival root closely follow Latin grammar even in the exceptions: those  ending in -er make the superlative in -errimus/a (it. celeberrimo, like lat. celeberrimus etc). 

A language of vowels

While allitteration can sometimes be found in Latin alongside end-rhyme, the Italian language traditionally bases its meter on vocalic value (see also dura/paura in Dante's terza rima below) since the long/short vowel opposition no longer exists in Italian and therefore cannot shorten or lengthen the verse. In poetry, rhythm is only measured on the number of syllables and and the recurrence of certain vowels, often with end-rhyme. 

On the contrary, length of vowels is vital in Latin verse and consonantal allitteration is more important, while in Italian the repeated occurrence of the same consonantal sounds is the exception rather than the rule: when it is used it usuallly discontinues the natural flow of speech. 

If you want to say that something started you, you will loose that uniform vocalic flow built upon those short vowels. You will want to convey your 'disordered flow of speech' by using that quick rhythmic pounding of Anglo-Saxon poetry. When Dante gets lost in the dark wood on a path that leads him to hell (Divina Commedia, "Inferno"), he describes the glommy scene in these words: 

Ah quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura 

esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte 

che nel pensier rinova la paura 

En:

"How hard it is to tell what it was 

This wood savage and dangerous and inpenetrable 

When I think of it  I feel again that fear 

(One day Dante, in the spring of 1300 is walking in the Florentine countryside and gets inexplicably lost in a strangely dark forest. No light (Divine Salvation) shines from the dark trees and branches that close around him, it's impossible the way out. He's soon surrounded by a lion and a wolf, their fangs open wide, ready to gulp him down to death, for eternal death is the punishment for unrepenting sinners. He is scared, because he feels there is indeed no way out (of sin: the dark wood). 

As he starts feeling remorse for his sins, however, the ghost of Virgil comes to his aid. Virgil is sent by God to guide him on a pilgrimage through the dark wood into hell, and out, until he Beatrice appears to lead him to Paradise andn then to Heaven. 

Though text like this comes inevitably with older words, it is not difficult for Italian speakers to read and understand the most of it, even when reading obscure passages from the Cantica of Paradise, which is more complex and higher in tone, for most of these words are still part of present-day Italian. 

A dictionary will be needed only in a few cases, the vastness of Dante's philosophical, historical, biblic and mythological hints being the real stumbling block to the student of the last two Cantiche of the Commedia rather than the language per se. 

The Florentine and especially Dante's language is surprisingly quite faithful to Latin lexicon but good Italian speakers can also read it without too much trouble because his language has inspired all the greatest writers from the middle ages to the present day and was taken as an ideal model when the blueprint  for toda's standard was conceived in the 1500s.

That the Italian language has not changed at the same speed that other European languages have is one reason why it resembles Latin unlike no other romance language. However, it must be remarked that calling Latin a 'dead language' is more of a cliché since there is much of it in most romance languages and particularly Romanian.  

However, that romance languages are so a good extent a kind of 'vulgar' Latin has been proven by scholars and a few bliographical hints may suffice in this short survey. If there was indeed a switch at some point, it was never anything like a divorce, and time and time again the romance world has drawn 'fresh blood' from his mother language, almost every time a neologism enters the romance world. 

It is revealing that the gist of Latin sentences, if not the whole meaning can be inferred by fluent speakers of romance languages, and that in Italy the Germanic superstratum has had only a relative impact on romance dialects. This is especially true of Italian, where these wordws are confined to a handful. 

Allitteration, also typical of German languages, has never made its way as a typical feature of italian poetry and can be heard in spoken Italian only in jokes. Making an alliterative sentence can either prevent an Italian grasping the meaning of a sentence or stammer (a fact quite rare among Italian speakers), the reason why it is best preferred in word-games, as in scioglilingue (lit. "melting of the tongue"), or tongue-twisters. 

A teacher may use them as warmers for starting out a lesson, and scioglilingue are also part of popular tradition. The 'ice-breaking' power of a 'scioglilingua' lies in its hight dentsity of consonants piled within a single word, the presence of difficult consonant clusters: "sotto la panca la capra canta (the sheep sings under the bench), / sopra la panca la capra crepa (the sheep dies over the bench)", "tigre contro tigre", "trentatré trentini andavano trotterellando...etc.."

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