R: Re: Distance in change

Frank Rossi iglesias at axia.it
Wed Apr 7 16:40:46 UTC 1999


Miguel CV wrote:

> But for an analysis of the system as a whole, it's not
> unimportant to add that Italian also has b, d, g; pp, tt, kk and
> bb, dd, gg...  Etruscan *only* had p, t, k and ph, th, kh.

That's correct.

> >All this *may* mean that the Tuscans, wrote "casa" (probably for
> >etymological reasons), but pronounced "hasa".

> That's the only hope the Etruscan substrate theory has: that the
> gorgia went unnoticed and unwritten for over a millennium (maybe
> in remote illiterate areas of Tuscany?) until it became
> fashionable in the Tuscan cities, sometime around 1500...

I'm not expert enough to be an authoritative supporter of either theory.
But what if all speakers in the areas of Northern Tuscany concerned spoke
like this? They wouldn't notice it, and the other Italians wouldn't have
dared to criticise them concerning their own language, at least until the
Italian literary language became consolidated in their own areas (around
1500), as the Americans (Webster, etc.), I assume, would not have
criticised British English before independence, or the Latin Americans
(Bello, etc.) Castilian.

>I must
> say I find that hard to believe.  Rohlfs also objects that the
> Corsican dialects show no trace of the gorgia, despite the
> (physical, not literary) Tuscan influence on Corsican.

Yes, the Corsican dialects were subject to strong Tuscan influence, as the
island was a colony of Pisa and many Pisans went there physically as
colonists.  However, the original pre-Pisan Corsican dialects are assumed
to be closer to Sardinian, and the difference can still be noted between
the north-eastern dialects, closer to Tuscan, and the south-western
dialects which were less "contaminated". It is interesting to note that
Genoese did not affect Corsican too much, except for the city of Bonifacio
which speaks a Ligurian dialect (like Alghero in Sardinia speaks Catalan).
This was because the Genoese during their occupation adopted a policy of
"Apartheid". The Italian language continued in official use as the written
language of Corsica until the 1850's and the last book in standard Italian
written by a Corsican author was published there towards the end of the
19th century.  The modern Corsican regional language, recognised by the
French authorities, is comparable to Neo-Galician and Euskara Batua.

Regards

Frank Rossi
Bergamo, Italy
iglesias at axia.it



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