ELL: RE: Attitude

[john clissa]

Hello,
	The following is an extract from a short article written by a linguist and
published in a Teachers of Italian Newsletter. Since attitude can be a
"killer" in regards to endangered minority languages, I would appreciate
anyone's reaction to this - so, by all means, email me directly if you wish.

Clissa at starwon.com.au

Thank you,
John



And to conclude, just a few words on an Italian greeting which has traveled
around the world -Ciao.
At the time of Carlo Goldoni, people greeted each other with the utmost
reverence and formality. Partly due to Spanish influence, since Spain in the
15th/16th century had occupied a great part of Italy. To greet in a
confidential way one would say: "vostro schiavo/your slave." (Even in formal
English of today one can close a very important letter with the expression
"your humble servant." This expression became common and with the passing of
time, it became simply "Schiavo/slave," whether one just met or left.
Now in the Venetian dialect, the word "schiavo/slave," evolved in the
following way. For quite sometime one used to say s'ciao (s'c = the medial
sound as in the English word "miSCHIEF"), then the letter V was dropped and
one just said s'ciao; then the initial sound became simplified and you ended
up with ciao.
"And why did all this take place in Venice, I hear you ask? Because it was
via Venice that the word "schiavo" came to Italy. The Latin word for "slave"
was "servus." In the 13th century, the Republic of Venice took a great
number of prisoners from the other side of the Adriatic. In Latin, a person
who came from those lands came to be called "sclavus" and in fact, today
they are called Slavs. But in Venice these people were constrained to work
as servants, and as time went by some confusion arose between "sclavus"
meaning Slav and "sclavus" meaning slave. From this point this long
evolution of the word which has brought the most international of all
greetings.
So much history in such a humble little word.
Ciao to all!!



-----Original Message-----
From:	owner-endangered-languages-l at cleo.murdoch.edu.au
[mailto:owner-endangered-languages-l at cleo.murdoch.edu.au] On Behalf Of
Claire Bowern
Sent:	Monday, April 29, 2002 10:02 PM
To:	endangered-languages-l at cleo.murdoch.edu.au
Subject:	ELL: Australian Lingusitic Institute

(I'm posting this on behalf of the organisers. Please contact Susan
directly with any questions.)

Dear All,

The sixth Australian Linguistics Institute is a biennial winter school,
being held this year at Macquarie University, Sydney, 8th-19th July.
The Indigenous Languages Program will be held in the first of the two
weeks of the conference.

Course presenters include Australian and international
experts in the fields of language in education, applied linguistics and
Indigenous languages.

For information about the Australian Linguistics Institute, please see
the website at http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/ali which has a link to the
Indigenous Program.

Susan Poetsch
Indigenous Program Coordinator


***************************************************
Susan Poetsch
Australian National Placenames Survey
Department of English, Division of Humanities
Macquarie University, North Ryde, Sydney, NSW 2109
ph: (61) (2) 9850 7937 fax: (61) (2) 9850 8240
Website: www.humanities.mq.edu.au/anps
***************************************************

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