"Italian becomes official language ... of Italy"

[Harold Schiffman]

Thanks, Don, for bringing this to our attention. In my conception of
language policy, terms like "official" and "national" have limited meanings,
unless spelled out very carefully and explicitly.  Legislators who
officialize a language often think that all they have to do is rubber stamp
a policy with the words "official" and then something will automatically
happen, and a language will be "protected" or whatever.

I like the language of French language policy:  "La langue de la republique
est le francais."   Not "la langue officielle" or "nationale".  But they
still thnk it *means* something.

Hal S.

On 4/3/07, Don Osborn <dzo at bisharat.net> wrote:
>
> So here's another "official language" story and whether it makes eminent
> sense, or is ridiculous, or negates linguistic rights is a matter of
> opinion.
>
> But it does raise again in my mind what the purpose of "official language"
> legislation, especially when it is, as the article mentions, "purely
> symbolic."
>
> BTW, I saw this on
> http://www.kwintessential.co.uk/crossculturalnews/index.html (via RSS).
>
> Don Osborn
>
>
>
> Italian becomes official language ... of Italy
> Fri Mar 30, 2007 5:42PM BST
>
> ROME (Reuters) - It's official. The language of Italy is Italian -- but
> not
> everyone is happy about it.
>
> While it might seem obvious, the Italian-ness of Italian has only just
> been
> enshrined in the constitution, with parliament voting this week to state
> that: "The Italian language is the official language of the Republic".
>
> The seemingly uncontroversial statement was opposed by 75 members of
> parliament, including leftists who said it smacked of cultural imperialism
> and northern separatists who are suspicious of pretty much any diktat from
> Rome.
>
> One deputy, Federico Bricolo from the Northern League party, said his
> nationality, and therefore his language, was not Italian but Venetian. He
> said the dialect of Venice was spoken by "millions of men and women around
> the world".
>
> "It's the language spoken in my family, in schools, at work. I am
> Venetian,
> Mr President, my language is that of Venice," Bricolo said in his dialect
> before his microphone was switched off because he was breaking a rule that
> states only Italian may be spoken in parliament.
>
> Franco Russo, of Italy's main Communist party, said the post-war
> constitution deliberately left out any mention of the language in a
> reaction
> against dictator Benito Mussolini's attempts to "Italianise" the country
> by
> force.
>
> The change to the constitution, approved by 361 votes to 75, is purely
> symbolic and does not alter the legal status that other languages enjoy in
> parts of Italy, such as German in the Alto Adige region or French in Val
> d'Aosta.
>
> But supporters of the change said it was high time the language was
> recognised as a fundamental part of what made up modern Italy -- a country
> which was only created by unifying rival regions and city states in 1870.
>
> It was Tuscan dialect -- in which Dante wrote the mediaeval epic poem the
> Inferno in the fourteen century -- that emerged as the national language
> of
> Italy, but many people still speak local dialects some of which are
> largely
> incomprehensible to people from other parts of the country.
>
>
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