lost in perception
TRANSCRIPT
Lost In PerceptionThis article was originally published on the Acclaro blog.
Category: "Spot" on Language, Translator's Corner
One of my favorite Italian columnists, Michele Serra, writing about
the qualities of a certain South American poet, remarked “It has to
be said, to be fair to all other poets, that he starts with an
advantage: Spanish is to poetry what cello is to music: everything
sounds better.”
I’m an Italian, just like Michele Serra and to me, Spanish is indeed a
refined, erudite language with just a touch of exoticism. It sounds
elegant but slightly harsher than Italian, more serious and
structured, but with some strange sounds (the unpronounceable “j”
for example) and a better defined rhythm. Yes it indeed sounds
great, like the cello — beautiful, soothing and warm while at the
same time, deep and slightly threatening.
When you’re a linguist and when you live abroad, you hear a lot about the qualities of
languages: beautiful, hard, musical, poetic, harmonious, harsh. And while recognizing that there
might be some science behind what makes a language pleasant to the ear, I cannot help but
thinking that none of these qualitative remarks have any truth behind them.
You see, Italian, people tell me, is a very “musical language”. They describe it as elegant,
sophisticated, and many other adjectives that I have never attributed to my own language. It
must have to do with a good combination of vowels and consonants. However, I doubt that early
20th century Italian emigrants, unloading from overcrowded ships and trains, were ever
considered speakers of elegant and sophisticated words in their new homelands.
Yes, those were other times: “Eat, Pray, Love” hadn’t been written yet, nobody really cared
about the wonders of olive oil, and growing your own tomatoes was not an activity that people
associated with words like “sustainable” or “earth friendly”.
It seems like the perception of a language is really the perception people have of its speakers
and that it follows more closely the highs and lows of a country over time, than the nature of its
sounds.
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And so now that we, the Italians, have become an economic leader and a cultural pioneer, our
language sounds “musical” to the wealthy, “industrialized” world. The stronger the country, it
seems, the more admired and dominant the language becomes on the world stage.
Now the tables have turned and I wonder what Italians think of the hundreds of Nigerians,
Romanians and Albanians who come to Italy every day in search of a decent life. Are the
languages spoken by these new immigrants considered harmonious or harsh, cheerful or dull?
And will the perceptions change once time has elapsed, and once cultural perceptions and
economic circumstances have shifted? Let’s hope that if not now, then later, these newly arrived
languages are perceived as music to our Italian ears.
photo attribution: fenanov
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