Translations

[Rosina Lila]

Cara Claudia,
Two observations on your message:    that the Italian language is beautiful
cannot be questioned.  Linguists, all over the planet, have gone to great
lengths to emphasize the fact that. dryly unpleasant as the spoken voice is, it
becomes almost musical when Tuscan Italian is spoken.  The reason given is that,
besides being a purely phonetic language, the Italian of Petrarca and Dante
has more vowels than consonants than any other language on earth.  Yet, spoken
Italian does vary from region to region, and in some areas one is hard put to
understand it when it is spoken.
.... Spanish, another lovely phonetic language, forms its plurals by adding a
consonant, rather than changing the ending vowel, at the end of the  modified
word(s), and it has many Arab influenced double-consonant diphthongs,
etc;,therefore the musical cadenza of vowels floating is often fractured, even
although it may be sensed somewhere in the background.
Close cousins, both lovely languages.

But I cannot agree with your contention that Italian is little known or
spoken by other than Italians.  Thousands and thousands of opera lovers all over
the world (really... all over the world), know enough Italian to make themselves
understood here and there.  Standing on the line at the Caracole baths in
Rome, or outside the Fenice (about to be reborn) in Venice, or La Scala in
Milano, or almost anywhere in Florence, one meets tentative Italian speakers, over
and over, who reveal that they learned Italian by studying Opera libretti.  So,
there.

Well, this is my last message for a while.

Purtroppo, nothing in life comes easy.... not even desired dreams.
I stayed up last night til the wee hours of the morning watching, and
rewatching,  the Democratic convention, and now I want to stay home and put both my
shoulders to the wheel.
Well..... I guess I'll be back in plenty of time to jump into the fray.
(...Do you think is kosher to walk the Camino for political reasons?  Gee
gads!)
OK. A packing toast to you, my fellow pilgrims, with Prosecco... of course.
and a big affectionate hug!
Rosina


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