The Vatican Museums. The Galleria Borghese. The Uffizi and La Specola in Florence. The Museo Archeologico Nazionale and Palazzo Reale in Naples. Italy has a multitude of museums devoted to traditional fields such as art, sculpture, science and technology, and anthropology.
There are also more specialized museums, such as the Museo della Pasta (National Museum of Pasta), the Museo del Castagno (Chestnut Tree Museum) in Pescaglia, the Teatro Stabile dell'Opera dei Pupi (museum in Catania highlighting traditional Sicilian marionettes), and museums devoted to olive oil, musical instruments, and even grapes and wine. But there has never been a major exhibit in Italy, never mind a museum, dedicated to the Italian language.
Journey through the History of the Italian Language
The development, preservation, celebration, and promotion of the Italian language has a long tradition. In the 1500's, the Accademia della Crusca, the national language academy of Italy, was established. Still in existence today, Accademia della Crusca was the first such institution in Europe and the first to produce a modern national language.
More recently, an annual Italian Language Week has been organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. A project called Chiaro!, aimed to rid the language used in bureaucratic texts of complex clauses and confusing terms, was initiated by the Civil Service Ministry. And members of the Italian parliament launched a campaign against English phrases that were flooding into their culture and language.
Italy, though, may now be one step closer to establishing a Museum of the Italian Language. Beginning March 14 at the Uffizi Gallery's Reali Poste a major exhibition entitled "Italian, the Italians—A Journey through the History of the Italian Language" is to be held. The first national exhibit on the Italian language, which will explore the roots of modern Italian as well as its connections with foreign languages, may well be the genesis for a permanent institution in Florence, birthplace of the national idiom.
It took ten years to find enough interest and funds to put together the ground-breaking exhibit. Curator Professor Luca Serianni, of Rome's La Sapienza University, said that unawareness of the linguistic treasure was the underlying problem: "Italians are proud of their language, like they are of their culture, but without realizing it."
The 'Si' Doth Sound
Dove il sì suona. Gli Italiani e la loro lingua is the Italian title of the exhibit, a reference to Dante Alighieri's Inferno (Canto XXXIII, 79-80), in which he defined the Italians as "the people of the fair land there where the 'Si' doth sound." In the 1300's, when Dante wrote La Divina Commedia, the idea of an Italian people was still remote, and yet the poet had already identified a common trait of the "countrymen" precisely in the language.
The exhibition, planned by the Dante Alighieri Society, illustrates the genesis and evolution of the national language from its origins until the present time. Historical documents are on public display for the first time, including the copy of Dante's "Divine Comedy" that Boccaccio gave to Petrarca, the original manuscript of Boccaccio's Decameron, Ludovico Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso" and Torquato Tasso's "Gerusalemme Conquistata."
Exhibit Details
Dove il sì suona. Gli Italiani e la loro lingua
Florence, Uffizi Gallery (in the former "Archivio e Reali Poste" rooms)
March 14 to September 30, 2003
Tuesday to Sunday 8.15 am–7 pm (closed Mondays)
ticket € 8.50; reduced € 4.25
