Learners of Italian often ask me if my native language sounds as beautiful and musical to me as it does to them. In a recent comment for example, Vince wrote “when I read “Sotto casa nostra” it sounds beautiful to me but it just means, “Below our house” which sounds totally mundane in English”.
This it is always a difficult question to answer. Personally, I find Italian to be a much more lively and expressive language than English, but Italian is my mother tongue and I believe that it’s difficult to really express yourself, and your culture in another language. Language and cultural concepts, it seems, are inextricably bound together.
Geoff (my English husband), who is also a fairly accomplished musician, feels that Italian definitely is more musical and expressive. The other day for example we were listening to “Fango” (Mud), a Jovanotti song which has the refrain:
Io lo so che non sono solo
anche quando sono solo
io lo so che non sono solo
io lo so che non sono solo
anche quando sono solo
Translating this into English it completely looses it musicality, that is, it’s essential rhythm:
I know that I’m not alone
even when I am alone
I know that I’m not alone
I know that I’m not alone
even when I am alone
Now I don’t wish to start a controversy about the expressive merits of one language over another, I really enjoy English literature, poetry, and music, and I know that, in the right hands, it can be a beautiful emotive language. However there is an interesting technical explanation for the inherent musical quality of the Italian language, and it can be easily illustrated by examining that simple refrain by Jovanotti: the Italian version only contains one word, ‘non’, that doesn’t end in a vowel, whilst the English translation only contains one word, ‘alone’, that does end in a vowel, and that vowel, ‘e’, is not pronounced. It is this preponderance of words ending in vowels that causes ‘La Dolce Lingua’ (‘The Sweet Language’ – my pun on ‘La Dolce Vita’) to lend itself so well to poetry and music. It also lends itself, to the constant dismay of students of Italian, to being spoken rapidly. In addition to this you have to take into account the tonality of spoken Italian, and who can say how much of this is part of the language itself and how much is simply inherent in our cultural temperament.
I’ll leave the final word to my friend, and student of English, Vilma, who, when I asked her the famous question that prompted this blog, replied: “Certo, la lingua Italiana è molto dolce ed espressiva. Per esempio, quando dico la parola ‘piacere’ la sento nel cuore, nel viso, ecco mi viene un sorriso e gli occhi mi brillano. Mentre se dico ‘pleasure’ non sento niente, mi sembra una parola fredda che non esprime niente.”
“To be sure, the Italian language is very expressive. For example, when I say the word ‘piacere’ (pleasure) I feel it in my heart, in my face, I mean I have to smile and my eyes shine. But when I say the word ‘pleasure’ I don’t feel anything, it seems to me a cold unexpressive word.”
Opinions please!
24 Comments
I love reading your blogs and the daily word! (I’m following you on Twitter) It is really helping me to learn more Italian.
I have to say that I think your examples are completely meaningless. Anyone can pick a beautiful bit of prose or poetry in one language and it probably will not be as lovely in another language. That’s almost the point, really, and the reason that good translations are so difficult. That being said, I think that English and Italian are both among the more expressive languages.
Unfair comparison! The Italian was written for euphony in Italian – and can’t be expected to have the same or even similar aural qualities in other languages. Poetry written in Chinese or French or English would sound best in their home languages too – especially to a person who grew up with that language.
Pleasure is a lovely example – because to my ear (English as a first language) it has a smooth quality – it sounds like melted chocolate to me. The shape of your mouth is a quiet sort of smile. Piacere sounds harsher and the shape of your mouth is a bigger ‘smile’ – reminding us that some like their pleasures more social than others perhaps?
Btw – I love your blog and read (and struggle with) it often. Many thanks for all your information, insight and hard work!
Italian is truly a beautiful language. I speak English as my first language and must still admit that Italian is significantly more beautiful. I agree the preponderance of vowels gives Italian a musical quality that other languages lack. Germanic languages like English, are much too harsh to compare to Romance languages in pure beauty. What is more interesting, I think, is that Italian seems to stand out even amongst the other Romance languages as the most beautiful. I have studied French, Spanish, and Latin a bit and none of them have that same musical quality as “la dolce lingua” if I may borrow your pun.
Any ideas on if something inherent in Italians is responsible for the beauty of the language? That is, what made Italians develop a language of exquisite beauty and the English one of less beauty, but with a much larger vocabulary? There probably is no answer to that, but it would be interesting to know.
I think it depends both on the text and the speaker. Some English prose read by, say, Richard Burton would give a rather different impression to the same thing read by Woody Allen.
And Shakespeare or the King James Bible would sound good with virtually any reader but the operating instructions for my DVD player wouldn’t.
Still, having said that, I do find Italian in most cases pleasant to listen to, even when I don’t understand it. In my own studies I aspire to develop a natural accent, but it’s hard going at times.
For English, my personal favourite would be the upper-middle class English voice, for instance of some of the BBC World Service correspondents. To me that’s a clarity of communication that neither higher “posh” voices nor lower “working class” English can match.
For Italian, ironically, the two cases you mention are the least appealing to me – the Italian pop songs I’ve heard (not many, admittedly) always seem to be trying to cram too many lyrics in, with only the most tenuous connection to the melody, whereas “piacere” is one of my least favourite words, probably because so much repetition goes into remembering how to use it (i.e. it’s so different to the English subject > object of “I like …”).
Prima di tutto, I’m talking only about American english, not English english. I guess I should also confess that I’ve spent a lot of effort over the last 50+ years striving to make my American english as expressive as possible.
Even with all the striving, I can’t make my english begin to convey what I can express in il mio italiano limitatissimo. Un esempio banale: l’espressione, “buona giornata,” conveys more affection and good will than, “Have a good day.” Un altro, “mio tesoro,” expresses something more than, “my sweetheart.” Inoltre, “Volentieri!” makes, “Willingly!” pale by comparison. then there are i suoni e i ritmi . . . I only wish that I could attain the eloquence that italiano makes possible.
Bill
Personal influence sets a point as well.
In addition to the student of English, Vilma, with the example of “piacere” and ‘pleasure’ – and
than “grazie” and “thank you “for example, the latest is much more ‘metallic’ then “grazie” by which I can imagine the grace of life, the ‘savoir vivre’…the elegance..
Anyway the waterfall of words in this blog mi ‘piacerono’. I am ‘singing’ “thank you”.
Jeannet
Anyway the waterfall of words in this blog mi “piacerono”. Thank you.
As a linguist, I would like to make the following comments that I have slowly developed after studying and learning a great many languages.
When people speak a language fluently, they cannot “observe” that language from the outside. Many years ago, I had a friend from Iceland who was very fluent in more than ten languages. I asked him if English was an attractive language to HIM. I had to ask him what he though, since, as a native speaker of English, it was not possible for ME to pass any judgment whatsoever on the “beauty” of the English language.
If we can imagine the creation of the greatest musical piece — concerto or symphony — that would be possible to create, any and every language is greater, more beautiful and more harmonious than any such creation. Each language is the intuitive product of hundreds of thousands or even hundreds of millions of people over many hundreds or thousands of years. The language grows invisibly. The native speaker is not aware of any changes that are taking place but the changes do take place bit by bit over dozens if not hundreds of years. Italian grew slowly, invisibly, out of Latin.
One cannot evaluate the beauty of any language except from the inside. And from the inside, one cannot observe the billions of complex pieces that constitute a language. Like a great cathedral that we place on a great mountain, each language has beautiful vistas, dark corners, flying buttresses and exquisite stained-glass windows. ALL of the languages in the world, Danish, Chinese, Italian, German, Tsuut’ina, Marathi, Catalan, Masai, Bantu and Vietnamese — to name a few –, are equal in majesty, complexity and beauty. A friend of mine — a native speaker of Tsuut’ina — claims that nothing in any language ever can begin to express the eloquence, complexity and beauty of what he can say in Tsuut’ina. And he is right. Any judgments we might make FROM THE OUTSIDE about a language or a dialect are invalid. And any judgments we might want to make FROM THE INSIDE are not possible. Our native language is like the color of one’s skin or the shape of a person’s nose. We did not choose our mother tongue and if we change too many of the thousand million parts of it, other people will not understand what we are saying. To say that any person’s language is “not beautiful” is both incorrect and insulting to the person who speaks it. Such comments should be viewed as being just as inappropriate as comments about a person’s color of skin.
Salve Serena:
I believe you can evaluate your own language from the inside. In fact, I would argue that there actually is no ‘inside’. I believe, with other philosophers, that ‘inner states’ stand in need of outward criteria. (But this is philosophy.)
Just as you can see your eye with a mirror, you can use the mirror of comparison with other languages to know your own. The idea that all languages are equal, while politically correct, is empirically untenable. At least in the narrow sense of any one given attribute. One language can be better for music while another is better for science. This should not be controversial.
For example, the questions of which language sounds more beautiful can be subjected to empirical tests. I am sure Italian would beat English – even using an all English speaking sample. To argue this empirical fact would be to transfer the argument to a philosophical discussion of Aesthetics. In this rarified atmosphere all languages might indeed be said to be equal. This I won’t argue.
When I hear popular English songs translated into Italian, they often sound better. Going the other direction, Italian to English, is often impossible to satisfactorily accomplish.
I submit that it is impossible to translate Celentano’s, “il Ragazzo della via Gluck” into English and have anything that approaches the beauty of the Italian. In fact, the English version will seem more like trite than a popular song.
Italian is so sonorous that it took me a while to realize that Celentano’s
“Prisencolinensinainciusol” is total nonsense. In fact, the only thing in that song that does not sound melodious is the phrase that sounds like the English words “all right”.
Listen to this song.
QED.
Vince
Avevo sempre detto che la lingua italiana senta buona nella bocca come nelle orecchie. Sono americana, io, e amo la lingua inglese ma e` vero che l’italiano commuove le nostre emozioni.
Italian is a gorgeous language, true, but there is more to a beautiful language than words that rhyme.
I have little to add to the comments above apart from addressing Vilma’s discriptions of her reactions to the two words ‘piacere’ and ‘pleasure’. The italian word when spoken conveys to my ear a cheerful and lively sense whereas the english word conveys to my ear a soft gentle enveloping sense.
Some may read into this the difference in temperment of the two peoples.
With respect, I beg to differ with Gary’s views.
I believe it’s perfectly possible to observe one’s own language and its relative merits and we all do this constantly. For instance, I find teen talk punctuated with “like” every second or third word as ugly. Most middle-aged people would agree. Teens may object, but would they characterise their mode of expression as “beautiful”? I doubt it. It’s just a group identification signal.
If Gary finds find it “not possible for ME to pass any judgment whatsoever on the “beauty” of the English language” then I would suggest he is in a very tiny minority, as the enduring popularity of poetry and song lyrics would suggest. By contrast, how many people find bureaucratic jargon beautiful? None. There is an objective reality even if the ability to appreciate it differs.
As for being deeply offensive to compare languages, this on the surface seems to be just another case of attempting to shut down the opposing point of view by placing it in the realm of taboo. I need only point out that many native-English speakers acknowledge the superior musicality of Italian without loving their own mother tongue any less.
What we can say, however, is that one’s views would change somewhat with a change in competence – At present most Italian speech sounds nice to me (probably all those vowels) but perhaps after I had lived in Italy for ten years I would be more discerning and be able to distinguish more subtle distinctions of good and bad. This is the same in any field.
Gary seems to finish off his comments with the standard subjectivist view that we can’t really know anything about anything and shouldn’t try because it might offend someone. Everything, including language, has a nature and that nature can be perceived and discovered. If one were to speak several languages from a young age, one could probably make valid generalisations about which was better for writing clear, concise manuals, which made prettier poetry, which adapted itself better to writing computer code, etc. and it’s likely that most others equally proficient in those languages would agree.
One thing I have always found interesting about the Italian language is the use of body language. The Italian language is more expressive and it becomes even more alive when experiencing it in person. Italians seem to speak with their whole body which you can’t always experience from an outsiders perspective through written word. Do you think this could also lead to the feeling that the Italian language is more expressive than others?
I tend to agree with Gary. I think it is really difficult to evaluate the merits of various languages & objectively determine between which are the more pleasing and correct sounds. There is too much baggage involved in order to do so. Our native ears are too attuned to our madre lingua to be totally objective.
I always wonder how I sound to Italians when I speak Italian. I really have no idea. No matter how much I practice, I believe I will always sound like an American speaking Italian with a midwestern flat accent (which I don’t like in the first place). But, my Italian friends say, that when I speak, despite my obvious accent, that the sound is pleasing and lyrical and educated. Now, the reverse is also true. When Italian friends worry that they have an “italian accent” when they speak English, I assure them that yes, I hear the sing song accent, and I know that they are foreigners speaking english, but to me it is beautiful and makes their English speech a little more delightful and unusual to my ear. We are all so critical of ourselves!
So, I have come to the conclusion that while it is impossible to know determine exactly how we sound to foreign ears, and quite impossible to assimilate the accent perfectly, the goal is communication. Whether one language is more beautiful than another is really hard to determine, as it definitely depends on the speaker and our own natural preferences. My bias of course, because I am enamored of the Italian language, is to say yes! the Italian language is so much more lyrical than English. But, there I pause and hesitate because, I have heard a torrent of Italian spoken on the evening news that sounds utterly scary, nasal and harsh and I have heard flights of lyrical english spoken from a man standing on the corner asking for a hand out. So, I guess we shouldn’t loose sight of the fact that it is not necessarily how beautiful any specific language is, or worry about how we sound, but rather if we are using those sounds to communicate and be understood.
Ciao a tutti!
I’ve recently discovered your blog after visiting the Swedish blog. I love it! Congrats!
I think this whole issue of a language being expressive is very subjective. All languages should be expressive, after all, that’s what they were made for.
Your comments reminded me of Amy Walker’s videos where she talks about speaking a foreign language really feeling what you are saying. You can see 3 of her videos in my blog:
http://englishinbarna.blogspot.com/2010/01/fascinated-by-accents.html
Congrats again and a presto!
Grazie a tutti, I believe that this blog now holds the record for the number of comments posted in the shortest amount of time, and for some of the longest, and most eloquent comments that I have read since I started blogging! It’s a privilege to have such educated and thoughtful readers.
Let’s see what kind of reaction there is to part 2 which I will publish shortly.
A presto, Serena
P.S. Vince, see what you’ve started!
I speak three languages fluently: English, German, and Italian. With slightly less proficiency I speak Dutch. I love German poetry like Goethe. I love English Poetry like Wordsworth, and I love Italian poetry like Leopardi. I love each of these languages. But one time I was in Italy and there was a German family speaking next to me. It was strange but it was the first time I thought that German sounded ugly. Within the context of an italian speaking environment, German did not blend in, so it sounded harsh. That was a first for me to have a glimpse of what German could sound like to other people.
But I think the author of this blog has some good points about the beauty of vowel sounds in comparison to consonants. Personally I prefer the sound of the rolled R to the English R, or the French R. And then there are some sounds that really assault my ears, like the Dutch G which sounds like someone clearing their throat.
Bartmann
Salve Serena!
I´ve finally read this blog and I want to add my two cents. Fist of all both English and Italian are foreign languages to me. But I´m an English teacher(I have a degree in English and French). And the story of my learning Italian is rather funny. I´ve always said that I don´t like it much, but at the same time I would buy a new Italian textbook or grammar. And I also attended some courses, and before that I had an optional course of Italian at the university. Then, when because of illness I had to break my post graduate studies dealing with English and translation, I had a possibility reevaluate what I really like and love. And then having heard an interview with an Italian guy from Florence, I realized (more felt)that it was what I would really love to research,and definitely to learn perfectly. I made that decision a year ago. And now I´m really happy every day working at my Italian. Your blog helps a lot. In my opinion both English and Italian are beautiful. But while I love Italian, I just like English very much. It´s like some men prefer brunettes(my case) and some prefer blondes. Why? Who knows?
There are several different issues here.
The first is the musicality of a language. Italian is definitely more musical than English. This largely because nearly all the words end in a vowel. But it is more than just that. Regular Italian verbs have a limited number of endings. Many words agree in gender and number so that they have similar endings. There is a significant degree of euphony prescribed by the nature of the language.
Expressiveness is an entirely different thing. English has a huge advantage over most languages in the sheer number of words, each conveying a slightly different connotation. Careful writers (and speakers) know that there are no true synonyms.
An additional advantage in this regard is the flexibility of English grammar. One can play with word order, for example, to achieve various effects.
English also provides for more variety in cadence. One can craft a sentence to flow smoothly or to progress haltingly.
Because English has so many longstanding loan words from both Romance languages and Germanic languages it can be made to sound sweet or rough.
In my opinion, Italian has distinct advantages regarding musicality or euphony. But English surpasses most other languages in expressiveness when used by a skilled practitioner.
Of course, one could argue that most English speakers are lazy. And I think that would be a fair assessment.
Ciao,
Rod
Serena ~
a comment on the translation of the song:
“Alone” ends in a vowel, yes, but not a vowel sound.
“I” ends (and begins) in a vowel, and the sound is the diphthong “ah-ee” ( as in “Che cosa fai?”)
“Know” ends in a consonant, but with a vowel sound, the same “o” as “non sono solo”.
As a singer I definitely appreciate the musical facility of Italian, with so many open vowel sounds that can be honey to the human voice.
The best “translations” of song lyrics are not literal, but “re-expressive”, finding words that suit the notes on which they are imposed, so that the note and the word become one. Often, to make a beautiful song, the content of the words is changed completely.
An example: O Sole Mio is a famous traditional and popular Italian song. In English it became “It’s Now or Never”. (The lyric not as memorable as the original, yet contrived to be more singable than a literal translation. It ends: “Tomorrow may be to late, It’s now or never, my love won’t wait.”)
Another example I like is the song Maria, from West Side Story. In English one line goes, “Maria – I’ll never stop saying Maria.” In French I’ve heard it sung as “Maria – je’taime, je’taime, Maria.” Very pretty – but in English we might find “I love you, I love you, Maria” a bit uninspired.
Song is a lovely way to hear a language – I’ve heard most European languages sung with beauty and charm. I think I’ve heard them spoken with beauty and charm, too! Including English, of course. And I think we all know that French, Italian, English or German can sound equally coarse when spat out by a coarse person, or with anger or meanness. But spoken by a loving mother to her child, or by a friend to a friend, any language is beautiful.
As for Italian – che bella lingua is what I usually say. But most of all, the best words are those that express thought the best. As mentioned by someone above, various languages have various strong areas: the scientific, the culinary, the spiritual, the artistic. The wonderful thing is that we can borrow from one another, sharing our most expressive words and phrases.
Thanks for the really interesting comment Tom. You’re absolutely right about the translation, in fact if you look at most of the translations in my blog they are not literal but interpretive. My husband Geoff helps me with that because he is a native speaker of English (and a musician, which helps a lot). Perhaps the song Fango which I quoted in my blog would never have been composed in English in that the refrain ‘io lo so che non sono solo anche quando sono solo’ is the rhythm itself, well I think you need to hear the song to understand (it’s on the CD ‘Safari’).
In fact the song ‘O Sole Mio’ is a good example of untranslatability (I think I just invented that word!), because ‘It’s Now or Never’ is a completely different song, it just shares the same melody. ‘O Sole Mio” is not a love song but an eulogy to the Neapolitan Sun, and the lyrics bear no resemblance to Presley’s song. I wrote a blog a while back called ‘O Sole Mio’, you’ll find it if you do a search on transparent.com, hope you enjoy it.
Salve, serena
Serena, the sad thing is that I am new to your blog. The happy thing is that I can enjoy catching up and reading past entries!
Yes, often the best “new” versions of songs are, indeed, totally new. Quando Vuelva a Tu Lado (When I return to your side), a popular song in Spanish, is What a Difference a Day Makes in English. I like them both!
Some of the less successful are operas in translation – often the “sense’ of the song must be kept, for the story, and for the mood. Still, open vowels must be kept over the big notes – so some pretty strange language develops at times!