Languages and dialects


Get your languages and dialects straight, linguists

My response on Facebook about a 7–9 April 2017 festival in Siena about Italian and Italian "dialects":

 

But calling the many languages of Italy "dialects", is Roman-style imperialism, and not even the linguistic truth. The word Italy itself did not come from the Latin, and is thus Italic, not "Italian" as Verdi might have thought. There apparently was a language that was superior, or at least not inferior to Latin.

 

The poet Quintus Ennius, often considered the father of Roman poetry, boasted he had three souls, since he was capable of speaking in his native Oscan (from which the Neapolitan language, and many Campania region dialects originate, and which still show signs of the dead language in their oral forms), as well as in Greek (the language he was educated in), and Latin (the language he finally acquired). He did not say he had two souls, nor did he say he had two-and-a-half souls, treating Oscan like a lesser language or dialect. No, he said he had three souls or three hearts!

 

The word Italia itself comes from Oscan, not Latin or even Greek!

 

My name Cesidio is not of Latin origin as a Latin linguist told me when I was younger, but of Sabellic or Oscan-Umbrian origin! Cesidio comes from the Latin Caesidius, but originally the name was the Oscan Kaisiris (and not Kaisidis, which is actually a Romanisation or Latinisation), and it was written from right to left, as in Etruscan style, not from left to right, as in Latin!

 

MT Kaisiris Tallini