La Bella Lingua My Love Affair with Italian the World Most Enchanting Language (Audible Audio Edition) Dianne Hales Suzanne Toren Audible Studios Books
Download As PDF : La Bella Lingua My Love Affair with Italian the World Most Enchanting Language (Audible Audio Edition) Dianne Hales Suzanne Toren Audible Studios Books
"Italians say that someone who acquires a new language 'possesses' it. In my case, Italian possesses me. With Italian racing like blood through my veins, I do indeed see with different eyes, hear with different ears, and drink in the world with all my senses...."
A celebration of the language and culture of Italy, La Bella Lingua is the story of how a language shaped a nation, told against the backdrop of one woman's personal quest to speak fluent Italian.
For anyone who has been to Italy, the fantasy of living the Italian life is powerfully seductive. But to truly become Italian, one must learn the language. This is how Dianne Hales began her journey. In La Bella Lingua, she brings the story of her decades-long experience with "the world's most loved and lovable language" together with explorations of Italy's history, literature, art, music, movies, lifestyle, and food in a true opera amorosa - a labor of her love of Italy.
Throughout her first excursion in Italy - with "non parlo Italiano" as her only Italian phrase - Dianne delighted in the beauty of what she saw but craved comprehension of what she heard. And so she chose to inhabit the language. Over more than 25 years she has studied Italian in every way possible through Berlitz, books, CDs, podcasts, private tutorials and conversation groups, and, most importantly, large blocks of time in Italy. In the process she found that Italian became not just a passion and a pleasure but a passport into Italy's storia and its very soul.
She offers charming insights into what makes Italian the most emotionally expressive of languages, from how the "pronto" ("ready!") Italians say when they answer the telephone conveys a sense of something coming alive to how even ordinary things such as a towel (asciugamano) or handkerchief (fazzoletto) sound better in Italian. She invites readers to join her as she traces the evolution of Italian in the zesty graffiti on the walls of Pompeii, in Dante's incandescent cantos, and in Boccaccio's bawdy Decameron. She portrays how social graces remain woven into the fabric of Italian Even the chipper "ciao", which does double duty as "hi" and "bye", reflects centuries of bella figura. And she exalts the glories of Italy's food and its rich and often uproarious gastronomic language Italians deftly describe someone uptight as a baccala (dried cod), a busybody who noses into everything as a prezzemolo (parsley), a worthless or banal movie as a polpettone (large meatball).
Like Dianne, listeners of La Bella Lingua will find themselves innamorata, enchanted, by Italian, fascinated by its saga, tantalized by its adventures, addicted to its sound, and ever eager to spend more time in its company.
La Bella Lingua My Love Affair with Italian the World Most Enchanting Language (Audible Audio Edition) Dianne Hales Suzanne Toren Audible Studios Books
Having lived in Italy more than a dozen years, my love of the country and its people is second to none. Even so, I did not enjoy La Bella Lingua. Ms. Hales sells us Italian like a used car dealer. The use of the superlative was more than I could take. Her anecdotes are often strange, too, I just can't believe her story of mistaking Domani Matina for a Mr. Matina. Had she no pocket dictionary with her? Could a train car of always helpful Italians not come to her aid? Her story of her night at La Scala is very odd. She's a woman who seems to travel to Italy endlessly, but writes that this would be her last chance to see an opera at La Scala. Why? She does seem to be allergic to Northern Italy, and Piemonte in particular, a terrible fault in a book that spends much time on culture and history. A reader of La Bella Linga would, for instance, never learn that Torino (Turin) was the first capital of united Italy. The elegant city of Torino is completely ignored both back in 1861 and today. There are other oddities: Hales spends a few pages on Fellini and never mentions his wife, the brilliant Giulietta Masina, nor La Strada, and Nights of Cabiria. An historical mistake that screams for correction appears in Hales' description of Verdi's funeral in 1901. She tells us that at the cemetery Paganini led a chorus of 900 men in singing Va, Pensiero. The problem here is that Paganini died in 1840, sixty one years earlier. It was Toscanini who led that chorus. Paganini, Toscanini -- what's the difference. :-)Product details
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La Bella Lingua My Love Affair with Italian the World Most Enchanting Language (Audible Audio Edition) Dianne Hales Suzanne Toren Audible Studios Books Reviews
I expected to be bathed in this lovely expressive language more from a learning point of view than historical, but the history offered insights you may value. Experiencing a language on so many levels obviously added great depth as well as pleasure for the author and I really learned a lot, although I found some parts a bit dry.
Although I knew Italian was a collection of dialects crystalized into a national language not all that long ago in spite of the antiquity of the land and people, I didn't realize how that came about, nor the critical steps, texts and people responsible. This book describes it all from the impact of Dante's Inferno to opera. There's a delightful passage about the wonderful librettist, Da Ponte, pairing with Mozart for the three great operas, Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutte and how Da Ponte not only brought vivid style and language to the operas, but to Columbia University where he became the first professor of the Italian language in America. He was introduced to the college by Clement Moore. Who knew! Tidbits like that enchanted me.
Stories of the impact of Marcello Mastroianni were fascinating as well as how Petrarch's sonnets influenced the more structured written Italian as opposed to spoken Italian. I enjoyed learning that Italian is so versitile not through a vast number of basic words, but the vast ability to alter words to mean so many different things through prefixes and suffixes, modifiers, etc. And conversely how it has multiple words for things like face, that convey very different concepts.
As a lover of the Italian experience, much of this information delighted me, but some of the history was just that and felt rather tedious. As I ground through the lengthy discussion of the Inferno, I got to wondering if I could go on, and the extensive discussion of vulgarity was really more than I needed to know, but in the end I was very glad to have read this book. I recommend it to lovers of all things Italian who want to understand the people and culture better through development and use of its language.
As an admittedly biased reader, in that I am a first generation Italian American and spent much of my life in Italy, I enjoyed Ms. Hales' labor of love. I too believe that Italian is the world's most beautiful language, not only from a lyrical perspective but what each word denotes. Fair warning though, the book really does concentrate a lot on the historical genesis of the Italian language, Arts, etc., so if you are not interested in that, this might not be the book for you. To me, and anyone else who loves all things Italian, it was interesting and, in many cases, educational, even for me. The author does also though intersperse her personal experiences with the language and the way of life in Italy and how she came to be an Italophile. The only disappointment for me is that, although the southern regions of Italy played a major role in the development of what is now Italy, there was much less attention given to those contributions than to those from central and northern Italy. Otherwise, I found the book interesting and entertaining and worth, in my opinion, reading.
I have started learning Italian for a number of good reasons. First, a friend loaned me this book, but after reading it I bought it. I might say it was hard to put down. I have been an avid student of the language, but reading this book has boosted my inspiration and interest beyond bonds.
The style is admirable, and captures one’s devotion and dedication not only for the language but it expands one’s interest way beyond. It creates interest in Italian literature which may only have existed in a casual form. It covers many areas of the culture in an irresistible way. In places, I even found the style poetic as it covers all aspects of the Italian language and culture. Obviously, the author’s erudition is enviable, which makes the book highly informative and creates further interest in reading also through the extensive bibliography at the end of the book.
English words do not appear to be sufficient to describe the magnetism for the culture this book projects, which is so eloquently rendered. Even the end of the book describing some of the vulgarity, which is present in all languages, can make me, as an old man, blush. But at the same time, all the aspects of the ‘La Bella Lingua’ prompts you even more to absorb this culture.
Having lived in Italy more than a dozen years, my love of the country and its people is second to none. Even so, I did not enjoy La Bella Lingua. Ms. Hales sells us Italian like a used car dealer. The use of the superlative was more than I could take. Her anecdotes are often strange, too, I just can't believe her story of mistaking Domani Matina for a Mr. Matina. Had she no pocket dictionary with her? Could a train car of always helpful Italians not come to her aid? Her story of her night at La Scala is very odd. She's a woman who seems to travel to Italy endlessly, but writes that this would be her last chance to see an opera at La Scala. Why? She does seem to be allergic to Northern Italy, and Piemonte in particular, a terrible fault in a book that spends much time on culture and history. A reader of La Bella Linga would, for instance, never learn that Torino (Turin) was the first capital of united Italy. The elegant city of Torino is completely ignored both back in 1861 and today. There are other oddities Hales spends a few pages on Fellini and never mentions his wife, the brilliant Giulietta Masina, nor La Strada, and Nights of Cabiria. An historical mistake that screams for correction appears in Hales' description of Verdi's funeral in 1901. She tells us that at the cemetery Paganini led a chorus of 900 men in singing Va, Pensiero. The problem here is that Paganini died in 1840, sixty one years earlier. It was Toscanini who led that chorus. Paganini, Toscanini -- what's the difference. -)
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