Let’s continue the time travel in Veneto to see how its history is actually saved in its language. In the previous post we see the born of Venetian, from the fusion of Vulgar Latin with the germanic population arrived in Veneto after the fall of Roman Empire, enriched by all the contacts with the greek world. But let’s see how it continue.
The Venetian Language evolution
After the fall of the Roman Empire, in Veneto Latin was turning into a vernacular rich in Germanic and Greek elements; moreover, new words were being formed from existing Latin, such as bovolo, the small white snails, from bovus, an animal with horns—thus the bovolo is a small animal with horns, later also used to indicate spirals; scarsela, originally a small purse for holding low-denomination coins, later coming to mean pockets; radego, from the Latin form erratico, which, like Italian errare, was originally an adjective indicating something that wanders or deviates from the straight path, later coming to denote faults, whereas in Italian it came to mean errors; ciacolare, petegolo (from peto, emphasizing the negative connotation of the term), imbrojare, from brolo, “garden” in Celtic, since tradition has it that behind the Doge’s Palace there was a garden where Venetian senators would go to reach agreements before voting—they would inbrojavano, as it were.
Note how many of these words later entered Italian, which does not derive solely from Tuscan, but has borrowed from all Italian vernaculars, with Venetian in the forefront, as it was the language of one of the most influential Italian states for much of the past millennium (consider much of the maritime lexicon, and typical political terms such as cantiere, arsenale, giocattolo, which is neither the Tuscan balocco nor the Latin ludus, etc.).
The most striking example is ciao, an evolution of the greeting formula s-ciao tuo (conceptually similar to al vostro servizio, or to Austrian Servus, which has Latin origins), and now one of the most widely known Italian words.
First stages of Venice
Let us recall that the first settlements in the area of Venice were formed by inhabitants of the mainland who sought to escape barbarian invasions by taking refuge in the lagoon, and that at the beginning of its existence the area lay within the Byzantine sphere of influence (the Venetia Maritima), which turned it into a duchy in an attempt to contain the Lombard advance [6].
Very soon the doge began to be elected by the people, but the Emperor did not withdraw his support from Venice because of the Lombard threat.
With the arrival of the Franks, who wrested Ravenna from Byzantium, and the birth of the Holy Roman Empire under Charlemagne in 800, Venice began to experience internal divisions between pro-Byzantine and pro-Frankish factions; in the end, however, the former prevailed, while still keeping the influence of the Byzantine Emperor only marginal [6].
From around the year 1000, this de facto independence was made official also by the Byzantine Empire, which granted the Doge the title of Dux Dalmatiae (doge is the Venetian form of dux, which in Italian corresponds to duca). By this time Venice had already expanded into Istria and Dalmatia, which it conquered in order to halt the raids of Slavic pirates.
The Pinnacle of the Dogedom
After 1300, its greatest territorial expansion began: it expanded throughout the Venetian and Friulian mainland, and by around 1500 it also came to dominate the Aegean islands, Crete, and Cyprus.
For a period it even occupied large parts of Greece and part of Crimea (its trade routes in fact extended as far as the Black Sea).
The presence of numerous dominions and commercial colonies throughout the Mediterranean even led to Venetian being adopted as one of the linguae francae of trade at that time.
Venice considered its territories as divided into three types: the Dogado (the Venetian equivalent of ducato), corresponding to the coastal strip where the original nucleus of Venice arose; the Stato da tera, the mainland roughly corresponding to present-day Veneto and Friuli; and the Stato da Mar, namely the various Mediterranean islands and coastal possessions [7].
In addition to wars of expansion, there were also numerous wars with rival Italian maritime republics, in particular Genoa, with the Papacy and the European powers, as well as partial participation in the Crusades.
Famous is the war against the League of Cambrai in 1508–1510, in which Venice withstood an assault by a European coalition including, among others, the Papacy, France, the Habsburgs, the Spanish, and the Duke of Savoy.
On the other hand, equally famous and infamous is the Fourth Crusade, led by Venice and transformed from a crusade against the Saracens into a war of plunder against Constantinople (then Orthodox).
Persians and Arabs
And it is precisely from the Crusades, and more generally from contacts with Arabs and Persians, that another rich component of the Venetian vocabulary (and more generally of Italian and European vocabulary) derives.
From Arabic come many words beginning with their article al-: alcohol (although in Venetian it is simply spirito), alchemy (and thus the more modern form chemistry), alembic, elixir, apricot (via Old Spanish), artichoke (via Old Spanish alcarchofa, which became carciofo in Italian and articiocco in Venetian, the form through which it was exported to the rest of Europe—suffice it to think of the English artichoke), and many others.
From Persian (which we recall is an Indo-European language) come naransa (from narang, a fruit favored by elephants; in Italian the initial n was absorbed by the article and the form was also
influenced by Aurum, “gold”), pigiama, papussa…
Note how in both languages these are loanwords related to trade: clothing, fruit, technologies.
In addition to trade, the Venetian lexicon was also enriched through its dominions: we in fact find terms such as britola or paltegan, from ancient Slavic terms (today we still find in Slovene britva and in Croatian britze, “knife”, and again in Slovene podgana for “rat”, although it may simply derive from the Latin ponticanus (mus) (“mouse of Pontus”), as in Italian).
Venetian terms due to Venetian laws
In some terms we Venetians can even see the laws of the Serenissima crystallized: let us think of the casoin (in Italian pizzicagnolo) and the becaro or bechèr (the butcher).
In the Middle Ages it was required that each shop sell only one type of product, whether cheese or meat, and the casoin was precisely the seller of cheese (caseum in Latin), while the becaro was the one who sold goat meat, the male of the goat (in Old Italian there is also the term beccaio). Since goat meat was the most widespread red meat, in popular usage becaro came to indicate the place par excellence where meat was purchased, and it was not supplanted, as in Italian, by the more general macellaio.
In the same way, casoin evolved into a small shop somewhat better stocked than one selling only cheese, even though today the term risks disappearing because of large-scale retail.
The Begin of the End of Venetian
It was precisely at the moment of greatest splendor that a series of unfavorable events occurred: continuous wars had drained Venice’s coffers; moreover, on the one hand the Ottomans advance was depriving it of territories in the eastern Mediterranean, while on the other the discovery of America in 1492 had suddenly shifted the economic center of the West from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean.
From around 1600 Venice’s policy had to change and adapt to this new situation: many Venetians went to colonize the mainland, building the famous ville venete, patrician villas with everything needed to develop agricultural activity.
They consisted of the villa proper, the residence of the landowners, and the barchesse, complexes where tools were kept, products stored, and so on.
This period, roughly between 1530 and 1796, was characterized by the absence of wars in the Venetian mainland and is therefore remembered as the Pax Veneta. Being a state without ties to the Papacy, the Serenissima was also a fertile environment for scientists
who elsewhere in Italy enjoyed less freedom of expression (one need only think of Galileo Galilei); moreover, we recall countless artists, architects, musicians, and playwrights of international renown,
such as Giorgione, Tintoretto, Tiepolo, Canaletto, Palladio, Canova, Vivaldi, and Goldoni.
The Fall of Venice by French
Despite (and perhaps precisely because of) its declared neutrality during the French campaign in Italy, Venice was invaded and plundered by Napoleon, and became a battlefield between the French and the Austrians.
It was then ceded by Napoleon to Austria with the Treaty of Campo Formio, losing its millennial independence.
It should also be remembered that Veneto was part of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy between 1805 and 1814, a period during which Napoleon converted many churches into stables for his armies, and that Venice was one of the few states not to be restored by the Congress of Vienna in 1815.
In the uprisings of 1848, it was for a few months independent for the last time, when Daniele Manin and Niccolò Tommaseo led an anti-Austrian revolt that ultimately failed.
In any case, it holds the title of the longest-lasting republic in Europe, with the first election of a doge, Paulicio Anafesto, in 697 and the abdication of Lodovico Manin in 1797, for a total of 1,100 years.
The French linguistic imprint is limited to a few ratatuie:
in recent centuries we have borrowed terms such as paletò, saraban, from char-a-banc , which in Venetian retained only the meaning of “cart”, gilè, reclame, crumiro, which originally was the name of the bandits of the Crumiria, whose raids were used by France as a pretext to establish a protectorate in Tunisia.
The term came to denote in France someone who does not join strike actions, and it was adopted by Italians with the same meaning.
In Venetian, however, the term shifted in meaning to “miserly”, evidently because those who do not strike are seen as being hungry for money.
In addition to these, we also have varieties of wine, such as Merlot and Cabernet.
The Austrian period
Somewhat more substantial, instead, is the Austrian imprint, which we see in
- schei (sghei or ghei in Lombardy as well), from Scheidemünze, the Austrian one-cent coins; in franchi, with which we continued until the very end to refer even to lire (now Euro are called properly but “money” remains schei in venetian);
- sine, from Schiene, “rail” in Austrian German, since railways were first built in Veneto to connect it with Lombardy and Austria during Austrian rule;
- spritz (literally “splash”), originally white wine diluted with water and splashed with seltzer, because Venetian wine was too strong for Austrian soldiers accustomed to their beer (note that spritz means “to splash”, since it was also splashed with soda or similar, and that the term sprizzare is likewise a Germanicism due to Goths and Lombards);
- trincar (“to drink”) probably used to mock the invaders who were heavy drinkers.
And in many other words due more to the long-standing border coexistence between Venetians and Austrians than to domination, such as canederli, finferli, etc..
Italian period
Between the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century we find the last Venetian neologisms with “choices” different from Italian, such as fulminanti instead of matches, originally an adjective in solfanelli fulminanti; paneti for popcorn; rabalta to indicate the fly of trousers, recycling the term used for the front and back openings of night leggings; aparechi and machine for airplanes and cars, using loans from Italian somewhat in the same way as pomo was used for “apple” by Venetians from Latin; moto pic for pneumatic hammer; goldone for condom, from the brand Gold One used by Americans and Britons during the Second World War.
The recycling of old terms is fairly frequent; for example, we still montar (mount) and smontar (dismount) from cars and trains, using the same verbs that were used when horses were involved.
We have now reached the present day, in which Italian is clearly the dominant language in Italy: everyone speaks it, and there is a situation of diglossia or even dilalia [8] between Italian and dialects, that is, these languages coexist, with Italian used in formal contexts (and also informal ones in the case of dilalia), and dialects only in informal or even purely private contexts.
Any new words added to Venetian today are merely loans from Italian, somewhat phonetically distorted, such as telefonin (mobile phone), ciaveta (USB flash drive), and it has definitively ceased to innovate.
On the contrary, it is losing many words in favor of variants closer to Italian, such as subiare becoming sufiare (though subiotti still exist, even if the awareness that the word means “whistle” is being lost), nodare instead of nogare, volare instead of zolare, and so on.
In recent years many families have chosen not to teach it to their children, or to teach it only after Italian; in addition to a loss of typical vocabulary, there is therefore also a reduction in the
population that speaks it, in a process that will probably, in as few as a couple of decades, cause it to almost disappear, except perhaps in mountain areas, which are traditionally more conservative.
The fact remains that already today the dialect is only a faint memory of what it was a hundred years ago, and if our generation has still had the chance to learn it and speak it, this will probably not remain true for long.
Conclusion
We have seen how Venetian offers us a remarkable cross-section of history: having evolved autonomously from Latin and having undergone the influence of many peoples, already 500–600 years ago it was a mature language, and since then it has evolved relatively little, carrying ancient linguistic features down to the present day.
Over the last two centuries it has begun to fade under the influence of Italian, a younger language still in full evolution, itself in its time heavily influenced by Venetian, in a natural historical process of the succession of languages.
I’ll link here my etymological vocabulary when it will be ready.
Bibliography
[1] A. Zorzi, La Repubblica del Leone, Tascabili Bonpiani, 2011.
[2] F. Villar, Gli Indoeuropei e le Origini dell’Europa, Società Editrice il Mulino, 1997.
[3] http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venetici
[4] http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regio_X_Venetia_et_Histria
[5] http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/germanismi_(Enciclopedia-dell’Italiano)
[6] http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repubblica_di_Venezia
[7] http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stato_da_M%C3%A0r
[8] http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diglossia
[9] http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfabeto_fonetico_internazionale