Fernando answers “What does it mean when someone"spoke in...”

Laura Lewakowski asked this question about My Brilliant Friend (My Brilliant Friend, #1):

What does it mean when someone"spoke in dialect", or in "thick dialect"? I understand that the book was originally written in Italian, but I'm not getting the importance of noting that the character was speaking in dialect at random times.

Fernando It is my understanding that prior to the unification, there was no «Italian» but a bunch of dialects that spread all over Italy. It is very common tha…moreIt is my understanding that prior to the unification, there was no «Italian» but a bunch of dialects that spread all over Italy. It is very common that countries born to these unions faced troubles when it came to choose the official language. What we call Italian was actually the dialect spoken in Florence that became the standard because of its prestige.

Now I wonder wether a non-Neapolitan Italian can understand the dialect or the differences are derisory. (If someone knows it, please enlight me!). Now I'm inclined to think Neapolitan it's difficult to read even for Italians, otherwise the author would've simply transcribed the words in dialect, at least a few times. Maybe that's exactly what she did, and it was adapted by the translator. It's hard to say.

Dialect is important throughout the story since it depicts the enormous social gap the characters face. (less)

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Eileen Fazzini The Neapolitan dialect was very difficult to understand, with a lot of the words "foreign" to me and entirely different from those words spoken in the ...more
Nov 26, 2018 07:03AM · flag

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My Brilliant Friend

by Elena Ferrante

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