La Bella Lingua Quotes

“far buon viso a cattiva sorte (to smile in the face of adversity). I”
― Dianne Hales, La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language

“Se io studiassi di più l’italiano, lo parlerei meglio.”
― Dianne Hales, La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language

“Coaching me in the Venetian pronunciation, he explained that the word itself was a local invention. In La Serenissima’s glittering heyday, correspondents signed letters, “Il Suo schiavo” (“your slave”). Meeting on the street, acquaintances would bow and repeat the same ingratiating words. However, in the Venetian dialect, which softens the hard sound of sch (pronounced sk in other regions) to a chewy sh (as in “show”), Suo schiavo came out sciao, which melted into ciao as it migrated to other parts of Italy.”
― Dianne Hales, La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language

“As I mulled over the words of its giants, I realized that I was unconsciously moving my hands beneath my cape in the very same ways that I do when I speak Italian. And I was speaking Italian—to myself! My teachers had predicted that someday this milestone of a moment would come, that”
― Dianne Hales, La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language

“All Italian cities have ghosts, but Florence’s seem to me to be always speaking. As”
― Dianne Hales, La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language

“I hold Petrarch at leastly partly responsible for the disconcerting gap between Italian’s written and spoken vocabularies. The”
― Dianne Hales, La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language

“A nation of inspired cooks and enthusiastic eaters has, of course, coined a specific word for a lust for a food—goloso (from gola for “throat”), which goes beyond mere appetite, craving, or hunger. Friends readily, even proudly confess to being golosi for cioccolata, sfogliatelle (stuffed pastries), or supplì (melt-in-your-mouth rice and cheese balls).”
― Dianne Hales, La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language

“Perhaps because of this Babel of dialects, Italians cultivated an alternative language: gestures. In”
― Dianne Hales, La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language

“Italians basic word chest, as tallied in a recent dictionary, totals a measly 200,000, compared to English’s 600,000 (not counting technical terms). But”
― Dianne Hales, La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language

“Americans see Italian “come una lingua polisensoriale capace di aprire le porte al bello” (“as a multi sensory language able to open the gates to beauty”).”
― Dianne Hales, La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language

“English may be the language everyone needs to know, but Italian is the language people want to learn. With”
― Dianne Hales, La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language

“Yet as a national spoken tongue, Italian, practically born yesterday, is nuovissimo”
― Dianne Hales, La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language

“When a people has lost homeland and liberty, their language takes the place of a nation and of everything,” observed”
― Dianne Hales, La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language

“many diverse people of intelligence and refinement, outside Italy no less than within Italy, devote much effort and study to learning and speaking our language for no reason but love.” These acolytes included Elizabeth I of England, Francis I of France, and Emperor Charles V, who once declared, “I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.” John”
― Dianne Hales, La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language