Italian dialects down-under: a richness to preserve

Talk by Ruben Benatti and Angela Tarantini.

Free event. RSVP: https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/italian-dialects-down-under-a-richness-to-preserve-tickets-27402987072?utm_term=eventurl_text

Italians in Australia represent a long-established migrant community. The first Italians arrived in Australia at the end of the 18th century, but it was after World War II that Australia became a destination for mass migration from Italy. The Italian-speaking community is now one of the largest non-English speaking communities down under.  Contrary to what the layperson may think, the Italian-speaking community has always been linguistically fragmented, even if recently this seems to be less and less the case (Armillei & Mascitelli 2016). Most of the migrants who came to Australia between 1945 and 1970 did not speak Italian as their first language; and many actually did not speak it at all (De Mauro 1963 [2011]). Most migrants spoke their local dialects, which in many cases are not comprehensible for Italian-speakers and/or speakers of other dialects.

Some scholars maintain that the importance of Italian dialects within the host society decreased as the level of education of later migrants grew (De Mauro 2002). We carried out a survey among second- and third-generation Italian-Australians to assess their knowledge of the Italian language and of their dialect, and their perception thereof. Surprisingly, our research reveals that dialect is still very much alive, and it is perceived by young Italian-Australians as an essential tool to bridge the gap between Australia and their Italian heritage, and to reconnect with their roots. In our talk, we will present the results of our survey (Benatti & Tarantini, unpublished), and we will report on the interviews we have been carrying out, where  most of our interviewees stated that dialect to them is at least as important as Italian, if not more.

Ruben Benatti (MA Linguistics, PhD Applied Linguistics) has recently returned from a semester as Professor of Italian Language and Linguistics at the Magtymguly Adyndaky Türkmen Döwlet Universiteti of Ashgabat (Turkmenistan). He held courses of neurolinguistics, general linguistics and language teaching at the Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale Amedeo Avogadro in Vercelli (Italy), and has taught Italian as a second language in universities both in Italy and overseas; and at the Italian Cultural Institute of Belgrade (Serbia).  He currently teaches Italian at Co.As.It.

Angela Tiziana Tarantini (MA Languages, MA Foreign Literatures) is a PhD candidate in Translation Studies at Monash University in Melbourne. Her doctoral project focuses on translating the work of Melbourne-based playwright David Mence into Italian. Before moving to Australia for her PhD she taught English in many Italian universities; she is currently tutoring for translation into Italian at Monash University.

Ruben and Angela have presented joint papers at international conferences, and have written a handbook for primary school teachers, to teach English phonemes to Italian native speaking children (forthcoming, 2017, Erickson).