A game of words with the language of Dante

Why learn Italian? Because it’s fun, it’s easy, and it’s a cultural investment. And more than that, it offers a wonderful play on words.
This was the theme of the first of three ItalCult conferences held at the Italian Cultural Institute last week. They were held in collaboration with the National Congress of Italo-Canadians-Toronto District, the Italian Heritage Month Committee, and the ItalCult Commission, to celebrate the first Italian Heritage Month and the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy.
The main feature of the first conference was the Italian language, or better still, the game. It’s something “serious” for Anthony Mollica, Professor Emeritus of the Faculty of Education at Brock University in St. Catharines, – notwithstanding being the creator of the ludo-linguistic (game) – who by involving and interacting with an attentive and eager crowd, demonstrated how simple and fun it can be to learn the language of Dante.
The evening began with an exploration of the pronunciation of “cognates,” words that – in both languages – have similar a sound and orthographics. Consider certain suffixes, words that in English end in “al,” end in “ale” in Italian, such as “animale,” while “ance” becomes “anza” as in circostanza (circumstance), or distanza (distance). And more: “or” becomes “ore,” and so on. A noun then, for example, “decisione” (decision), can become the verb “decidere” (to decide), the adjective “decisivo” (decisive), or the adverb “decisamente” (decidedly). And the so-called “false friends” merit special attention – English terms that appear similar to Italian ones but can be misleading because at times they have very different meanings.
And then come the games like mesostico, where a player chooses a word or short phrase, and writes it out vertically. Then you add a word or phrase horizontally that is somehow related to the original word or phrase.
“If you like culture, art, good food, music, or sports, then you should learn Italian,” says Mollica, who demonstrates that it’s possible to “motivate the student, showing him in concrete terms the importance of Italian.”
The audience was treated to a video where they viewed Italian personalities from Dante to Michelangelo, to the more current Rita Levi Montalcini, Riccardo Muti, Bertolucci, and Pavarotti.
“At times, words aren’t necessary,” explains Mollica. “It’s enough to see these images, these famous personalities, to make us understand the importance of Italian in the world. We don’t need words. We’ve exported not only the language but also the culture. And it’s impossible to separate language from culture and, as a result, from made-in-Italy. Those who love the Italian culture also love Italian production.”
The video also featured the words of the late Giovanni Nencioni, linguist and former president of the Accademia della Crusca from 1972 to 2000, who passed away in 2008: “A nation’s cultural and civic identity is made up of a combination of precious elements, one being the language. When a language is spoken by all citizens, as in the case of Italian, it becomes representative of the people, it’s the I.D., the collective memory, the light. It’s also the strongest factor in being united.”
For Mollica, the promotion of Italian is more important than ever.
“We’re fortunate here in Canada both as Canadian citizens and as Italian Canadians. We have another culture. Those of us who speak more than one language are more tolerant compared to a unilingual people. We’re better able to appreciate the thinking of other peoples. And let’s not forget that speaking Italian opens up another world — another way of living.”