La Bella Lingua: A love letter to an exquisite language

While I never ended up having children, I long considered naming any first-born son Domani.

My critics asked, “Why would you name your child after the Italian word for tomorrow?”

Well, for lots of reasons.

For one, I like its inherent hopefulness, to be named for tomorrow, but more than that, I love the word itself. I adore its very sound, the way it rolls off the tongue like a whispered compliment paid to a lover. 

Like that cherished woman in your life, it is a thing of exquisite beauty.

Domani.

To my ear, spoken Italian is truly the Lamborghini of Latin languages — sleek and elegant, representing both style and grace. At times dangerous and even naughty, it never fails to get your attention.

It’s been this way for ages. Back in the 16th Century, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V was quoted as saying, when comparing the languages of his day, that “I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse.”

To my mind, speaking to God, men and even your horse would sound so much more expressive in Italian.

While studying Italian in preparation for spending the summer in the southern Italian town where my grandfather was born, I have been repeatedly stunned by a language with the voluptuousness of a Sophia Loren and the delicacy of a Michelangelo work of art, one veritably sung rather than spoken, like a score from Italy's greatest composers, such as Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini or Ennio Morricone.

And Italian, after all, is the language that gave us the poetry of Dante Alighieri. (Or did Dante give us Italian?)

This ethereal tongue has often nearly brings me to tears. Oh, il mio Italiano, how do I love thee? Let me count the phrases.

What other language could morph the mundane "day before yesterday,” into the gorgeous l’altro ieri, the other yesterday? Or Il dolce far' niente, the sweetness of doing nothing, for being just plain lazy?

Why be simply “enchanting” when you can be incantevole? Why be just cool when you can be figo, or forte or mitigo or even da urlo, epic!

I have made my trade writing in English but I can already sense the unlimited possibilities of being able to write in Italian, with style. Oh, the places we'll go, la bella lingua! I dream of one day speaking with my hands like a true Italian, gesturing like a street mime over life's joys and frustrations.

For now, I enjoy swearing in this new tongue. Just saying the word cazzo is like therapy.

With the Italian language in my mind, shaping my thoughts and dictating my words, I feel so much closer to my grandfather, who grew up in Italy, and my father, a first-generation American. Italian has helped me feel their spirits and, in a way, inhabit their very beings.

And you need to think and feel Italian to fathom some experiences, such as grasping the power of the family or appreciating the beauty of the classical arts. Because as H.L. Mencken once said, "Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible as baseball in Italian."

Indeed, the Italians are poets at heart. Somebody in a bad mood is described as having una luna storta, or crooked moon. I may be ticklish at home, but in Italy, io soffro di solletico, "I suffer from the tickles."

In Italian, you’re not just a cat lady, you’re a gattara! If you just don’t give a damn, you’re a menefreghismo. Why be merely angry when you can do it in style, and be arrabiato?

And why say "sky blue" when you have azzurro in your repertoire? If the sky above is particularly blue, the Italians even have a phrase for that: azzuro-azzuro! In Italian, the English saying "While the cats away, the mice will play" becomes a ballet, "Quando il gatto no c'e, i topi ballano, "When the cat is not there, the mice dance."

Don’t know the answer to something? In Italy, you can just shrug your shoulders and puff out the word Boh!, which doesn’t have a direct English translation. There’s even a lovely little word to describe the hunk of bread used to soak up your pasta sauce — scarpetta. 

You don't flirt in Italy, you fare la civetta, "make like an owl." And there's the elegant little word you say when you want something to come true: Magari.

There are, of course, different versions of Italian, depending on your company. If you're giving directions to a stranger, you never end with "Do you understand?" which puts the onus on the listener. Instead, you say, politely, Mi spiego bene? or "Do I explain myself well?', keeping the responsibility with the speaker.

Then there's the Italian you get when you're talking with your cousin Giovanni Glionna in Pomarico, when you're bluffing that you understood what was said, even though you're absolutely clueless.

That's when he'll look you square in the eye and give you the no-nonsense but loving, Non hai capito! "You didn't understand!"

In her well-observed book, La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language, linguist Dianne Hales excavates one statuesque phrase after another. Apologies to Shakespeare, but compared to the beauty of Italian, English is like your unmarried older sister.

Hales shows the pazzazz that Italian brings to words from other tongues. In la bella lingua, the lowly towel is an ascendant asciugamano. And why honk a guttural word like “handkerchief” when you can say something snazzy, like fazzoletto?

In Italian, words simply come alive. It makes me innamorato, head over hells crazy in love. When a Roman friend arrived at Hales' home amid a rainstorm, he gallantly proclaimed himself inzuppato, literally, “dunked in the soup.”

The author quotes the Italian newspaper La Repubblica to describe Italian as come una lingua polisensoriale capace di aprire le porte al bello, a “multisensory language able to open the gates to beauty.”

Indeed.

Hales has inspired me to thusly describe my struggles to learn Italian: Io so suonare alcune note, ma non ancora so fare la musica, “I can play a few notes but I can’t yet make music.”

Yet my Italian relatives make plenty of music, each and every day.

Years ago, an Italian cousin scolded me on the ugliness of my native language.

“In English,” she said, “you have water.”

She squinched up her face like she was about to be ill.

Water," she said, was brutto, ugly. "But in Italian, we have acqua!”

She paused, and then smiled.

“And there is simply so much more beauty in that.”

I couldn’t agree more. But as usual, the Italian said it best.

And that's why I'll keep exploring this beautiful language.

I'm always thinking of Domani.