Angela
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I thought I'd start a dedicated thread to it because discussions are buried in multiple threads.
I'll start off with this one, which is about which region has the most "neutral" or "standard" accent in Italy. There are subtitles in English, but you'll also be able to hear someone trying very hard to speak said "standard" Italian. (His "natural" pronunciation is clearly Piemontese or Torinese, an accent I personally find very unattractive to the ear.)
As in most countries, I think, the "standard" accent is often the accent used by television presenters or reporters sometimes, or, in the case of Italy, in the Italian "dubbed" into foreign films.
So, for Italy, we have a "created" standard pronunciation on top of a language essentially "created" by poets and fiction writers which was read and written by the highly educated for centuries, but was virtually unspoken.
He comes to the conclusion, as have many in the past, that it's not a "Tuscan" pronunciation, or at least not the Tuscan variety with the pronounced "gorgia" of Firenze, where "coca cola" becomes hoha hola", but not really the Roman one either, i.e. not Romanesco.
I think I once read perhaps the accent around Siena is the model. I doubt it because the "gorgia" is present there. Perhaps somewhere else in southern Toscana? Anyone know what Grossetano sounds like? Or maybe some border areas with Umbria as well? It's been more than a decade since I was traveling around Umbria, but I remember I liked the way they spoke in Perugia and also in Cortona in neighboring Toscana. It could be northern Lazio out of the reach of Romanesco as well, I suppose.
If you use the link you can really blow it up to see the details.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...lian_Dialects.png/1200px-Italian_Dialects.png
Wherever it is "natural", I love it: I think it's beautiful, and deliberately designed to be beautiful.
A corollary in the U.S. is that newscasters used to speak with a sort of "standard" American accent which some people placed in the Midwest, around somewhere like the Nebraska of Tom Brokaw. People took diction courses to sound like that. I got my first job, at a magazine, because they thought I sounded like that, instead of having a downstate New York accent. It was somewhat deliberate on my part. The "American" around me was quite close to the "standard" except for a somewhat flat "a". I corrected all of that, however, because, as I said, I mostly learned English from television, both old films and the newscasts.
I'll start off with this one, which is about which region has the most "neutral" or "standard" accent in Italy. There are subtitles in English, but you'll also be able to hear someone trying very hard to speak said "standard" Italian. (His "natural" pronunciation is clearly Piemontese or Torinese, an accent I personally find very unattractive to the ear.)
As in most countries, I think, the "standard" accent is often the accent used by television presenters or reporters sometimes, or, in the case of Italy, in the Italian "dubbed" into foreign films.
So, for Italy, we have a "created" standard pronunciation on top of a language essentially "created" by poets and fiction writers which was read and written by the highly educated for centuries, but was virtually unspoken.
He comes to the conclusion, as have many in the past, that it's not a "Tuscan" pronunciation, or at least not the Tuscan variety with the pronounced "gorgia" of Firenze, where "coca cola" becomes hoha hola", but not really the Roman one either, i.e. not Romanesco.
I think I once read perhaps the accent around Siena is the model. I doubt it because the "gorgia" is present there. Perhaps somewhere else in southern Toscana? Anyone know what Grossetano sounds like? Or maybe some border areas with Umbria as well? It's been more than a decade since I was traveling around Umbria, but I remember I liked the way they spoke in Perugia and also in Cortona in neighboring Toscana. It could be northern Lazio out of the reach of Romanesco as well, I suppose.
If you use the link you can really blow it up to see the details.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...lian_Dialects.png/1200px-Italian_Dialects.png
Wherever it is "natural", I love it: I think it's beautiful, and deliberately designed to be beautiful.
A corollary in the U.S. is that newscasters used to speak with a sort of "standard" American accent which some people placed in the Midwest, around somewhere like the Nebraska of Tom Brokaw. People took diction courses to sound like that. I got my first job, at a magazine, because they thought I sounded like that, instead of having a downstate New York accent. It was somewhat deliberate on my part. The "American" around me was quite close to the "standard" except for a somewhat flat "a". I corrected all of that, however, because, as I said, I mostly learned English from television, both old films and the newscasts.