New ePublication–A Linguistic History of Italy / Storia linguistica d’Italia
A new eBook by John Kinder, in collaboration with Grazia Scotellaro, provides a stimulating resource for teachers and scholars of the Italian language and its cultures.
Professor John Kinder, Head of the Italian Studies programme at the University of Western Australia, has been one of Australasia’s trailblazers in the use of digital technologies for Italian language and culture acquisition. His 2008 CLIC: Cultura e Lingua d’Italiana in Cd-Rom (Novara: Interlinea) was novel in its day and showcased what new media can achieve.
As the technology of the Cd-Rom has been progressively displaced, John Kinder has kept abreast of new developments and has re-launched a version of CLIC called A Linguistic History of Italy – Storia linguistica d’Italia in a free-to-download eBook format in collaboration with Grazia Scotellaro through the Australian National University Press.
This book argues that at the heart of the life and culture of the peoples of the Italian peninsula and islands is their language. A Linguistic History of Italy tells the story of how the language spoken in Italy developed from Latin to multiple dialects, to the selection of Florentine for a national written language and how Italian became the common language of the entire nation.
The chapters of A Linguistic History of Italy take you through the history of Italian society, art, ideas and language. At each step on this fascinating journey language intertwines with other components of Italian social life. The chapters focus on the turning points in language history – when Latin ‘became’ Romance, when local dialects were first used in writing, when Florentine was selected as the national language for literature, when Italian became the ‘national language’ – and they show how those moments only fully make sense when seen in a broader context.
The text is written in both English and Italian, so you can improve your linguistic skills while immersing yourself in Italian culture. And the many images provide a visual feast of Italian beauty through the centuries.
