(1). 1:Italy was unified far later, in the 19th century.
2:“Italian” was thus created by the pen, not the sword.
3:The 13th- and 14thcentury works of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio were the peninsula’s most revered literature.
4:So when, in the 16th century, Pietro Bembo sat down to write a grammar for the prestige language of their texts, he used their (by now rather old) Tuscan dialect as his model.
5:In this way “Italian” was born—though Bembo titled his book simply “Writings on the Vulgar Tongue”.
6:It soon spread to elites in other regions.
1:意大利很晚才在19世纪统一。
2:因此,“意大利语”是由笔而不是剑创造的。
3:13、14世纪但丁、彼特拉克和薄伽丘的作品是半岛上最受尊敬的文学作品。
4:因此,16世纪,当皮埃特罗·本博坐下来为他们的经典语言编写语法时,使用了他们的托斯卡纳方言(到目前为止相当古老)作为模型。
5:就这样,“意大利语”诞生了——尽管本博把他的书简单地命名为“俗语的写作”。
6:它很快就传播到了其他地区的精英阶层。
(2). 1:Even then, ordinary folk continued speaking their own dialects, which, across great enough distances—say from Milan to Naples—were and remain mutually incomprehensible.
2:These are not bad copies of Italian but its siblings, descendants of Latin in their own right.
3:Over half of Italians proudly speak one of them still (though nearly all speak Italian, too).
4:A Sicilian who doesn’t speak Sicilian is hardly worthy of the name; Neapolitan plays a crucial role in the celebrated novels of Elena Ferrante.
1:即使在那个时候,普通百姓仍然在讲他们自己的方言,这些方言跨越了足够远的距离,比如从米兰到纳普勒斯,彼此之间仍然无法理解。
2:这些并非意大利语失败的复制品,而是其兄弟姐妹,拉丁语的后裔。
3:超过一半的意大利人仍然自豪地说其中一种语言(尽管几乎所有人也都说意大利语)。
4:一个不会说西西里语的西西里人很难称得上是西西里人; 那不勒斯人在埃琳娜·费朗特的著名小说中起着至关重要的作用。
(3). 1:These days, amid migration and globalisation, Italian continues to develop.
2:Naturally some worry that it is happening too fast; that young people are derelict in their grammar, or use too many foreign words.
3:In reality, the same forces that made Latin from its predecessor (called Proto Indo-European), and turned Latin into Italian—the drift of time and exposure to different influences— are still operating.
4:The only unchanging language is an unspoken one.
5:Classical Latin may be dead—but as Italian, it lives on.
1:如今,在移民和全球化的背景下,意大利继续发展。
2:自然有人担心这一切发生得太快;年轻人在语法上荒废了,还使用了太多的外来词。
3:事实上,时间累积和受到的不同影响使拉丁语从前身原始印欧语变为拉丁语,而同样力量也把拉丁语变成意大利语,如今这种力量仍然在发挥作用。
4:只要语言在使用就会一直发生改变。
5:古典拉丁语可能已经绝迹,但作为意大利语,它仍然存在。