Italian orthography in Early Modern times Andreas Michel
2. The historico-cultural context
The politically-split Italy had no uniform spoken standard language until the 20th century, since the majority of the population only used their local dialects. A global Italian written language had become established already, as indicated above, in the course of the 16th century, and had replaced the different written dialects (scriptae) that had emerged in the Middle Ages. It is also the basis for the present standard spoken language. The codification of the Italian written language was carried out to a great extent by gram-marians and lexicographers. The linguistic model was the Florentine liter-ary language of the 14th century, which was broadly accepted by scholars throughout the whole of Italy. The assertion of the Tuscan variety as the general Italian written language at first marked a break with the dominance of the Latin tradition, which took longer in Italy than in the other Romance countries, and at the same time established the supremacy of the phonemic principle over the etymological, which, for instance, prevailed in France.
2.1. The Latin written tradition and the volgare
The difficulty in putting the Italian dialects into writing in the Middle Ages was due to the fact that a large number of sounds could not be adequately expressed by means of traditional Latin orthography. This applied above all to the Gallo-Italic dialects in Northern Italy, whereas the Tuscan variety remained closer to its Latin origin. However, even here there were some sounds including phenomena which were unknown to Latin: for instance, the affricates /ʤ/, /dz/, /ts/ and /ʧ/, or the fricative /ʃ/.
As far as the development of the Italo-Romance written dialects was concerned, there were two basic types. The first was characterized by rela-tively weak diatopic marking, as well as by strong Latinization; the second, conversely, by a strong regional or local characterization as well as by slight Latinization. For instance, to the first group belong the Ligurian scriptae, in which the form [ʧy] (< Lat. PLUS) is in general expressed by
<plu>. In Neapolitan and Sicilian texts, however, we find <pluj> for spo-ken [kju] (< Lat. PLUS).
The Tuscan dialect represents generally, as we have already mentioned, a relatively low rate of discrepancy between phonetics and written repre-sentation. Thus, the sound connections [pj] (< Lat. PL-), [fj] (< Lat. FL-) are, in most cases, expressed by <pi> (Lat. PLUS > Tusc./It. [pju] <più>) and
<fi> (Lat. FLOREM > Tusc./It. [fjore] <fiore>), while Latinized spelling tends to be more the exception.
2.2. The Tuscan spelling of the Middle Ages
In the development of the Tuscan writing tradition in the 13th century, it was not literature that played the main role, but rather the correspondence of merchants. It was the business people in particular who disentangled themselves relatively early from the monopoly of the Latin written lan-guage (cf. Castellani 1982). The documents of this time, however, were characterized by a degree of heterogeneity. Alternations between <k> and
<ch> emerged for the expression of /k/ (e.g., ke; chuore, chose, chome);
<k> and <q> were sporadically used for the expression of /g/: Kerardi (Gherardi); quadannio (guadagno). The group <th> served sometimes for the expression of /ts/: vethosa (vezzosa); in Pisa and Lucca <z> often repre-sented a voiced intervocalic s (/z/) (e.g., bizogno, uzare). Characteristic of the Florentine merchants of the Duecento is for instance the following document from 1256 (cf. Casapullo 1999: 328):
Arighetto f. Tolomei d’Agliana: aven konperato da lui un peço di tera posta a• rio grande, ke fue del padre, k’è dal primo lato Giaffero f. Triki per la tera ke konperò da’ fratelli Ispinelli, e ii sì è i• rio e iii Righetto medesimo e iiii via; avenne karta per mano di ser Andrea da Enpoli vekio, ke s’inbrevò dies otto intrante febraio nel cinquantasei, ke ne de avere ib. Xxv questo die.
A Righetto demo lb. Xiij e s. iiij dies otto intrante febraio: ponemo a sua ragione ove dovea dare, ke saldamo.
Demoli s. xxvii questo die: ponemo <a sua> a ragione ove dovea dare Tolomeio suo padre, ke saldamo.
Demo a Righetto ib. x e s. xi dies quatro intrante marzo in sua mano, ke ne paghò la konpagna da Enpoli lb. Otto. …
Conspicuous here is the massive usage of <k> (e.g., ke, konperato, karta, konpagna, vekio). The group /ᶆp/ is represented by <np> (e.g., konperato).
The voiced plosive /g/ is expressed before palatal as well as before velar vowels by <gh> (e.g., Arighetto, paghò). The unvoiced affricate /ts/ is represented in intervocal positions by <ç>, the postconsonantal affricate
/ts/, conversely, by <z> (e.g., peço vs marzo). Geminate consonants are often expressed by a simple character (e.g., demo instead of demmo, saldamo instead of saldammo, tera instead of terra).
Table 1. Possible phoneme-grapheme relations (selection) in the medieval scriptae of the Tuscan speech area
Phoneme Grapheme
/k/ <ch> + <e>, <i>, <a>, <o>, <u>; <k>
/g/ <g> + <a>, <o>, <u>; <gh> + <e>, <i>; <k>; <qu>
/ʃ/ <sci>
/dʒ/ <g> + <e>, <i>
/tʃ/ <c> + <e>, <i>
/ts/ <ç>; <z>; <th>
/dz/; /z/ <z>
/λ/ <gli>
/λ/ <gli>
/ɲ/ <gn>; <nn>; <ngni>
2.3. Phonographemic experiments in Alberti’s Grammatichetta and in the fragment Ordine délle lættére pélla linghua toschana
Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472), the author of the first synchronously-designed grammar of the Italian language (c. 1435) – which however is only available in a manuscript from the early 16th century – uses in the chapter Ordine delle lettere diacritical signs for the distinction of open and closed vowels, as well as of voiced and unvoiced consonants. The conjunc-tion e (usually pronounced [e]!) is expressed by <ae>, which represents [ɛ];
the third person of essere, é [ɛ] by <é>, the masculine article in the plural at that time, by <e’>. The phonemes /ɛ/ and /ɔ/ are expressed respectively by
<ae> and <ŏ>; conversely, /e/ and /o/ are reprensented by <é> and <ó>
respectively, or simply by <o> (e.g., lættére [lɛtːere] and pŏrci a’ porci [pɔrtʃi a portʃi]). To mark the phoneme /ts/ the sign <ç> was used (e.g.,
<çio> [tsio]):
Ordine délle lettere i r t
n u m c e o l s f d b v p q g a x z ç ch gh Vochali a ae é ó ŏ u
ae é e’
ae é e’ Coniunctio Verbum Articulus El ghiro giró al çio el zembo
Et volse pŏrci a’ porci quéllo che’ è pèlla pelle.
Similar approaches to the phonological marking of characters also exist in the short document Ordine délle lættére pélla linghua toschana (cf. figure 1).
As a whole, Alberti’s spelling system shows a certain inconsistency.
Figure 1. Ordine délle lættére pélla linghua toschana1 i r t n u m l ſ f c e o
b d v vi ſveglie p q g
a x z
ç ch gh çi chi ghi.
Io voglio ch’el ghiro giri al çio él zembo vochali
a æ é i ao ŏ u ſchórse, ſchŏrse a ae é i ó ŏ u tŏnó a tŏrnŏ
io ripŏſi el uino tu ripóſi l’animo verbo articulo coniunctione
è é æ
I’ vóltŏ èl vŏlto quando la naera é nèra.
æ èlla pŏrtó pèlla pælle e’ faerri
3. The development of the Italian written language