venetian language 939
Venetian and all other vernaculars in italy to the effective status of dia-
lects, in the sense, initially, of being subordinate to a national norm and
then, eventually, of being a corruption of it. the new norm, while not
yet an institutionalized standard in all domains, would from that time
forward be adopted for unmarked writing by the italian elites and act as
a “roofing” language:29 a prestigious point of reference for all the vernacu-
lars of italy. indeed, it was in the early Cinquecento that the term italiano
began to be used by some writers to refer to Florentine or tuscan. it was
also in 16th-century italy that the term dialect first made its appearance
in modern european languages, although the strength of local vernacular
traditions in italy impeded its use there in the modern pejorative sense
until considerably later.30 it is significant that as late as the mid-18th cen-
tury, against the background of Venice’s exceptionally mature statehood
in the italian and european context, goldoni could deploy spoken Vene-
tian and spoken italian alongside one another in his theater on an equal
footing, continuing to call them quite unpolemically “lingua Veneziana”
and “lingua toscana.”31
With the fall of the Republic in 1797, and the subsequent period of
French and austrian occupation, Venetian lost its official position entirely
within Venice and its former empire (l’Imperio Veneto), although it con-
tinued as the unmarked32 spoken language of all social classes, at home
and abroad. When Venice joined the kingdom of italy in 1866 following
a plebiscite, a long-standing “bilingualism,” where dialect occupied most
spoken registers and italian most written ones, was the rule throughout
the peninsula, apart perhaps from tuscany and Rome, and was more clear
cut and solidly established in Venice than elsewhere. this linguistic divide
was inevitably rendered problematic by incorporation into a centralizing
nation-state.33 From uncontroversial and almost imperceptible, italian
contact influence on dialects became dynamic and, potentially at least,
ideological. in Venice, an official national standard, the mother tongue of
next to nobody in the city but familiar to the social elite, was now in effect
29 Modeled on german Dachsprache, a “roofing” language is a prestige variety that acts
as a reference for “subordinate” varieties within its political or cultural orbit.
30 On the appearance of the term dialetto in the italian Renaissance, see Mario alinei,
“Dialetto: un concetto rinascimentale fiorentino,” Quaderni di Semantica 2 (1981), 147–73.
31 From goldoni’s preface to I Rusteghi of 1762. guido Davico Bonino, ed., Carlo Gol-
doni: “I Rusteghi” (turin, 1970), p. 17.
32 that is “normal,” with no special or negative connotations.
33 For a consideration of the italian linguistic situation after unification within its his-
torical context see tullio De Mauro, Storia linguistica dell’Italia unita (Bari, 1963).