La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language

Overview

"Italians say that someone who acquires a new language 'possesses' it. In my case, Italian possesses me. With Italian racing like blood through my veins, I do indeed see with different eyes, hear with different ears, and drink in the world with all my senses..."



A celebration of the language and culture of Italy, La Bella Lingua is the story of how a language shaped a nation, told against the backdrop of one woman's personal quest to speak fluent Italian.

For anyone who has been to Italy, the fantasy of living the Italian life is powerfully seductive. But to truly become Italian, one must learn the language. This is how Dianne Hales began her journey. In La Bella Lingua, she brings the story of her decades-long experience with the "the world's most loved and lovable language" together with explorations of Italy's history, literature, art, music, movies, lifestyle and food in a true opera amorosa -- a labor of her love of Italy.

Throughout her first excursion in Italy -- with "non parlo Italiano" as her only Italian phrase -- Dianne delighted in the beauty of what she saw but craved comprehension of what she heard. And so she chose to inhabit the language. Over more than twenty-five years she has studied Italian in every way possible through Berlitz, books, CDs, podcasts, private tutorials and conversation groups, and, most importantly, large blocks of time in Italy. In the process she found that Italian became not just a passion and a pleasure, but a passport into Italy's storia and its very soul. She offers charming insights into what it is that makes Italian the most emotionally expressive of languages, from how the "pronto" ("Ready!") Italians say when they answer the telephone conveys a sense of something coming alive, to how even ordinary things such as a towel (asciugamano) or handkerchief (fazzoletto) sound better in Italian.

She invites readers to join her as she traces the evolution of Italian in the zesty graffiti on the walls of Pompeii, in Dante's incandescent cantos and in Boccaccio's bawdy Decameron. She portrays how social graces remain woven into the fabric of Italian: even the chipper "ciao," which does double duty as "hi" and "bye," reflects centuries of bella figura. And she exalts the glories of Italy's food and its rich and often uproarious gastronomic language: Italians deftly describe someone uptight as a baccala (dried cod), a busybody who noses into everything as a prezzemolo (parsley), a worthless or banal movie as a polpettone (large meatball).


Like Dianne, readers of La Bella Lingua will find themselves innamorata, enchanted, by Italian, fascinated by its saga, tantalized by its adventures, addicted to its sound, and ever eager to spend more time in its company.

Editorial Reviews

In this charming love letter to the language and culture of Italy, journalist Hales recounts her inebriation with Italian's sounds and her lovesickness over its phrases. Enamored of this lovely and lovable language, Hales immerses herself in Italian culture on numerous trips to Italy in her attempt to live Italian. She comes to think of Italian as a lovable rascal, a clever, twinkle-eyed scamp that you can't resist even when it plays you for a fool. Hales regales us with the mysteries of the language, such as when a color becomes more than hue. She tells us that yellow, for example, refers to a mystery because thrillers traditionally had yellow covers. In her rapture over the language, she also swoons over Italian literature (from Dante to Manzoni), opera (Verdi and Puccini) and cinema (Marcello Mastroianni and Fellini) as she rehearses the many ways in which the language has seductively slipped into Western culture and consciousness. (May)
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Author Information

Bio of Dianne Hales

Dianne Hales is one of the country's most widely published authors of books & articles on health subjects. Her husband, Robert E. Hales, M.D., is a nationally renowned psychiatrist. He is professor & chair of the Department of Psychiatry at the University of California, Davis, & the author of more than 125 scientific publications. Together, they are also the co-authors of the definitive, award-winning reference work "Caring for the Mind: The Comprehensive Guide to Mental Health."

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Additional Info

Imprint

Broadway Books

Filesize

1.40 MB

Number of Pages

320

eBook ISBN

9780767932110