The French (Dis)connection

French was the first foreign language I'd heard as a child, which made me aware of the many different ways people all around the world communicate with words.

It’s close to Italian in terms of grammar, lexicon and syntax, yet quite different phonetically with sounds we don’t have, such as u pronounced as ü, eu/oeu as ö, the nasal vowels, and the infamous uvular r. In Italian, almost all words end with a vowel, but this is also different in French, with its breezy, séduisante phonological quality, so alluring to many of us.

French became a more familiar presence in my life, when my dad, a trade unionist, decided to move the family from Prato, an industrial town in Tuscany, to Turin, a bigger industrial town in the northwestern region of Piedmont. The distance between Turin and the French border is just 53 km (32.9 miles), and the city centre is imbued with a distinct Parisian vibe, from its spacious boulevards to its elegant squares. The hearty, indulgent Piedmontese dishes remind the seasoned gourmets more of the rich transalpine cuisine than of the light Mediterranean flavour palette, while Barolo, Barbaresco, and Nebbiolo can hold their own next to the great wines of France.

Photo by me. OK, not the most alluring of images: a Piedmontese-style Gianduja chocolate cake with over enthusiastically roasted hazelnuts, made by my lovely husband for my birthday in 2020. It was delicious and much less stodgy than it looks.

Before Italy became a unified Kingdom in 1861 – with Turin as its very first capital – the King and his Court used to speak French and the Piedmontese dialect. Even though they sound very similar, Piedmontese is closer to Occitan – la langue d’Oc – sometimes also referred to as Provençal, a Romance language spoken in Southern France, Monaco, Italy’s Occitan Valleys, as well as Spain’s Val d’Aran in Catalonia.

How many linguistic misunderstandings could this closeness have caused? From the top of my head, I can think of two idioms. The first one is la bellezza dell’asino (I’m using its Italian translation, since I can’t speak, nor write Piedmontese), literally “the donkey’s beauty”, which means “the beauty of youth”, or la beauté de l'âge, as in “You can’t really call her pretty, but she’s got the donkey’s beauty.” How in the name of Jebus could youth become a donkey, from French to Piedmontese? Well, it might have been a typo – âne (donkey) instead of âge (age) – or someone just couldn’t hear it the correct way. We’ll never know. Another theory is that baby donkeys are indeed cute, even though not as handsome as their equine relatives, the horses, so that’s how it came to be.

Kawaii alert: A cute light brown baby donkey. Photo by Ryan Ancill on Unsplash

As it happens, the second idiom – parlare francese come una vacca spagnola, lit. “speaking French like a Spanish cow” – is more puzzling. Why would Spanish cows speak French? Why would they even speak Spanish? The meaning is “to speak a foreign language extremely badly.” Apparently, it’s another case of typos/bad hearing. The correct sentence should read parlare francese come un basco spagnolo, “speaking French like a Spanish Basque.” Now, I wouldn’t call the proud Basques “Spanish” to their faces, unless I had a death wish, but there’s a Northern Basque Country in the French department of the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, and the Basques hailing from there presumably used to speak a better French than the Basques from Northern Spain, hence the difference.

And now a case, where the French language is once again a force for civilisation or, at least, pacification. One of my Russian lecturers at Uni, Tanya (the best teacher with whom I had the honour to study), came from Leningrad, now called St. Petersburg again. She’d met her Italian husband in the early 1960’s, during a tour of the Hermitage Museum, where she used to work as a guide. Her mother-in-law (let’s call her MIL) wasn’t amused: whatever could her precious only son see in that twenty-something lovely blonde, with her English degree and her love of the Arts? MIL wasn’t going to have any of these international shenanigans under her roof, even more so with a representative of the Soviets, no matter how blonde and pretty they may look. She decided to sabotage the unholy union in her own way. When her son asked her kindly to speak Italian with Tanya, but not too quickly, so that she could learn, MIL thought “The hell I will, let’s see how she’ll like it!”, and started talking to her in Piedmontese.

The Moyka canal in St.Petersburg. Photograph: Alamy. From The Guardian

Little did MIL know that Tanya’s very first words as a baby had been uttered in French. Tanya’s mother came from a Russian aristocratic family who – like all the rich and nobles in the years before the Bolshevik Revolution – used to hire French mademoiselles and English Misses to teach their offspring and take care of their young children. The old governess, too frail to attempt her journey back to France, had stayed in St.Petersburg/Petrograd/Leningrad with Tanya’s mother, and had helped her with raising Tanya and her brothers. Tanya was able to understand MIL, and to talk with her. She also learned Italian quickly and well. Graciously, MIL conceded defeat: “She may be a foreigner, but she’s smart. She may be a Russian (God forbid!), but she’s not a bad girl.”

Let me finish with a word that any lover of fast cars and petrolheads know well – Countach, as in Lamborghini Countach, from Piedmontese contacc, which literally means plague, contagion, and is used to express amazement or even admiration.

What a beauty, huh? The Countach was the first production car to incorporate scissor doors.

What other kind of (dis)connections occur between languages that share two or more variants (for ex., English in the USA and Canada, Spanish in almost all of South American countries), or very similar languages of the same family, like in Scandinavia, or Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, or the Netherlands and Germany, or the Slavic countries (Ukrainian is very close to both Polish and Russian, or Czech and Slovak,), or Estonia and Finland? What about the way Chinese writing and culture influenced Japan, Korea, and Vietnam? Tell me all about it in the comments!

Amiche e amici italiani: siete caldamente incoraggiati a lasciare uno o più commenti nella nostra bella lingua, un invito che vale anche per tutti i miei articoli pubblicati in precedenza. Molti tra voi sono torinesi: c’è un modo di dire o un proverbio simile a quelli che ho citato? Attendo i vostri contributi!

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