E-books in Italian - where?

[nrapallo]

Originally Posted by mtravellerh

Italian, as a written language, is quite old (but never was talked). Only recently, with a higher level of education, the "high" Italian is been used more and more as a talking language.

I'm Canadian, but of Italian descent, specificially of Sicilian roots. Both my parents and grandparents were born in Siciliy and eventually emigrated to Toronto over a half century ago.

I learned our Sicilian dialect first, then English, then some conversational as well as a bit of written Italian.

My (retired) Italian-only speaking grandmother was my early educator (while both my parents worked) and so I learned her Sicilian dialect quite well but later found out, when I was older, that that dialect is almost never written. They wrote in proper Italian, but spoke dialect...

It is a chore to co-erce the pronunciation of some Sicilian words into an Italian phonic, let alone be able to read what you've written. Iddu/idda represent he/she with a slight slur on the second "d" and "vowel".

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by doreenjoy

Back on topic -- I speak a little Italian but no Latin; a friend of mine speaks Latin but no Italian. They are very different languages indeed.

The grammar is, of course, very different, but a great many Italian nouns are pretty unchanged from Latin - eg "water" is "aqua" in Latin, and "acqua" in Italian. When I visit Italy, which I do quite often, I've had considerable success in asking for things by using the Latin word .

[Lo Zeno]

Well, I am italian
and I confirm, the Divine Comedy is incredibly easy to read for me: it is, after all, exactly the same as modern Italian except for some words. Word order is the same, most verbs, while a little unused, are still known.

Latin, on the other hand, has a completely different grammar. I have studied Latin while in High school, and while a lot of words are similar (obviously: Italian derives from Latin), its grammar is a lot more complex, and while you can find the roots of modern Italian grammar in it they aren't really comparable (just as if you try to compare Latin grammar with French grammar).

Modern Italian language has evolved very little after Dante's Divina Commedia. The only other author who influenced the evolution of the language is Alessandro Manzoni with his "I Promessi Sposi" ("The Bethroded" is a close translation): Manzoni wrote it in the same Florence dialect as used by Dante mixed with some words and structures inherited from northern dialects.