News

Video captures Alpine languages and cultures

10.05.2016

The Alpine Convention produced a video of its International Mountain Day 2015 celebration, "Reading Mountains", to document and promote mountain literature and culture, in recognition of the role mountain peoples play in the protection and sustainable development of the territory.

As part of this initiative, the Italian Delegation of the Alpine Convention proposed a selection of pieces from the culture and the tradition of minority languages in the Italian Alps, with the intent to celebrate the literary tradition of the Italian valleys, where historical and ancient languages are still an important element of identity for mountain peoples. Pieces in prose, poetry and music proposed are linked to the cultures of the four largest Alpine linguistic families: Friulano, Ladino, Occitano and Valdostano-Patois, to represent the whole span of the Italian Alps from east to west.

The underlying theme of the readings was the modernity of these ancient languages that are still spoken and written. All the pieces came from the works of contemporary artists who have been able to express, with a modern vision, some of the problems and challenges that mountains face, such as the abandonment of the territory.

Thanks goes to the Mountain Partnership Secretariat for including the initiative in the programme of its IMD celebration at the Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome, Italy, and to all the friends and colleagues, experts on the traditions and languages of their lands, who lent their voices to the readings.

Four languages

The Friulano language (Lenghe furlane) belongs to the group of Gallo-Romance languages. It has been spoken in areas of the historical region of Friuli since 1999 and is recognized as a historical minority language and is protected. It is influenced by surrounding cultures and languages - Venetian, German and Slovenian.

The great Italian writer and film director Pier Paolo Pasolini began his poetic experience in the early 1940s, writing verse in the Friulano dialect, specifically in the Casarsa dialect as it is the birth place of his mother and where Pasolini spent his childhood. Pasolini wrote the collection “Poems in Carsara” between 1941 and 1943 when, in World War II, Susanna Pasolini returned to Casarsa with her two sons, Pier Paolo and Guido.

Ladino, a very old language that precedes the birth of many Italian dialects, has resisted outside pressure thanks to the natural morphology that housed it. The Ladin language took shape during the first century, after the conquest of the Alpine region, including the Ladin, by the Romans.

Ladin has survived thanks to the work of Ladin linguists and personalities who acted for the preservation of their mother tongue "lingaz dla uma ". The mountain reading presented poetry by two contemporary authors: Iaco Rigo e Roland Verra, Director of Education of the Ladin Schools since 1992, writer, publisher, film-director and author of many radio- and tv-programs, mainly on Ladin history, nature and culture.

The Occitan language is recognized by the Italian government with Law 482/99. Its keywords, used in “trobadores” poetry, are now more relevant than ever: convivencia (the art of living together in harmony), paratge (equal opportunities), joi (live in free joy), larguessa (generosity). Even Dante Alighieri appreciated the Occitan language, the only other foreign language, aside the vulgar language and the Latin, used in the Divine Comedy, in the XXVI canto of Purgatorio. In 1907 Frédéric Mistral received the Nobel Prize in Literature.

The piece read is from the novel "Steve" (Stephan) by John Bernard, author of numerous studies on the topography, the territory and the Occitan culture.

The Aosta Valley language (in French patois valdôtain; in Val d'Aosta, patoué Valdotèn), defined locally patois is a variety of Francoprovenzale language, spoken in the Italian region of Valle d'Aosta. It is one of the three traditional idioms of Gallo-Romance linguistic region, with the Occitan to the south, and French (langue d'oïl and its dialects) to the north.

The song, "Bénéfor is tsaugrà" by the Valdaostan poet Magui Bétemps, who passed away ten years ago and used music to tell the stories of his homeland, is an exhortation to the younger generation to decide to return to the mountains. When the land speaks it cannot be ignored by one's own culture: it is a tread linking the mountain peoples to their deep roots… and the roots of the Valle d'Aosta speak Patouà.

Watch the video