Unesco and the art of the pizzaiuolo (pizza maker)

Posted on February 8, 2018 by babbityjean

News came from far away—from the South Korean island of Jeju—late on December 6, 2017.  Unesco placed the art of Neapolitan pizzaioli (or pizzaiuoli) on the honored List of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.  Crowds gathered along Via dei Tribunali, the historic pizza thoroughfare in Naples, to celebrate: “We won,” and “The world recognizes our art” could be heard among those who had gathered to party.

Unesco explains its award: “The culinary know-how associated with pizza-making—which includes gestures, songs, visual forms of expression, local linguistic utterances and the ability to handle pizza dough properly and to transform pizza making into a performance to share—is without a doubt a cultural patrimony.  Pizzaiuoli and their guests all participate in a social ritual steeped in conviviality, where counter and stone oven work as a stage.  Originated in some of the poorer areas of Naples, this culinary tradition remains still today deeply entrenched in the daily life of its community.  To many young apprentices, becoming a pizzaiuolo is also a way to avoid social marginalization.”

Clearly, Unesco is honoring not only the cultural value of pizza making, but also its social value.  Becoming a pizzaiuolo has been a path out of poverty for decades and decades.  A menial skill only in appearance, pizza making is an art that can be learned without going to university, without spending money, without living in an exclusive neighborhood.  But it does require creativity and talent—not only to show off the pizza maker’s abilities but also to unite them with the history, traditions, and soul of the territory.  While there are schools and academies to teach the art of pizza making, “the knowledge and skills are primarily transmitted in the bottega, where young apprentices observe masters at work, learning all the key phases and elements,” which include making the dough, baking in a stone oven, and turning the pizza continuously during the process, which I can tell you personally takes a lot of dexterity and practice.

There is also the business side of making pizza.  In Italy alone, it employs 100,000 people full time and 50,000 part time.  Italians and Americans are not only the biggest pizza makers, but also the biggest pizza eaters:  15 pounds are consumed on average by every Italian each year; not surprisingly, 25 pounds are consumed per capita annually in the United States.  What is also not surprising is that many Americans were among the 2 million people who supported Italy’s candidacy for the Unesco award, the most widely supported Unesco campaign in history.

Pizza making is an art that started in Naples more than 300 years ago.  On December 7, 2017, the pizzerias of Naples opened early to start baking.  Tables were set up in the streets and pizza was served for breakfast—mostly la Margherita, the most Neapolitan of all pizzas, fragrant and colorful, simple and exquisite, and worthy of a true patrimony of humanity.

 

 

 

Posted in Arte, Campania, Cucina italiana, English, Foto, Italia, Napoli | 1 Comment

Le avventure della lettera “Acca”

Posted on February 1, 2018 by babbityjean

(Adottato da un articolo nel Corriere della Sera.)

In francese, c’è “heure” (ora) e in inglese c’è “hour” (ora) e “heir”(erede).  In questi casi, l’acca è muta.  Ci sono molte parole in inglese, come “help” (aiuta) e “horse” (cavallo), in cui l’acca è aspirata.  Ma in italiano, l’acca è sempre muta: ho un cane; hai un gatto; chi è qui?  Si scrive ma non si legge, si vede ma non si sente.

La storia dell’acca italiana è antica quanto quella dell’alfabeto che, fu inventato dai fenici.  Le prime iscrizioni conosciute risalgono al 1000 a. C.  La “het” era l’ottava lettera dell’alfabeto fenicio e si scriveva con un segno a forma di rettangolo con un trattino in mezzo (“acca chiusa”).  Corrispondeva a un suono sconosciuto dagli italiani che veniva prodotto con un restringimento della cavità orale all’altezza della faringe.

A partire dal IX secolo a.C., i commercianti libanesi avevano contatti sempre più frequenti con i greci che erano a conoscenza delle loro straordinarie invenzioni tecnologiche, dal vetro all’alfabeto.  L’adozione dell’alfabeto fu un processo complesso perché il greco antico era una lingua indoeuropea con suoni diversi dal fenicio che era una lingua semitica.  In greco molte parole iniziavano con delle vocali aspirate.  Queste parole furono trascritte con il segno “het” davanti che stava a indicare appunto un’aspirazione.

Verso la fine del VII secolo a.C., ci fu una semplificazione dell’antico segno “het”: i due trattini superiore e inferiore vennero tralasciati e la lettera assunse la forma della acca corrente.  Si passò, così, gradualmente, dalla “acca chiusa” alla “acca aperta”.

In greco antico esistevano molti dialetti.  A Mileto e più in generale nella Ionia asiatica corrispondente alla costa centrale della Turchia, i greci parlavano un dialetto privo di aspirazioni.  Usavano il simbolo “het” fenicio per indicare la vocale “e” lunga.  Nel 403 a.C. la città di Atene decise con un decreto ufficiale di adottare l’alfabeto di Mileto.  Fu così che il segno a forma di “acca” si impose quasi ovunque nel mondo greco come simbolo della lettera eta, cioè della “e” lunga, mentre per indicare il suono aspirato entrò lo “spirito aspro” sopra le vocali iniziali.

Il segno a forma di acca ebbe una sorte diversa nelle colonie greche in Campania.  La prima era a Cuma (ora un sito archeologico a Napoli), che fu fondata dai greci dell’isola Eubea nell’VIII secolo.  Nell’alfabeto dei cumani quel segno continuava a indicare il suono dell’acca aspirata e così passò anche ai romani che adottarono il simbolo nella sua variante aperta proprio per indicare il suono dell’aspirazione all’inizio di molte parole latine (per esempio, homo per uomo, habere per avere), da cui l’acca che sopravvive ancora in italiano—anche se muta—nelle voci del verbo avere.

Come avvenne il passaggio dalla acca aspirata latina all’acca muta italiana?  Nell’antica Roma i ricchi parlavano in un modo e i poveri in un altro: la lingua colta marcava l’acca all’inizio delle parole, e il popolo ignorante invece non pronunciava l’acca.  Ne dà testimonianza Catullo in una sua poesia in cui ironizza su un certo Arrio che per darsi un tono piazza l’acca aspirata a sproposito un po’ dappertutto.

La lingua parlata italiana ereditò la dizione del latino rustico che non pronunciava il suono aspirato all’inizio della parola.  Tuttavia l’acca sopravvisse nell’italiano scritto.  Fra i suoi paladini più convinti nel Rinascimento, ci fu Ludovico Ariosto: “Chi leva la H all’huomo, e chi la leva all’honore, non è degno di honore”.  Alla fine però i nemici dell’acca ebbero la meglio e imposero una grafia semplificata senza il segno “H” all’inizio della parola.  A partire dalla fine del Seicento si definì una consuetudine ortografica che salvava l’acca solo nelle prime tre persone singolari e nella terza plurale dell’indicativo presente del verbo avere: quindi “ho,” “hai,” “ha,” “hanno”, quelle cioè che si prestavano a confusione con altre parole dal suono uguale ma dal significato diverso – o, ai, a, anno.

Ora possiamo spiegare i manuali scolastici ai bambini e perché nella coniugazione del verbo avere, non scriviamo habbiamo e havete.

 

 

 

 

Posted in Campania, Foto, Italia, Italiano, La Lingua, Storia | Leave a comment

The Adventures of the Italian Letter “H”

Posted on February 1, 2018 by babbityjean

(Adapted and translated from an article in Corriere della Sera.)

In French, there is “heure” and in English there is “hour” and “heir.”  In these cases, the “h” is silent.  There are many words in English, like “help” and “horse,” where the “h” is aspirated.  But in Italian the “h” is always mute:  Ho un cane; hai un gatto; chi è qui?  It is written but not read, it is seen but not heard.

The history of the Italian “H” is as old as the alphabet, which was invented by the Phoenicians.  The earliest known inscriptions date back to 1000 B.C.  The “het” was the eighth letter of the Phoenician alphabet and was written as a sign in the form of a rectangle with a hyphen or dash in the middle (called a closed “h”).  It corresponded to a sound that was produced by a narrowing of the oral cavity at the height of the pharynx.

Beginning in the ninth century B.C., Lebanese traders had more and more contacts with the Greeks, who were aware of the Phoenicians’ extraordinary technological inventions of the time, from glass to the alphabet.  The adoption of the alphabet was a complex process because ancient Greek was an Indo-European language with different sounds than the Phoenician, which was a Semitic language.  In Greek, many words began with aspirated vowels.  These words were transcribed with the sign “het” in front to indicate the aspiration.

Around the end of the seventh century B.C., there was a simplification of the ancient “het” sign:  The top and bottom lines of the rectangle were omitted, and the letter took on the form of the “H” that we know today.  Thus, gradually, the closed H became an open H.

In ancient Greece, many dialects existed.  In Mileto and in Asia Minor corresponding to the central coast of Turkey, the Greeks spoke a dialect without the aspiration.  They used the Phoenician “het” symbol to indicate the long “e” sound.  In 403 A.C. the city of Athens issued an official decree adopting the alphabet of Mileto.  And so the sign in the form of an “H” was used almost everywhere in the Greek world as a symbol for the letter “e,” that is the long “e” to indicate the aspirated sound.

The sign of the H had a different fate in the Greek colonies in Campania.  The first on mainland Italy was in Cuma (now an archaeological site in Naples), which was founded by Greeks from the island of Eubea in the 8th century.  In the alphabet of the Cumians, the sign continued to indicate the sound of the aspirated “H,” and so passed on also to the Romans who adopted the symbol in its open variant to indicate the sound of aspiration at the beginning of many Latin words (eg, homo for uomo, habere for avere) from which the “h” survives still in Italian – even if mute – in some of the voices of the verb avere today.

 How did the aspirated Latin H pass to the mute Italian H? In ancient Rome, the rich spoke in a certain way and the poor in another:  the educated language stressed the H at the beginning of words, whereas the uneducated instead did not pronounce the H.  Catullus (a Latin poet of the late Roman Republic) gives testimony to this in a poem in which he mocks a certain Arrio who, in order to give himself airs, uses the aspirated H inappropriately almost everywhere.

The spoken Italian language inherited the diction of the rustic Latin people who did not pronounce the aspirated sound at the beginning of the word.  However, the H survived in written Italian.  Among its most hardened champions in the Renaissance was Ludovico Ariosto (“Who omits the H from huomo, and who omits it from honore, does not deserve honor”).  In the end, however, the enemies of the H won out and imposed a simplified spelling without the H at the beginning of a word.  Starting at the end of the 6th century, a writing custom was defined that saved the H only for avere in the 3 singular persons and in the third person plural of the present indicative of the verb:  hence, ho, hai, ha, and hanno, so as not to be confused with other words of the same sound but different meanings: o, ai, a, anno.

Now we can explain the school manuals to children and why in the conjugation of the verb “to have,”  we do not write habbiamo and havete.

 

 

Posted in Campania, English, Foto, Italia, La Gente, La Lingua, Storia | 1 Comment