Ray Brown wrote:
> >> Raymond Brown wrote:
> >> > I would
> >> > assume, and I guess most others would, that it'd be the way an
educated
> >> > Italian speaking what most text books give as standard Italian.
> >>
> >> But there's no such standard in English. There is such a standard if
> >> you're specifying British English, but American English has no such
> >> standard, it seems to have regional standards. I'm not sure if
> >> Australian English has such a standard, but at any rate, there's
> >> definitely no standard for "World English".
> >>
> >
> >Italian hasn't an established standard, as well.
>
> Yet textbooks seem fairly agreed (not 100%, I admit) on what Italian
> ideally should be like.
The magic word is 'ideally' : )
Really, before the spread of television (in the 70s) it could still be very
difficult finding common people with acceptable pronounciation, especially
in rural areas (this summer I've been on a mtb trip in a wood 10 kms
southern than Como, in a rural area; we've had to ask some directions, and
we've found a 25 yrs old boy who actually could not speak properly Italian -
it was Lombard - I let you imagine which could be the situation 20 yrs ago).
> >For istance, the way Tuscanians pronounce a word should be the rule;
>
> I thought it was "Tuscan as pronounced by Romans" :)
: )
> >I think that there is no great barrier between northerners and
southerners
> >*when both are speaking Standard Italian*. But of course people in both
> >North and South often speak their so-called local dialects, which really
> >amount
> >to separate languages -- indeed, far northern Italian dialects are
> >really Gallo-Romance rather than Italo-Romance at all.
>
> Precisely what I meant. But large regional differences like this
generally
> influence the way a standard language is pronounced, and Mangiat's email
> seems to bear this out.
That's what I meant.
Luca