Cross-Cultural Blog

Italy is the only country where first was born a culture and then a nation, first poets and after politicians. We speak about Italy as a nation just after the 1861 when a period of civil wars finished with the decision took by the governments of every regions that at that time composed the Italy, to unify all under the same flag. It started the time of the Italian kingdom that resisted till the end of the second war that for the Italian population symbolises the real moment in which the Italy started to exist. But no more than 150 years of history is nothing if we want have a clear understanding of the Italy. I have said that first there was the Italian culture and after an Italian nation and this was fundamental just for the language for example. When the Italian country was divided in a lot of little independent nations in every of these there was a different language, we can say a different way to speak Italian, so it was just with the great operas of authors like Dante, Petrarca, Boccaccio that all the people that lived on the Italian territory recognised each others as an only population that spoke the same language, the language of poets. I can’t imagine another country in the world, at least in the most developed parts, where people that are patriots sometimes are not able to speak the language, but really different idioms, because it is still like this now. If you grow up in Italy you must learn at the same time two languages: the official Italian, like you learn at the school and the dialect of your region that has almost nothing in common with the real Italian. For example the dialect of my region situated in the north of the Italy is very very similar to the French and if I speak with a guy from the south of Italy using my dialect he can’t understand nothing. But all these dialects are still in use and they are not dead idioms. The language is not the only thing that divided us. Travelling across the Italy you never finish to meet people that eat in complete different ways, that celebrate different recurrences, that live and work differently. However the things that we all have in common are the things that are used by the others nations to imagine us, the love for the food that means not that we are all fat but that we like to eat well, the passion for the soccer, “il calcio”, that it is more than a religion for someone and our great attitude to make party and fun, exaggerating sometimes and maybe it is for this that when we travel in others countries we are not always good welcome. But if I have to resume the Italian people in one word I will use the word “creativity” because in every area of the life we like the improvisation sometimes risking with some hope and some dreams always fixed in our mind.