Follow Italy on languages

I WAS surprised, and I may say disappointed, to read Mr Beppe Conte’s letter (November 22) on Neapolitan. He should be aware, first, that there is no hard and fast opposition between “language” and “dialect”, the status of any speech form being dependent on several mutually independent factors; and second, that any community speech, whether classed as language or dialect, deserves support as an integral part of that community’s identity.

Some years ago I attended a conference on minority languages in Ortisei in the Italian Dolomites. The languages of the conference were Italian, German, English and Ladino, the local speech: the conference was opened with a speech in Ladino by the mayor of Ortisei. I am competent in Italian but Ladino proved almost completely foreign to me, both from hearing it spoken and from the text-books-on display at the conference. Neapolitan, in my limited experience of it, is equally remote from standard Italian.

One of the things I learned from that conference was that Italy puts Scotland completely to shame in its provision for the local languages and dialects which abound there. Each local speech form, even those with only a few hundred native speakers, has its own website, mutually linked to allow for collaboration in developing the dialects for modern use; and each one is actively supported in its own community and recognised by the educational system: some have their grammar and orthography defined in textbooks and others are in the process of reaching this stage of development. Haste the day when Scotland is as advanced as Italy in this respect, and we see Glaswegian and the other dialects of Scots getting the same respect as Friulian or Abruzzese.

Derrick Mcclure, Aberdeen.