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Dante’s Italian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Lessons in Polyglottery |  | |
| carlonove Senior Member United States Joined 5971 days ago 145 posts - 253 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Italian | Message 9 of 23 31 May 2009 at 4:47pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Most of the books I think you're looking for are in Italian. I haven't studied Dante in depth, so be forewarned that the following is just what I found on Google. Try the following titles in Google Books:
Dante e la Lingua Italiana Lezioni della Lingua Toscana Della Lingua Toscana Also, search for the author Claudio Marazzini on www.unilibro.it, he's written a slew of books on the history of the Italian language. Then again, if you're just starting out in Italian and want to jump right in, it might be better to look for a couple of (heavily footnoted) dual-text translations in addition to whatever beginner Italian materials you're using. You could compare one version that's ultra-literal with another that tries to follow the original poetic meter, essentially using the texts as an additional learning tool. I must say, when I first posted I wasn't interested in reading Dante, but now that I've looked through all these sites I'm probably going to give it a try myself:) Tanti Auguri, --Carlonove 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dmaddock1 Senior Member United States Joined 5418 days ago 174 posts - 426 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Esperanto, Latin, Ancient Greek | Message 10 of 23 14 April 2010 at 6:16pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Jackal11, good luck to you. This is also one of my life goals.
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| Jackal11 Groupie United States Joined 5647 days ago 41 posts - 45 votes Speaks: English* Studies: German, Latin | Message 11 of 23 15 April 2010 at 12:08am | IP Logged | |||||
If that is so, then you may find the book titled 'La Divina Commedia' by Charles Grandgent helpful. A portion of the text may be seen here: http://books.google.com/books?id=F0IOAAAAYAAJ&pg=RA1-PR9&dq= charles+grandgent+divina+commedia&cd=1#v=onepage&q&f=false 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| dmaddock1 Senior Member United States Joined 5418 days ago 174 posts - 426 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Esperanto, Latin, Ancient Greek | Message 12 of 23 15 April 2010 at 1:08am | IP Logged | |||||
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Thanks Jackal, that looks like a very useful volume! Handy to print out one canto at a time and work through it. I was in Rome last summer and I regret passing up the opportunity to buy a beautiful old edition of the Commedia in Italian, though I think I would've been too afraid to read it.
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| BartoG Diglot Senior Member United States confession Joined 5432 days ago 292 posts - 818 votes Speaks: English*, French Studies: Italian, Spanish, Latin, Uzbek | Message 13 of 23 15 April 2010 at 7:51am | IP Logged | |||||
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I liked the facing page translation by Mandelbaum - it captured the flow of the poem but it was fairly easy to identify what was going on in the Italian even though it wasn't just literal line by line. And the notes were clear and copious. I only read the Inferno, but I found it quite satisfying to be able to push through the Italian without having to sit constantly with a dictionary.
As a side note, I think a decent grasp of modern Italian ought be sufficient to the task of working your way through a well-annotated facing page translation. The hardest part with Dante is not grammar; it's vocabulary and the contractions needed to make the lines work. For these, a solid knowledge of Italian and footnotes are more useful than trying to develop your own sense of Tuscan only to find yourself confronting things that have nothing to do with Tuscan per se and everything to do with making the poem work. And once you've read the bilingual text once or twice, you'll be able to go back to it and just ignore the right hand side. In a sense, I wonder... if you search these forums you'll find oodles of plaudits for Assimil... if you've got the background, there's no reason you couldn't use a well-annotated facing page translation as your very own "Using Dante's Tuscan". 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| bela_lugosi Hexaglot Senior Member Finland Joined 6439 days ago 272 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English, Finnish*, Italian, Spanish, German, Swedish Studies: Russian, Estonian, Sámi, Latin | Message 14 of 23 15 April 2010 at 5:27pm | IP Logged | |||||
Not quite so. Obviously even native Italians need footnotes in order to be able to understand the 14th century words that have not survived in spoken Italian, but I'd say from experience (I've read Inferno and Purgatorio in Italian, but sadly I haven't had time to continue further..) that it's not impossible. Your Italian needs to be at a rather advanced level + you should know lots about the Tuscan dialects (especially Florentine), Greek and Roman mythology, and local history. Before taking on this seemingly impossible reading task I had studied Italian philology at university, studied ancient mythology and medieval history, and of course, achieved a high level of fluency in Italian (both oral and written) and lived in Tuscany for a couple of years. Even when you're equipped with insane amounts of information and linguistic skills, you still need footnotes in order to understand the cultural references in La Divina Commedia. There are things that even experts might not know. Keep on studying Italian and maybe one day you will be able to read it in the original language! :) Edited by bela_lugosi on 15 April 2010 at 5:33pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| dolly Senior Member United States Joined 5775 days ago 191 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Latin | Message 15 of 23 15 April 2010 at 6:48pm | IP Logged | |||||
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The Princeton Dante Project: a line-by-line Italian-English edition of the Commedia + streaming audio. Edited by dolly on 15 April 2010 at 6:51pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| dmaddock1 Senior Member United States Joined 5418 days ago 174 posts - 426 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Italian, Esperanto, Latin, Ancient Greek | Message 16 of 23 15 April 2010 at 7:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
Awesome!
True, but I'd suggest that's true of reading it in translation also. Plus, much of that preparation can be done in your native language. I've read the DC three times in different English prose and verse translations and worked through several lecture series on Dante so I am already well-equipped. It sounds like the actual Italian and Dante's poetic idioms will be my main obstacle, rather than context. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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