Romance Philology
Romanistik | Filologia romanza | Romanska filologija | Filologie romanică
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Italian
Italienisch | Italiano
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Italijanščina |
Italiană
As Portuguese, Spanish, French and Romanian, Italian is a Romance language which evolved from Vulgar Latin. For Thomas Mann there was »no doubt that angels in the Sky speak Italian. Impossible to imagine«, he wrote, »that these blessed creatures use a less musical language.«
On Earth, instead, Italian is the official language of Italy, Switzerland (cantons of Ticino and Grisons), San Marino, and the Vatican City State. It is also spoken in the Principality of Monaco (along with ›Monegasco‹, a Ligurian dialect, and French). Italian is granted an official minority status in Istria (Slovenia and Croatia), while ›Talian‹, a dialect of the Venetian idiom, is a co-official language in some municipalities of the Brasilian states of Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina. Corsican is very similar to Italian; traditionally considered as an Italian dialect, it is now categorized as a language.
Italian has approximately 85 million native speakers worldwide, out of which 65 million in Europe. It is the continent's fourth most spoken language, after Russian, German, and French. Italian is spoken by 1.5 million people in Argentina, 900,000 in Australia, 710,000 in the USA, 500,000 in Brazil (›Talian‹, and São Paulo area), 320,000 in Canada, and 200,000 in Venezuela. Until the 1970s, a Pidgin Italian was spoken in some areas of the former Italian colonies of Somalia and Eritrea, where standard Italian is still widely understood and spoken. While it is only 22nd on the world's list of most spoken languages (it ranked 13th in 1900), Italian is fourth on the list of the most commonly learned foreign languages in the world.
Among the major Romance languages, Italian is closest to Latin, with a difference of just 12%. Only Sardinian shows a lower rate of divergence (8%), while it is much higher in the case of Spanish (20%), Romanian (23.5%), Portuguese (31%), and French (44%).
Milestones in Italian and German-Italian / Italian-German Lexicography
[ Italienisch-deutsches Vokabular und Gesprächsbüchlein ]
i.e., Italian-German Vocabulary and Conversation Guide
by George of Nuremberg (Georg von Nürnberg), presumably published in Augsburg in 1420.
Master George of Nuremberg run a language school in Venice. It was situated near Rialto Bridge and the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, close to Saint Bartholomew (San Bartolomeo), the church of the German community. The school was very popular with Venetian merchants who felt it was advantageous to them to learn German as a foreign language. George's teaching activities resulted in a textbook that was unique for its time and became a highly-acclaimed bestseller.
(Heidelberg University Library holding: cpg 657)
A similar intention was pursued by an Italian-Dutch conversation guide written around 1500 by an anonymous merchant from Brabant. It appears that the author had spent a certain time in Venice, since trade relations with the southern Netherlands were particularly close. The manuscript is written in Middle Dutch on the one hand, and in the Venetian dialect on the other (see: British Library, Add MS 10802; and: Een koopman in Venetië. Editie José de Bruijn-van der Helm et al., Hilversum 2001).
Il memoriale della lingua italiana
by Giacomo Pergamini (1531-1615), published in Venice in 1602 (fourth edition: Venice 1688), was the very first methodical European dictionary. Only ten years later, however, it was eclipsed by the famous dictionary of the Accademia della Crusca of Florence.
(Author's property)
Dictionarium Teutsch-Italiänisch und Italiänisch-Teutsch
by Flanders-born Levinus Hulsius (Lieven van Hulse; 1546-1606). First published in Frankfurt in 1605 (fourth edition: Frankfurt 1630).
(Author's property)
Das neue Dictionarium oder Wort-Buch in Teutsch-Italiänischer Sprach
by Mathias Kramer (1640-1729), published in Nuremberg in 1678.
(Author's property)
Il nuovo dizzionario de' viaggianti italiano-tedesco e tedesco-italiano / Neues italiänisch-teutsches und teutsch-italiänisches Wörter-Buch, aus dem bekannten Vocabulario des Herrn Pergamini da Fossombrone ... gezogen
by Adam Friedrich Kirsch (?-1716), published in Nuremberg in 1718.
Kirsch, son of a Weimar court furrier, worked as a tutor and proofreader in Nuremberg and was the author of an important Latin dictionary ("Abundantissimum cornucopiae linguae latinae et germanicae selectum, in quo continentur vocabula latina omnis aevi, antiqui, medii").
(Author's property)
Dizionario italiano-tedesco e tedesco-italiano
by Christian Joseph Jagemann (1735-1804), published in Weissenfels and Leipzig in 1790 (second edition: Leipzig 1803).
(Author's property)
Gran dizionario grammatico-pratico italiano-tedesco / tedesco-italiano
published in Berlin in 1821 by Francesco Valentini (second edition: Leipzig 1831).
Valentini was born in Rome in 1789 and became a professor of Italian Language and Literature in Berlin, where he died in 1862.
(Author's property)
Vollständiges deutsch-italienisches und italienisch-deutsches Wörterbuch
published in Nuremberg and Leipzig in 1825 by Philipp Zeh, a bookseller from Nuremberg.
The actual author of this dictionary was Christoph W. Fr. Penzenkuffer (1768-1828), a Nuremberg linguist. However, his publisher, Philipp Zeh, had made so many unauthorised changes that the author heavily complained about him; the work was finally published under the name of Zeh.
(Author's property)
Seminars on Italian
Language
Sprachseminare Italienisch | Seminari di lingua italiana | Jezikovni tečaji italijanščine | Seminari de limba italiană
Spring/Summer 2025
Italian for Beginners 3 (intensive course)
Italienisch - Grundstufe 3 (A1), May 5 through May 9, 2025
9.00 a.m. - 2.00 p.m.
Bremen – VHS - 69, Faulenstrasse - Room 208
Italian for Beginners 4 (intensive course)
Italienisch - Grundstufe 4 (A1), May 12 through May 16, 2025
9.00 a.m. - 2.00 p.m.
Bremen – VHS - 69, Faulenstrasse - Room 307
seminar handouts:
download
Seminars on Italian
Literature
Literaturseminare Italienisch | Seminari di letteratura italiana | Tečaji italijanske književnosti | Seminari de literatura italiană
Spring/Summer 2025
Mattinate di lettura (Italienische Lesematinées)
»Genova: ›La Superba‹«
February 22 through June 14, 2025
dates: 2025: February 22; March 1; March 22; April 26; May 17; June 14
10.00 a.m. - 1.15 p.m.
Bremen – VHS (Sprachenzentrum) - 69, Faulenstrasse - Room 304
Course announcement Fall/Winter 2025/26
Literaturseminare Italienisch: Rückschau 1998-2023 | Past Seminars on Italian Literature, 1998-2023
Romanian
Rumänisch | Romeno | Romunščina | Română
Closely related to Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese, Romanian is the easternmost Romance language. It has approximately 30 million native speakers worldwide, out of which 24 million in Europe. It is the continent's ninth most spoken language and the official language of Romania and the Republic of Moldova. In addition, Romanian-speaking communities are to be found in Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, and Russia. Italy, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom have major Romanian immigrant communities, adding up to three million speakers.
Languages similar to Romanian (Istro-Romanian, Aromanian, and Megleno-Romanian, by some scholars considered as Romanian dialects) are spoken in Croatia, Serbia, Albania, North Macedonia, Bulgaria, Greece, and Turkey.
The first written Romanian text dates back only from 1521. For centuries, Romanian had no written circulation, since Slavonic was widely used as a liturgical, official, and literary language, while Romanian was the language of the paesantry. Roughly speaking, Romanian was written in the Romanian Cyrillic alphabet until 1862, when it was replaced by the Latin alphabet.
»A language as sweet as a honeycomb«, as the country's most famous poet, Mihai Eminescu, once said, Romanian
is often ranked as the hardest Romance language to learn. Nevertheless, learners will gain fluency fast.
Rodna Mountains - Munții Rodnei,
Eastern Carpathians, Romania
(photo © Michael Wedekind)
What makes Romanian special?
- Romanian partly preserves the Latin case declension of nouns (nominative/accusative, genitive/dative, vocative), while other Romance languages reduced it drastically, replacing it by prepositions preceding the noun (genitive: de + ablative; dative: a + accusative)
- the definitive article is attached to the end of the noun as in other languages of the Balkan Language Area (Balkansprachbund) or, e.g., in Danish
- Romanian has three grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter, the latter being masculine in the singular and feminin in the plural
- Romanian widely uses a subjunctive in place of an infinitive: vreau să merg - I want to go (literally, I want that I go)
- around 14% of the Romanian vocabulary stemms from Slavic (cf., approx. 8% of the Spanish vocabulary is of Arabic origin). The
etymology of Romanian place names
deserves particular mention.
Words used for lăcătuș, ›locksmith‹, in Romanian regional speech varieties. They either derive from Hungarian (lakatos), South Slavic languages (Bulgarian ковач, Serbian kovač), German (Schlosser; Klempner) or Latin (ferrarius). Map taken from Micul atlas lingvistic romîn, serie nouă, vol. 1, 1956.
German-Romanian / Romanian-German Lexicography
(19th and Early 20th Centuries)
Walachisch-deutsch und deutsch-walachisches Wörterbuch
by Andreas Clemens (1742-1815), published in Sibiu/Hermannstadt/Nagyszeben (Transylvania) in 1836.
(Author's property)
Walachisch-deutsches Wörterbuch / Vocabular românesc-nemțesc
by Andreas Isser, published in Brașov/Kronstadt/Brassó (Transylvania) in 1850.
(Author's property)
Vocabular portativ românesc-nemțesc și nemțesc-românesc
by S. Petri, published in Sibiu/Hermannstadt/Nagyszeben (Transylvania) in 1861.
(Author's property)
Wörterbuch der deutschen und rumänischen Sprache / Dicționar german-român și român-german
by Sabbas Popoviciu Barcianu, published in Sibiu/Hermannstadt/Nagyszeben (Transylvania) in 1888.
(Author's property)
Dicționar româno-german
by Lazăr Șaineanu, published in Bucharest in 1889.
(Author's property)
Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch
by Silesian-born Hariton Tiktin (1850-1936).
The three volumes were published in Bucharest from 1903 (fasc. 1: 1895) to 1925.
(Author's property)
Rumänisch-deutsches Wörterbuch
by Brașov-born Theochar Alexi (1843-1907), published in Brașov/Kronstadt/Brassó (Transylvania) in 1906.
(Author's property)
Langenscheidts Taschenwörterbuch der rumänischen und deutschen Sprache / Dicționar de buzunar Langenscheidt român-german și german-român
by Ghiță Pop, published in Berlin-Schöneberg (Part I: Rumänisch-deutsch: 1911; Part II: Deutsch-rumänisch: 1935).
(Author's property)
Deutsch-rumänisches Wörterbuch
by Maximilian W. Schroff (* 1873), published in Craiova in 1916.
Schroff was born in Constance (Baden, Germany). In 1893, he moved to Romania where he became a German teacher (initially in Craiova and then in Tulcea). He translated the works of Vasile Alecsandri, Mihai Eminescu, Ioan Slavici and Barbu Ștefănescu Delavrancea into German.
(Author's property)
Dictionaries of the Romanian Academy
Glossariu care coprinde vorbele d'in limb'a romana straine prin originea sau form'a loru, cumu si celle de origine indouiosa
by the linguists August Treboniu Laurian (1810-1881) and Ion C . Massim (1825-1877). Their "Glossary", commissioned by the Societate Academică Română (whose name changed to Academia Română in 1879), was published in Bucharest in 1871. It followed the principles of the so-called Școala Ardeleană. Both Laurian and Massim were founding members of the Romanian Academy.
(Author's property)
Dicționarul limbii romîne literare contemporane
(Author's property)
Seminars on Romanian Language
Sprachseminare Rumänisch | Seminari di lingua romena | Jezikovni tečaji romunščine | Cursuri de limba română
Spring/Summer 2025
Romanian for Beginners
Rumänisch - Grundstufe 2 (A1), February 21 through May 23, 2025
dates: 2025: February 21; February 28; March 14; March 21; April 25; May 9; May 23
4.15 p.m. - 7.00 p.m.
Bremen – VHS (Sprachenzentrum) - 69, Faulenstrasse - Room 214
Romanian for Beginners (Intensive course)
Rumänisch - Grundstufe 1 (A1), May 19 through May 23, 2025
9.00 a.m. - 2.00 p.m.
Bremen – VHS - 69, Faulenstrasse - Room 208
Course announcement Fall/Winter 2025/26
Notes on a Passion
Appunti su una passione
Însemnări despre o pasiune
Writing in English about the passion for Romance languages is a questionable undertaking for a Romance philologist. And yet ...
›The Germans‹ and their European neighbours. The ›Self‹ and the ›Other‹. To this subject I have devoted my attention since my academic beginnings. It drove my interest in History and European philologies, be they Romance, Germanic, Slavic or Finno-Ugric.
Fascinated by Italian, I studied Romance Philology at the Universities of Münster (Germany), Perugia and Bologna (Italy). Additionally, I studied Romanian philology at the Universities of Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca (Romania), and Portuguese at the University of Faro (Portugal).
I also have a basic knowledge of minor Romance languages, such as Rhaeto-Romance and Ladin, spoken, respectively, in the Grisons (Switzerland) and the Dolomites (Italy). Linguistic and cultural interests going beyond the Romance area led me to study Dutch, Hungarian, Russian, Croatian, and Slovene.
I lived several years in Bologna, the capital of Emilia-Romagna, before moving back to Germany. My historical research has resulted in numerous articles and books on 19th and 20th-century Italy, written in both Italian and German. I have translated academic and literary texts from Romanian and Italian into German, as well as from German, English, and French into Italian. I look back at nearly three decades as a spare-time teacher in the field of adult education, and still enjoy as much as ever teaching the subjects I am passionate about: Italian and Romanian languages and literatures.
