tongue than Latin. Save the infinitives, which
often end in r, when not followed by s impure (as
sp, St, sc, etc. ) , or by a vowel, and a few foreign
words, such as nurd, sud, lapis, and monosyllables
such as in, per, con, and non, all Italian words
end in a vowel. Tlius cams becomes caro, and prin-
cipem becomes principe. This vocalic tendency
is furthermore observable in the avoidance of con-
sonantal groups like in Spagita, which becomes
in Ispagna, or iitstituto, which gives istituto.
Of the Latin consonants x and aspirate h have
disappeared, though c in pure Tuscan is under
some conditions aspirated, as hasa for casa. The
combinations bl, pi, ft, gl, and cl become 6i, pi, fi,
ghi, and chi, as in biasimare (blasphemare) ,
pieno (plenus), fiore (Horem) . ghianda (glnnda) ,
chiaro (claro). On is liquefied. Thus dignus
gives degno (pronounced de-nyo). Ct becomes it
(dictum > detto) : pt becomes tt (raptum >
ratio) ; gd becomes dd {frig'dus ^freddo). Ini-
tial simple consonants usually remain, but c
before e and t become ts ( English ch ) . Thus
came, coda, cura, but Cicerone, pronounced in
Latin Kikerone, becomes cicerone, pronounced
tsitserone. So g, as in gemma or gibbo. Jam
becomes gia, and justum, giusto, in which the i
is merely a sign to mark the palatal, as it is also
in Giovanni, to be pronoimced Dzovanni. That is.
the Italian gi is like our j. So sc before i
and e is no longer sk, as in Latin, but like sh in
English. C', §, and sc are made guttural by putting
in an h. Thus chi. sgherro, schiera. In Italian
(but only seldom in other Romanic langu.iges)
there are true double consonants. Thus pretto
= pret-to, anno = anno, gobbo = gob-bo. etc.
k is always trilled on the tongue; not gutturally,
as in French.
The destiny of the Latin vowels may be summarily examined. Whereas the Latin dis- tinguished its vowels by quantity, Italian dis- tinguishes them by quality, though long and short vowels^ e.ist_ also Jn Italian. In Latin there were ii, e, i, o, u, and, among others, diphthongs CE = e, and ce = e. AYhat became of them depended mainly on their pos- session or lack of stress. A remained in al- most all cases (cantare). I. too. usually held its own, if long (vino) ; if short it often fell, thus giving rise to new consonantal groups (domina y> donna) ; or it changed to a close e (e) , as in fede, from fidem. E, long, usually, became a close e (e) ; but e, when not blocked, usually became ie (fi'l > fiole, vettis > vieto). long oftenest became close 0(0); but o, when not blocked, was generally diphthonged to no (bonum > bnono). U long remained, but short u usually was changed to o (valgus > volgo) .
In a short sketch one can only observe certain tendencies. If we carried our study farther, we should learn that almost innumerable causes have been at work in changing Old Latin to Modern Latin or Italian. Analogy and popular etymology. as we may see in the words suonare, instead of sonare, or Campidoglio for Capitoglio. are con- stantly at work. Furthermore, it is highly im- portant to observe what accent, or rather stress, has to do with the fate of a vowel : for otherwise we could not understand such apparent inconsistencies as fiere from frrit, and ferire from ferire. or gli (from illi in hiatus), as in gli ho reduti, with li (from illi not in hiatus), as in li redo.
It has already been stated that Italian gram- mar is a development of Latin grammar; we may add that it is a simplification thereof. There are still the two numbers, singular and plural, for substantives, but, except for certain pronouns, case distinctions have disappeared. Like Spanish, but unlike French, Italian ordinarily feels no need of an expressed subject-pronoun, since the ter- mination of the verb-form sufficiently marks its person and number.
The Roman tradition was much stronger in Italy than elsewhere, and the new speech did not depart so far from Latin as to make the latter difficult to understand. The first continuous bits of Italian are found in a document of the year 960 (the Carta Capuana) . Other phrases in the vulgar tongue occur in a document of 964, and about a century later certain inscriptions in Italian were written on a wall of the lower basilica of San Clemente at Rome. The first im- portant appearance of written Tuscan thus far noted is in certain banking registers of Florence, which seem to date from about 1211. The be- ginning of the fourteenth centuiy brought Dante, v.ho in his Divina Commcdia gave to Tuscan its supremacy over the other dialects of the Penin- sula. A little later Petrarch and Boccaccio proved further the suppleness and artistic ade- quacy of the new speech, and since their day Italian has suffered no very material alterations. Xow and then authors intruded dialectal peculiarities into texts written essentially in Tus- can; but in the early sixteenth century the Jiegole grammaticali della volgar lingua of For- tunio (1516), the Volgari eleganzie of Xiccolo Libumio. and the Prose della volgar lingua of Pietro Bembo (1.525) introduced an element of greater rigidity, requiring absolute purity of idiom in the writing of Tuscan as the true lit- erary Italian. The Accademia della Ciusca com- pleted their work in 1612 by publishing its dic- tionary of Tuscan as the standard national lan- guage.
BiBLiOGEAPiiT. D"Ovidio and Meyer-Liibke, "Die italienische Sprache," in Groeber. Qrundriss der romanischen Philologie, vol. i. (Strassburg, 1888) ; Demattio, Origine, fortnazione ed elementi della lingua italiana (2d ed. Innsbruck, 187S) ; Morandi, Origine della lingua italiana (5th ed. Citta di Castello, 1891) ; Gorra. Lingue neolatine (Milan, 1894) ; Caix. Saggio sulla storia della lingua e del' dialetti d'ltalia (Parma, 1872) : id., Studi di etimologia italiana e romanza (Flor- ence, 1878) ; id., Origini della lingua poetica italiana (ib., 1880) ; Monaci, Crestomazia itali- ana dei primi secoli (1st fascicule. Cittft di Cas- tello. 1889; 2d fascicule, ib., 1897: a third fascicule, with a vocabulary, is to follow) ; the article on dialects in Archiv^io glottologico itali- ano, edited by Ascoli, vol. viii. (Turin, 1873 et seq. ) .
Grammars: Fornaciari. Grammatica storica della lingua italiana (Turin. 1872) ; id.. Gram- matica italiana. He. (ib., 1880) ; id.. Sintassi dell' uso italiano moderno (Florence. 1887); Grand- gent, Italian Grammar (.3d ed.. Boston. 1891 et seq.) : Blanc, Grammatik- der italienischen Sprache (Halle. 1844) : Vockeradt. Lehrbuch der italienischen yS'pracfic (Berlin, 1878) : Diez, Gram- matilc der romanischeyi Sprachen (5th ed.. Bonn, 1882, English translation by Cayley, London, 1862) ; Meyer-Liibke, Italienische Grammatih (Leipzig, 1890) ; id., Grammatik der romanischen
