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If you like Italian, you will surely know that

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this language and most of its words come from Latin.

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However, let's take this phrase (very natural, and which we say every day): as a joke,

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I stole a bench from the hotel, but the guard saw me and broke my shin. No

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term in this beautiful sentence, beyond the grammatical ones and the verb to see,

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is of Latin origin. This is because Italian has taken many words, even quite common ones,

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from Germanic languages. Words like look, drive, lose, joke,

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earn and many others are very ancient Germanisms - this is the topic of today's video.

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Ah, and this is Podcast Italiano, a channel for those who learn or love the

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Italian language. If you need it, you can turn on subtitles. If you learn Italian on my

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website you will find the transcription of everything I will say in the video: the link is in the description.

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The words I listed earlier, such as war, hotel and many others, were borrowed to us

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, so to speak, from languages ​​of the Germanic family.

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All the Barban languages ​​are part of this family ... descending from a common ancestor called Proto-Germanic.

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Germanisms can be from any era, ancient or modern, but in this video we

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will focus particularly on the ancient ones, which mostly date back to the Early

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Middle Ages, because they tell us something interesting about the history of our country.

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But let's start with the oldest ones of all, which date back to before the Middle Ages: they are the

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Paleo-Germanisms. Nothing to do with dinosaurs and Jurassic Park (sorry, Elena): it is

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a term used by some scholars to indicate Germanic words lent not to Italian,

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but already to Latin, from which they then arrived in Italian . These ancestral Germanisms,

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so to speak, are not very many: for example we have words like soap, yew and spade.

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Every now and then, Germanic words were adopted to express a new concept, for which

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there was not yet a word. It is the example of moose, lent to Latin by a Germanic culture which

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evidently dealt with moose more often than the Romans. These are called borrowings of necessity,

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precisely because in a certain sense they are necessary (or at least useful) to the target language,

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which does not have a word to designate that concept.

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The word spade, however, allows us to observe the opposite phenomenon, that is, luxury borrowing:

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as the name already explains, this type of borrowing is not strictly necessary,

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because a word for the concept in question would already exist in the target language ; however,

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for a series of reasons, it is decided to adopt a foreign word and replace it with the

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native one. For example, the Germanic word war replaces the Latin word bellum.

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Among these very ancient Germanisms we also have blue, brown, ember,

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stable and above all, the adorable marten. But look at her, isn't she adorable?

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Well, but why were all these Germanic words adopted in

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Latin first, and in Italian or, well, proto-Italian, proto-Romance varieties then?

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Here we have to talk a little about the history of our country. Already during the Roman Empire,

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there were numerous invasions by barbarian… ahem, Germanic peoples,

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which generated contact between the Roman people and that of the invaders;

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and contact between peoples also means contact between languages, and therefore linguistic interference,

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and therefore borrowing. It's like when an Italian goes to England for three months

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and comes back putting anglicisms in every sentence he says. And then there were not only invasions,

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but also trade and other types of interactions. Finally, gradually,

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the units made up of Germanic soldiers became increasingly larger in the Roman army.

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And after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the Germanic peoples settled permanently

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in central-southern Europe; and, in particular, in Italy there were centuries

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of invasions and even Germanic kingdoms. In particular, we talk about Ostrogoths,

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Lombards and Franks. This explains our great linguistic interference. Consider that

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the Ostrogoths (i.e. the eastern Goths; because the Visigoths were the western Goths) began

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to reign in Italy at the end of the 5th century AD, and lost power towards the middle of the 6th,

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then merging, over time, with the local population. At this point,

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the entire Italian territory was under the dominion of the Germanic peoples. The Lombards, meanwhile,

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entered Italy around the middle of the 6th century and began to conquer it, although they never

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managed to obtain the entire territory. When the increasingly powerful Lombard kings

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arrived in Rome in the 8th century, the popes turned to the Franks, another Germanic people,

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who were becoming the great European power of the time. Thus, from 774 AD, the Franks took

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control of the former Lombard Kingdom, led by a certain Charlemagne (maybe you know him);

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but, unlike the two previous cases, there is no mass migration towards the boot.

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Even though we have a lot of information about this historical period, it is not always easy

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to understand whether a certain Germanic word came to us from the Ostrogoths, the Lombards or the Franks,

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given that in any case they were all Germanic languages ​​related to each other. For

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example, truce could come from the Gothic triggwa, the Franconian triuwa or the Longoboard trewwa:

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and it is also possible that it was a mixture of different Germanic words. Scholars

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are often unsure. What we can say with certainty, however, is that

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we have received quite a few words from these peoples: from the Lombards alone, almost three hundred,

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according to some estimates. Among these, for example, those that Barbero reminds us of.

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They are Lombard words war, brawl, truce, feud, bar,

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trap, in short they were quite violent people.

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Over the centuries, Italian also borrows from what can

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already be called German (though not modern German, of course). In fact,

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contacts with "Germany" (which did not yet exist) continued intense for centuries:

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for example, Central-Northern Italy was part of the Holy Roman Empire for a long time and

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German mercenaries often fought in the Italian wars. Today, however,

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I want to focus in particular on the most ancient Germanisms, those of the Early Middle Ages,

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perhaps leaving the so-called Germanisms, that is, words that derive from German in different eras, for a future video

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. But I want to say something about the word "German": why

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do we have this strange adjective in Italian when in other languages ​​we say German, Allemand, Aleman?

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The adjective German ultimately comes from a Gothic word, thiuda, which meant

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"people" and is related to that Deutsch of Deutschland. So, friends, it's not that strange.

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Good, but in practice how did these ancient Germanisms pass into Italian?

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Apart from the fact that, as always, everything depends a lot on the historical moment,

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because there was a long interaction between Italy and the Germanic peoples, we can say that the loanwords

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coming from ancient Franconian (the language of the Franks) often entered late Latin (or, if we want,

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in a proto-Romance state, when Latin was becoming Romance languages) often by written means,

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through the language of the chancelleries (i.e. public offices that were responsible for drawing up documents;

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in fact therefore the language of the bureaucracy) because the Franks they occupied precisely the

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high-ranking environments, and were rather concerned with governing, rather than populating Italy en masse.

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More often, however, the loans came orally from the Lombard language;

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but it is also true that the Lombards, who came before the Franks, also

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reigned in Italy, and in fact some words that have come down to us from the Lombard come

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from the legal chancellery field: we have, for example, truce and feud.

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We must not forget indirect loans. We have seen,

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speaking of Paleogermanisms, that Latin has left us Germanic terms,

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taken even before neo-Latin languages ​​such as Italian, French, Spanish,

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Portuguese or Romanian were formed. We have also seen that late and medieval Latin,

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through writing, indirectly left us many terms from Franconian. But there are other cases:

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Old French, for example, left us many words that it had in turn taken

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from Franconian. As we also saw in the video on Italianisms, words often make the rounds,

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passing from one language to another: for example, if you remember, "baguette" is a Frenchism

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common in many languages, but which French in turn took from the Italian “bacchetta”.

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Ok, but what kind of words entered Italian?

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Again, it all depends on the historical context and when

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the term was borrowed. We can, however,

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isolate some specific areas. For example, as you may have imagined by now,

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we have received several terms related to the military world, such as war, guard and brawl.

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There are many – this may surprise you – terms to indicate the parts of the body of humans and

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animals: we have cheek, spleen, knuckle, shin, span and tusk. I really like zanna because in

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modern German it is the same as the Lombard word from which the Italian one derives: zahn. In Italian,

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however, zanna is used only for the particularly robust teeth of some animals, such as elephants. And

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even spleen in German is very similar: milz. However, not because Italian took it from German,

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but because Italian took it from Lombard, which was a Germanic language related to the

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ancient language from which modern German descends. There is also strozza with the meaning of throat,

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a term no longer used today, but which remains in the very common verb to strangle or choke.

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I always find a good reason to strangle you! I'll choke you and I'll choke you again!

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There are also many terms related to the house and domestic life:

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balcony, mezzanine, bench, shelf, pillowcase and hanger among others.

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Less common are legal and administrative words. Some, however, are

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quite well known: for example the already mentioned truce and feud.

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Finally, we have many concrete and expressive terms: grab, snore,

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joke, stench (i.e. bad smell) and thud.

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As you can see, the type of words that come from a certain people depends on their culture.

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As Barbero says, speaking specifically of the Lombards, "they were not a society of philosophers".

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We know that each language has its own set of sounds and its own way of putting them together;

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thus, Japanese doesn't sound like Arabic, which doesn't sound like Italian, which in turn doesn't

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sound like English. Can you imagine if we talk about things? 🙂 It is clear, therefore, that words, passing

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from one language to another, will have to be adapted somewhat to the structures of the target language.

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As previously mentioned, we are dealing in particular with very

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ancient Germanisms; and the fact is interesting, because the ancient borrowings have been adapted

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more heavily than the modern borrowings. If today we are used to foreign languages ​​and

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obviously non-Italian words (like blitz or panzer) don't seem too strange to us, things

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were once different. So let's see how these words were adapted and Italianized.

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First of all, in the presence of a diphthong, it was often reduced to a single

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vowel. So the Franconian rauba has become stuff, and raubon has instead

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become stealing. Later, the Middle High German stainbock became ibex.

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Another common phenomenon is epithesis, or in medical language the correction of a

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defective limb... no, I got the wrong definition, I meant "phenomenon whereby

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a sound is added, and in particular, in this case, a vowel, at the end of a word. Thus,

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the Franconian bank (which indicated a seat along the walls of a house) gave bench

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and bank (or bench), with the addition of o and a endings; from bosk (bush; and yes,

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it is related to the English and German bush/Busch) we got wood; and from want

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we got glove. As I said earlier, knowledge of foreign languages ​​was not widespread

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centuries ago. Some would say that it isn't even today in Italy, but not me. Given that all

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Italian words, with a few (few) exceptions, end with a vowel, the

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average speaker did not feel at ease when faced with a word that ended with a consonant:

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it simply did not come naturally (in a certain sense, it doesn't come so naturally even today:

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which is why we pronounce fan or gol by adding a small final supporting vowel: fannə).

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Furthermore, as we can observe from the example of Stainbock/ibex,

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sometimes the last consonant was doubled,

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and we do the same today: if you hear when I say fannə, double that n.

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Then there is anaptyxis – again, no strange pathologies – whereby

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a vowel was added to a series of consonants, because we Italians don't like too many consonants in a row.

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Let's think of the landsknechts, the German mercenary soldiers who sometimes came to Italy and

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who all Italian readers know thanks to The Betrothed. The original word in German is

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Landsknecht, decidedly unpronounceable for an Italian: and therefore lanzichenecchi. Beautiful, is not it?

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From the eighteenth century, however, knowledge of foreign languages ​​began to be more widespread,

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and so the adaptation of loanwords became less burdensome and their foreign origin gradually

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more evident, as in nickel, fuhrer or panzer. This is why I am especially interested

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in ancient or medieval Germanisms, because they are completely camouflaged in the pile of Latin words.

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Given that Germanisms arrived in Italian at different times,

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and were not part of Italian (and Latin) for the entire history of these languages,

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the normal process of evolution of words did not occur,

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in particular as regards it's about sounds. Furthermore, Germanisms brought sequences

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of sounds in unknown and sometimes even awkward to pronounce positions to Latin and Italian.

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First of all, the intervocalic b of Latin, i.e. placed between vowels, became v, therefore the Latin

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fabulam gave us fable, and the verb habere became to have (here I am referring to the words

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that have been handed down orally for centuries; the cultured Latinisms , “recovered from books” are much

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more similar to the original Latin form, as I explained in this video). Germanisms, however,

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did not experience this change, so the Franconian rauba remained stuff,

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rather than becoming rova, and the Gothic raubon remained steal.

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Let's now look at one of the strongest indications of the Germanic origin of a word.

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Be warned, this is interesting. The word-initial /gw/ sound did not exist in Latin:

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it comes instead from the word-initial /w/ sound of Germanic loanwords. So

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wardon became look, with the addition of the verb ending -are. And so from

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warjan we got heal, again with initial /gw/, this time with -ire.

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And again, we have warnjan, which meant to warn (Does it remind you of the English to warn?

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Nice intuition, totally not driven by me: the two words are in fact related.)

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and which to us gave garnish (once used mainly in a military sense ,

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like "garnishing a city with weapons and ammunition", from which also the garrison, but which today is used

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above all in the kitchen: "garnishing a dish with a side of potatoes"), and then obviously werra,

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which gave us war, wida, who gave us guidance, the Franconian waidhanjan who gave us

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gain or wai from which comes trouble. Like “woe betide you if you don't like this video”.

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In short, almost all words that begin with /gw/ in Italian are Germanic. Almost,

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not all. This mechanism was so widespread and common that it transformed /w/ into /gw/ even in

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Latin words. From vadum, for example, precisely because of this mechanism, the form guado has come to us. Or from

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the Latin… vāgīna (which in Latin was the sheath of a sword or in general a casing), is derived

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guaìna (which today, however, is pronounced guàina, with the accent on the a) and always means sheath,

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casing or membrane where… put something. Erm, you might be wondering… yes, vagina

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obviously comes from the same Latin word, but it is a cultured word, recovered from books.

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With that, we can conclude this journey. We have discovered that there is truly

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a world of very ancient Germanic words that have arrived in Italian since Latin times

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and then in all subsequent centuries; we just don't notice it, because they are

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so camouflaged that today only experts (or you, after this video) can recognize

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their non-Latin origin. Having said that, the Italian lexicon still remains predominantly

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Latin. But what does this mean? You may be interested in this video about it.