Monday, September 20, 2010

Poop Was Black But Now Normal

The disappearance of Italian.


The Italian is disappearing. Or rather, migrates to form undefined and anarchic. Invalsi survey (which aims to check the ability of the students about the Italian written), it is clear that in reviewing the issues of maturity 2008-2009, these are totally inadequate for the following reasons: 63% for vocabulary and 59% for ideational competence, grammatical competence to 54% and 58% for textual competence. In other words, most of the graduates have a poor mastery and rich vocabulary, he can not hold a written argument and makes grammatical errors. Valeria Della Valle, a professor of Italian at "La Sapienza", points the finger at the political choices: "Needless to cry wolf when the wolf disappeared in the schools of specialization for language teachers. It is said that those who graduated in literature has full command of the language and its rules. And the recent reform has lowered the number of hours of Italian ... "
Imagine a young man struggling with serious linguistic errors is a sad reality acceptable to change the subject in question and discover a degree in literature jurisdiction is quite another thing. Especially if these graduates then sit behind a Chair. The few words in Italian is most at risk of the Congo Gorilla. The mistakes and incompetence rampant covering the majority of the population illiterate or semi-literate. Do you know the meaning of words as obsolete, you do not know how to use the apostrophe and the letter h is merely optional. Disappears punctuation, semicolons and colons go on holiday. Not to mention the subjunctive, where the same as Valley has written a successful essay entitled "Long live the subjunctive." But risk is not only the subjunctive, the time is the result of revision: from the concept of relativity is gradually saying goodbye to the distant past (I used it).

Where to look for causes? Surely the master of entertainment TV is the first place. The TV in fact, being half of the mass, adopting a more gaunt than written language. Poor, with no frills, dry and understandable to all. A few standard items (including one million) that contribute to impoverish the language in a general manner, especially among those accustomed to spending long hours in front of the screen. Another cause can
find using the Internet. Today the Internet offers the opportunity for everyone to write, either through a blog, chat or facebook. Unfortunately, this causes the transposition of short form is ungrammatical, first in use on SMS (where, however, it was justified by the small space and the cost), now carried on the network (where, therefore, is to invalidate the above reason). So rampant sgrammaticature, invented verbs, abbreviations beyond the limits of scientific intelligibility, changes to the same scriptural sounds (ch k) beyond the usual accents replaced by apostrophes (for the capital is correct accents just do Alt +212) or non-existent. Finally, the lack of interest in reading. This last point certainly linked by a thin red wire to the other two: in a society where the centrality of the image, the word loses its meaning in his writing. But a company can not argue, speak, or understand, is a company that becomes barbaric.

These are the reasons (together with those of a political nature) that can be identified intuitively. But there is something that the everyday reasoning ignores: there can never be a nation of scholars. From the alphabet to the masses and they will use it less appropriate. At one time few people could follow their studies. Today it is considered a good literacy. Yet this could be even worse than illiteracy. How? The good writers have always been few. Therefore, once they could rely on a small number of potential readers.
But, being the ability to write or read a privileged few, there were good players and good literature, the written language, used by great writers, did not run great risks of sabotage as a preferred solution. Give the masses the ability to read and write at a time precisely standardized, produces more negative than positive: the ranks of potential readers is growing, but not for the good readers. Good writers are always a few, but their art far from a privileged (and protected), begins to take on the characteristics incomprehensibility, boredom, gaining a low level of interest in mass. In an age where they win large numbers also in publishing, the great scholar subject to the interests of the market and is swept away by Fabio Moccia or Flight. The number of bad players expands, giving rise to trush-winning publications. Trush publications provide little food for thought and language in line with the poor TV competitor. The writer is good at the margins, is not promoted because they do not sell, no money: and now money is everything. The barbaric culture and mass culture involves good (and somewhat elitist) pushing more and more marginalized. Finally death occurs: the writers try to defend the language, but the thrust of the masses requirements and rules are becoming less stringent until moving to a new system without rules, without synonyms, without meaning. Rethinking education compulsory? Today I would answer yes. Better an elite culture that mass production of ignorance and mediocrity.

Note: do not escape some of the academic books, among which I quote the book "Capital Markets and Financial Intermediation" by P. Giovannini, a professor at "La Sapienza", which has an infinite number of grammatical errors as well as a bad layout. Edizioni Kappa.

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