La nascita dell’italiano, inglese e cinese come lingue letterarie The bitrh of Italian, English and Chinese as literary languages

Italian The father of Italian literary language was Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). He took the Italian dialect spoken in Florence and made a literary language out of it. “La Divina Commedia/Divine Comedy” is Dante’s masterpiece. It is the voyage of Dante himself in the world after death and it is a work in poetry. Petrarch (“Il Canzoniere/Collection of love poems”) and Boccaccio (“Decamerone/Decameron”) also contributed to the spread of literary Italian in poetry and fiction.

English English as a literary language was born thanks to Geoffrey Chaucer ( 1343-1400 ). He was a page at court and then a diplomat, travelling on the king’s behalf on diplomatic missions all over Europe. In Italy, Chaucer read Boccaccio’s “Decameron” and he copied its structure in his “Canterbury Tales”, about a pilgrimage of a group of different people to the shrine of St. Thomas Becket, in Canterbury Cathedral. Thomas Becket had been the Archbishop of Canterbury until he was murdered in his cathedral, by four knights. All the pilgrims described by Chaucer belong to all English social classes with the exception of the highest and the lowest.

Chinese The first work written in Chinese as a literary language dates back to the Zhou Dynasty(11th century BC- 6 th century BC). The title of the work is “The Book of Songs”,and it is written in poetry . The work is divided into three parts:farmers’ life, formal poems and poems for a sacrificial ceremony.

《诗经》（The books of songs）

LANGUAGE Different from alphabetical languages, Chinese characters have their unique discipline. Chinese characters originated from pictures, and were people’s depiction of things, or the original hieroglyphical characters. There is no exact number of Chinese characters. Only approximate figures can be found in dictionaries. 85,000 Chinese characters have been included in Chinese Thesauruses published in 20th century.

The original Chinese character These are the earliest Chinese characters we have found which were written on tortoise shells and beast bones. There are big and small characters with slender strokes. Every character is like a small child’s drawing.

The unity of Chinese characters The First Emperor of Qin unified China in 221 B.C. He is also the first emperor to build the Great Wall. After unifying China, he alsoo unified characters into “Xiaozhuan” from about 8 different styles handwriting all around China in order to consolidate his feudal rule .

An example of nowadays characters, which is a poem from the Book of Songs, and translation on the left You wear a collar blue; At ease I cannot be. Though I come not to you, Why don’t you ask for me? At peace I cannot be. Why you don’t come to me? I’m looking far away; On City Wall I plea. If you come not one day, Three months it seems to be. 青青子衿， 悠悠我心。 纵我不往， 子宁不嗣音? 青青子佩， 悠悠我思。 子宁不来? 挑兮达兮, 在城阙兮。 一日不见， 如三月兮。

At last………… Thank you! Grazie! 谢谢！ Although Italian and English are completely different from Chinese, no matter the origin and development or language theory, they are all very beautiful languages, which represent human culture and wisdom. Thank you! Grazie! 谢谢！