History Hijinks: Another Dumb Italy Story
HTML-код
- Опубликовано: 18 янв 2024
- Plot Twist: Language is wacky, who knew.
SOURCES & Further Reading:
A hefty amount of Wiktionary trawling to check and compare etymologies
Britannica "Romance Languages" www.britannica.com/topic/Roma...
A Linguistic History of Venice, Ronnie Ferguson, 2007
“The private language of Venice” by Robert Landon, BBC Travel, www.bbc.com/travel/article/20...
"Ecclesiastical Latin vs Classical Pronunciation History | Latin: The Immortal Language" & "How Latin became Italian 🇮🇹" by polýMATHY • Ecclesiastical Latin v... & • How Latin became Itali...
My relevant language experience is 2 years of university-level Italian and 4 years of middle-school French
I'll be honest this was a Wiktionary-heavy video
MUSIC:
"Sneaky Snitch", Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 creativecommons.org/licenses/...
And about 4 seconds of Kass' Theme from Breath of the Wild
Our content is intended for teenage audiences and up.
PATREON: / osp
PODCAST: overlysarcasticpodcast.transi...
DISCORD: / discord
MERCH: overlysarcastic.shop/
OUR WEBSITE: www.OverlySarcasticProduction...
Find us on Twitter / ospyoutube
Find us on Reddit / osp
Want this video in another language? Check out our guide to contributing translated captions: www.overlysarcasticproduction...
If you're Italian, please share your favorite place-name in your local language!
I've seen a handful of comments saying that Venice in Venetian is closer to "veNESSia", and others saying there's hefty internal variety even within the Venetian language. Sourcing that pronunciation for the Venetian Language itself and not just the Venetian dialect of Standard Italian was a pain in the ass, so even if "veNEEsa" turns out to be wrong I'll take it as further proof of local language wackiness.
EDIT: NEVERMIND I FIGURED IT OUT, I'M JUST STUPID. The Venetians in the comments are absolutely correct and it's like "Venessia" - the problem is I'm a dumbass who can't read IPA notation to save my life. The only place I could find an IPA pronunciation notation for Venésia was the Venetian language wikipedia page ( vec.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venesia ) and the only place that could help me decipher it was the Venetian Language IPA wiki page page ... ... WRITTEN IN VENETIAN. The notation is [veˈnɛːsja] and the ː and j characters are what screwed me. The ː lengthens a sound but my stupid ass mistranslated it as DOUBLING the sound, hence my "veNEE-". As for the "-sa" at the end instead of "-sia", I screwed up the "j" IPA character, which is a completely standard "I" sound in Venetian, but I misread it as the "ʃ". This maps to a "sc" sound, but I lazily and stupidly thought "oh I know that one, that's the medieval variant of the letter S". Cascading failures from stupid assumptions in a video about *not* making assumptions. Lesson learned, ask a Venetian next time, and check my assumptions. Any similar mistakes with the pronunciations of other local-language endonyms stems from the same source - ya boi is bad at IPA. I don't think this failure breaks the thesis of the video, but it's an oversight I don't intend to replicate. You all deserve the best research possible, even when that means better deciphering a Venetian-language IPA chart.
-B
The names of Brescia and Bergamo in our "dialect" are Bresa and Bèrghem respectively (written using italian spelling)
I'm from Northern Italy, 3 hours from Venezia. My mom's home-village name (in local language) is San Vido (San Vito), my dad's is Bellun (from Latin Bellunum, in Italian is Belluno).
If you need an Italian tour guide or some help with Italian language, I'm here to help you. 😁
I always introduce my friends to the Italian languages by telling them how to say “Let’s go” 😉
Andiamo in Italian
Ammuní in Sicilian
Jamme in Neapolitan
Annamo in Roman
Ndemo in Venetian of Venice
Ndon in Venetian from Treviso, right bank of the river Piave
Love your channel, btw! 😉 greetings from The Hague. Den Haag. L’Aja. La Haye. Hāga…. You pick 😂
@@LorenzoCanon91 you can also translate that with "Si va!". 🤣
@@luanafarina3626 CIÓ 😂
“I was thinking about [simple premise] and I realized [PROLONGED NONSENSE]” is the best kind of setup for an OSP video
Also goes well with H Bomber guy’s videos too
Amen! Agreed! 100%
I think you can apply that much wider!
The best kind of videos
It really is 😂🤌🤌
I am absolutely okay with OSP incorporating linguistics and etymology into the rest of their humanities bingo card.
OSP Bingo is the best Bingo!
Why limit to the humanities? Don't forget that Red's degree is in math and that she's an amateur astronomer! Imagine if she branched out to cover cosmology _alongside_ cosmogony.
@@GSBarlev She already sort of has with the Eclipse video. But cosmology isn't in the humanities.
@@samfisher6606 Ope! Accidentally forgot the key premise of my comment (edited it in just now)-I could totally see _OSP_ branching off into *all* areas of knowledge.
Yeah, but the moment Blue said "simple" and "History of the English Language" in the same thought process, I knew he done goofed. The fact that Italian is... not quite as bad, but its own flavor of messed up... is a fun educational reminder.
“My first instinct was to blame french” is definitely going right into out of context/quote compilations
And also it's an enormously relatable mood!
Spoken like a true Englishman.
@@aquamarinerose5405 What makes it even funnier is that I'm Swiss/French myself😂
Blue really is trying to do everything he can to avoid saying "English is actually closer to what they called themselves than modern Italian is" and the clear pain it brings him to even come close to doing that brings me an unimaginable sadistic joy.
Lol I know. He even had to admit that Milan is exactly the same in English and the local language
As an italian, I can only describe the impact of hearing Blue changing language mid-sentence as the equivalent of a flashbang.
Italian is a second language for me and yeah, agreed
It's a lot more jarring when people do it without the correct pronounciation or a very thick accent, imo. Blue is actually one of few people I can listen to speak italian and *not* be jarred because he actually speaks it correctly.
@@thunderthebright8469i think it's because his grammar and overall pronounciation is good, if one of my english teachers taught me anything, it's that when you learn a language it's inevitable to have an accent, but with good grammar, clear voice and even a medium level pronounciation, anyone can understand you. This case applies very well with Blue imo, his accent may show, but he has a very clear pronounciation of words, along with good grammar use. (And i say this as an italian) idk if this makes sense tho
I know right? He's so good it actually turns into an Uncanny Valley kinda thing
Eeeh he still has too tick of an accent for my Italian ears, I'm sorry (ed è Boccaccio, Dante Petrarca e Boccaccio, non Machiavelli)
Thankfully he got the dialect thing right, most people pretend they don't even exist.
Welcome to the wonderful world of linguistics, where everyone's playing a game of telephone and no one knows where it started and somehow you're "It" despite that being an entirely different game.
Thank you, this is my new favorite comment on the internet lmfao
God, yes! I studied linguistics in college & I once took a test in a syntax class where one of the questions was "which of the following is ungrammatical" & I had to summon the professor to ask what to do because none of them were to me but that wasn't an option on the multiple choice test. She had me note it on the question & gave me full credit & then, after class, correctly IDed the different part of the country I was from in one guess.
@@MartyMango0 Currently studying linguistics, and I very much understand this struggle. Syntax trees exist but for the life of me I can't understand what the hell they're doing half the time. Failed the exam spectacularly but passed the course, and that's enough for me!
"Languages are just complicated and Localization is fine" is a take we need more of.
Seconded. By all means do your best to be accurate but at the end of the day it's simply not always going to be possible, and there's often not a definitively true answer anyway.
Yeah, adopting endonyms and using is now something we ONLY do for far-away places we feel bad about. It is essentially becoming condescending. We would never consider it impolite to call Germans German, and not use their endonym. When Finland asked the whole world to stop calling them Finland (a name they consider given to them by their colonizers), we ignored it. That is only something we do for third world places, like Iran, Myanmar or now Türkiye.
Fortunately it seems most people are ignoring the Modi requests to rename India, as just a political trick by the current ruling party and not something we should take serious.
@@Carewolf more recently, Kyiv
@@Carewolf This immediately made me think of New Zealand and how the natives want it to be recognised as Tearoha (Tee-air-ro-ha).
For the record, while I agree that I don't have any feelings of guilt over calling Deutschland Germany, ever since I learned that the German people call it Deutschland, I've tried to use that name in conversation when it comes up.
I was not expecting Blue to pop into his best Mario “Oh no” impression. This is basically the equivalent of Reds video about the nine realms. “Oh boy, I sure do love a simple topic with no nuance.” 3 days and several academic textbooks later. “WHY AM I DOING THIS TO MYSELF?!!”
Academia is all about suffering can confirm
I thought it was Jar Jar Binks cos Veneesa sounds like meesa.
Blue the Historian, Blue the philosopher, Blue the dome lover, and now… Blue the linguist. He’s just assimilating more humanities subjects every year!
I read this in the voice of Mel Brooks doing the Merchandising joke from Space Balls
@@erikeverson7812 I read it in Picard's voice, "Q the Liar, Q the Misanthrope!"
Not to mention, Blue the Spider-man
"We are the Blue. You will be assimilated. Your humanities distinctiveness will be added to our own. Resistance is futile."
Blue does all the real world humanities stuff like history and arts while Red does all fiction stuff like stories and epic poems and story tropes.
Blue having a melt down about not being able to read Danté in the original Tuscan is such a mood
italians are not able to read Dante in the original Tuscan without some kind of translation most of the time
it's from almost a millennia ago
Yeah, "volgare" (and the "volgare" Dante used in the Divina Commedia still may not have been 100% what the average fiorentino spoke in their everyday life at the market) is *very* different from what modern fiorentino is xD
Well, most italians can read the Divine Comedy in the original Tuscan pretty fluently...up to Purgatory, where he starts using more aulic language and Paradise needs a full-on translation for most parts.
Don’t worry, the original Tuscan Raider edit is harder. All those grunts don’t translate into English well.
@@matteoarman, I *hated* going through the Paradiso in highschool...
I died when Blue went from speaking a beautiful Italian straight into a full on Mario "OH NO", like, same delivery.
Fun fact: Livorno has a traditional English exonym that didn't come from France. Because it was a common port-of-call for English merchant ships, it became known in English as "Leghorn." Which is where a popular chicken breed with a white body and bright-red comb became known as the "Leghorn." And that is part of how the Looney Tunes character, Foghorn Leghorn, got that name and that design.
You’d think he’d be from NYC instead of the South then.
Does this place experience a lot of temperature differences between the water and air that cause visibility issues for navigating at sea?
And this is how the comments section became a new James Burke "Connections" episode.... 😂
Aspè è di Livorno?
I n t e r e s s a n t e
I love how it's canon for Red and Blue to be like "I want to do something fun and simple" then they be like "oh no, what have i gotten myself into"😂
I find that's usually how learning about anything goes lmao
@SPLuvr Yeah, turns out the underlying reasons behind anything is long, complicated, and basically nonsensical.
The "This'll be Quick & Easy" to "What have I gotten myself into" pipeline is basically the thesis statement for human history.
Me asking my dad for help with my math homework- 💀👌
It reminds me of CGP Grey's video on Tiffany
As an Italian, I can totally get behind the "blame French" argument.
Also, Blue speaking Italian is *adorabile*
(Also guys, I'm honestly overwelmed by the reactions - not saying I'm teary-eyed but kinda! 🥺😍)
I know, right?! Was totally not expecting Blue to speak Italian so beautifully
as a german speaker, I can totally get behind the "blame french" argument
for the record I say this as an american with a french speaking mother and a new orleans french speaking girlfriend
Wait, adorable as in he sounds cute when saying it, or adorable like when your 5-year-old is happy with themselves when they say gracias at a Mexican restaurant?
As a French, I can totally get behind the "blame French" argument.
As a student of the English language, I can totally get behind the "blame the French" argument.
This is basically a good part of the reason why Tolkien’s Middle Earth is so extensively detailed; my man wanted to make a language of his own (that is, what would become elvish) but being a literal professor in language, he knew language doesn’t exist without context, culture and history. So he got to work, which is (probably) why elven history is so much more detailed than that of the race of Man and dwarves. Aaaall of the history, culture and internal rivalries between the broader elven tribes/clans/groupings.
This professor made me want to learn Sindarin, Quenya and the Tengwar writing system right after finishing Children of Hurin and LOTR. And now i'm on a quest for a suitable notebook
That’s also why keeping track of all the character and place names in the Silmarillion is so damn difficult. Name changes are dropped on the regular depending on who’s point of view the person or thing is being talked about from, and that’s not even getting into the “codification“ of names that we get by the time of the Lord of the Rings.
Romanians everywhere thank you.
Also, as a violinist, I NEED to see that one about Stradivari wasting his time making violins.
Not gonna lie, Blue's existential meltdown in the end had me cracking up.
"Go Go Gadget better empire" tickled my funny bone.
Same. I love him, but... that was fun to watch.
@BradyPostma I lost the Game there too!
It was worth it.
I imagined Inspector Gadget in a Toga with Laurels & Sandles eating Olives & Pizza.
@@Claymann71 - "Go Go Gadget Greek Fire!"
It's like Red with the "Those Dang Phones" Trope Talk.
I was not expecting to hear blue burst into fluent Italian. But I would be lying if I said I didn’t wanna hear more
I almost clicked on "hear more" thinking it was "Read more"
Imagine you did and it unlocked more ranting except entirely in Italian
@@OhCrapI_He
Small spoilers for OSP's production of Julius Caesar, but Blue voices the titular character and does all of his lines in Latin.
@@DragonbIaze052 that's noir, blue played brutus ^^
@@sevencats4964 Ahh sorry, it's been a while since I watched it.
The fact poor Blue starts having an existential crisis concerning his beloved Venison is such a treat and opens the door for OSP to dissect Linguistics. Seriously channels like these are a treasure!
Was that intentional?
Venison? Oh deer!
Props to Blue for his not-too-shabby Mario impression at 7:41.
About to say 😂
I actually laughed at that oh no
I never thought I'd see the day that a man would go through the 5 stages of grief backwards over the Italian languages but here we are
7:40 Blue's Mario-esque "OH NO!" Had me on the FLOOR 😂
I'm *really* curious is the nearly flawless Mario impression was intentional or fully accidental.
SAME!
How you know OSP *actually* does their own research: "Oh *no.* My premise was wrong. Here's what I learned when I went down this rabbit hole!" XD
Gods this was funny and informative and I loved it. :D Thank you for the laughs, Blue!
Meanwhile me, a Czech, having to talk about Venice as "Benátky", Genoa as "Janov" and Rome as "Řím"
As a croat I shudder, although we also say Rim for Roma, Venezia = Venecija, Genova is the same
The Icelandic for Venice is "Feneyjar" which translated directly means "marsh-islands" 🤷♀
@@astahelgadottir8747 You win.
"the city of wetness" @@astahelgadottir8747
Okay venice in Czech legit sounds like the name of a medicine
0:53 Considering how much of post-Roman Empire Italian history basically boils down to "Remus was right", I think Rome being one letter off 'Reme' is appropriate.
I always want to pronounce it "Re-Mey" and not like a ream of paper.
About all I know about Remus was that he hopped over Romulus's wall and got murdered to death for it. Care to expand?
@@Archris17 Remus wanted to build a trading hub on the Aventine Hill for its easy access to the Tiber River. Romulus wanted to build a fortress on the Capitaline Hill for its strong defences. Romulus got his city by killing Remus.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the city of Rome got sacked several times over the next century, and was eventually rebuilt from the Aventine Hill (which acted as a tourist trap for the Vatican) and the Campus Martius (which was flat ground on the Tiber; more Remus-like than Remus!) which grew into the Rome we know today.
Modern Italy has been infamously weak militarily, but was still a powerhouse thanks to it's trade (Venice go brr) and cultural leverage. Just as Remus intended!
@@samfisher6606not me reading it and wanting to pronounce it Rem like "REM sleep"
Of course, Romulus and Remus most likely weren't real people, and if they were, actually lived somewhere in the Pontic-Caspian Steppe, because the whole "Founding of Rome" story with Romulus and Remus and the she-wolf and all that is actually pretty much just the Roman version of the Indo-European story of the creation of the world.
9:03 Narrator (Morgan Freeman): "He was not, in fact, fine."
As an Italian linguist I really enjoyed this episode. The way you pronounce Italian place names is simply delightful.
And thus Blue dedicated the remainder of his life to learning all the individual dialects of the peninsula for no reason other than complete and total accuracy.
Thus wasting his life, just like Stradivari did 😂
He was remembered for knowing too much.
It's quite a dream of mine to magically know every non-standard variety of every language in the world, simply out of spite towards governments that want to extinguish them.
This legitimately bleeds into a weird topic about the italianization of local dialects and languages. It is very much a phenomenon in Italy where increased modernization is making people forget their own local dialects. It's happening to me in my hometown, just one generational gap and kids don't speak the dialect nearly as much, if at all.
Se acercan tiempos oscuros, Harry.jpg
I live in Germany and a similar thing is happening here. A friend of mine was recently bemoaning the fact that she can’t speak her grandparents’ dialect (Tho she can at least still understand it)
Agree! As far as I´m concerned, my parents generation (born in the 50´) was the last really speaking Sardinian and only with their respective families, never with each other (two very different dialects). I loved my professor in school insisting on teaching MATH (!) in Sardinian...
I think that's a universal phenomenon, actually. It's probably due to most media being in the standard form of which ever language is being spoken and because that's what you're suppossed to speak in school (at least in my school we were told of for speaking dialect)
@@gracetopherkirk5742Same here. When me and my brothers were kids, our dad unconsciously switched to Hochdeutsch when speaking with us, but as we got older and I moved out, he started speaking Franconian most of the time. Dialects also have the reputation of being spoken by stupid people, as Hochdeutsch has been the standard in German schools for a while and people associate trades and other non-office jobs with dialects.
4:40 , thank youuu for defending romanian, if you want suggestions I really think a video about Romania's history would be very interesting bc of the sheer perseverance of the people and how it became as it is. As you can see in that map we are a latin island in a sea of slavic influences (as Nicolae Iorga said) so its really impressing how the culture preserved itself. I love your videos and hope you all have a good and not stressful year! La mulți ani!
I got into this channel because of Red, but Blu’s feral historian energy is probably what keeps me coming back the most
Get yourself a person who loves you the way Blue loves Italian history.
Someone needs to ask Cyan if Blue loves her the way he loves Italian history 😂
Unfortunately for all involved, no one can love anything the way Blue loves Italy.
The distinctly Mario-esque "oh no!" broke me lol
I laughed as well. His enthusiasm is contagious
As an italian who studied at school a little history of the Italian language, I would like to add some details left by the video or simplified a little. What we now call standar Italian was born during 1500/1600 by the hands of some linguists (the most important and famous: Pietro Bembo) who wanted a standard language for literature and politics. It was chosen at the end the Florentine of late 200 and early 300, more specifically use the language used by Petrarch for the Poetry and that of Boccaccio for the prose. (Petrarch and Boccacio are two very influential Florentine poets). The modern Tuscan dialect is not an evolution of the Florentine of Boccaccio and Petrarch but of what existed at the time of Bembo.
It is also not true that in the center the dialects are less widespread. A prime example is Romanesco, which, although much more similar to standard Italian than Siciliano or Veneto, is separated from it with characteristic words and inflections. It still remains the main language for conversation even among strangers (which with other dialects is increasingly less common). It is easily understandable by other Italians from different areas for its exposure through cinema and television
P.S.
Your accent in Italian is great
P.P.S
How did you managed to pronounce so badly the names of italian cities?
Examples here (I'm gonna use IPA)
Venice(Italian Venezia( /veˈnɛːtt͡sja/) Venitian (Venesia/Venexia/Venezia/Veneszia[there is no consensus on how to write venitian] (/veˈnɛsja/) as every one can see the only part that change is Z that change from a Ts sound to a S sound, the other parts rest the same. The other names are also mispronounced, but I’m too lazy to write in IPA
Anyway nobody, and I repeat NOBODY understands Dante’s Italian, not even Italian, So don’t take it hard Blue
Thank you, I was about to write all that but I found your comment and likes it instead
@@mistertizio4094 Always a plaesure
"a simple informational story about historical linguistics, etymology, language transfer, and endonyms. what could possibly go wrong!" is remarkably similar to my thought process in choosing to get a degree in linguistics
"Go-Go Gadget Better Empire" is my first Favorite Thing Blue Said for the year of 2024.
I can state confidently that us Italians from different regions still don't understand each other perfectly when talking, not because of the accents but due to common use of our language in day to day life. I am from the South and dated a guy from Tuscany in my 20s, it took me three months to understand everything he said (Tuscan dialects are also very similar to standard Italian, and they aren't scolded for using them since primary school as they do with us in the South, so they tend to use regional forms that are extremely weird to outsiders). And don't let me started with Swiss Italian.
Fun fact: it is widely accepted that Italian became a commonly spoken language in the late 1950s, since broadcast television started in 1954. Before that, it was just a formal language you learned in school and, since compulsory education ended in 5th grade at the time, it was very rare for people to use it everyday. There are also some political implications with the suppression of Southern "dialects" and accents, I literally had to force me and stop being ashamed when speaking to Northeners in my normal accent, since they drilled into our heads that it's impolite and very ignorant.
Someone else talks about the unfairness that southern dialects are subject to! Ever since I started attending university in the north I realised how much more mainstream it is for them to talk in dialect with a certain pride even in more formal events, meanwhile in the central-south we had always been taught that it was a sign of ignorance and rudeness (scusa per il papiro, ma mi sono sentito troppo validato dal tuo commento🙏✨)
@@eleutheros7216 That's interesting. On one hand I think there's the usual arrogance towards the South in play, but I suspect the fact that several of the northern dialects are becoming much less commonly spoken also plays a part. So it's something of a badge of honor to still be able to flex what little dialect you might have picked up from grandma, as opposed to those other regions where the presence of dialect is still very strong even in younger generations. But, like Blue says, these are just my "vibes". Grazie comunque per il papiro.
@@guyfawkes938 Honestly, great analysis, that is for sure one of the factors at play; the only "ugly" part that I wish would be left behind is how often in order to celebrate northern dialects (which I love btw) southern ones are torn down (with the most ridiculous excuses, from "they sound uglier" to "oh but our dialefts are actual languages" which surprise, southern are too; this kind of rhetoric is often linked to ugly separationist politics tho, no intellectual worth of their name would ever argue something like this)
@@eleutheros7216Linguists actually classify the Southern Italian "dialects" as a _completely separate branch_ of the Romance Languages.
Also, Germans and Austrians joke that the Swiss speak 4 languages: French, Italian, Rhaeto-Romanish, and „Erkältung“ [raffreddore] 😂. Because apparently, Swiss German sounds like someone speaking German with a really bad cold to anyone in Austria or Germany.😂
@@John_Weiss As a person with a Master's degree in German, I can vouch for the Erkältung definition, but let's not forget Swiss Italian which, to me, is quite a different language from Italian Italian. But then, Austrians should take care of their own problems before criticizing anyone, lol. And nobody's talking about Südtiroler yet.
Anyway, there's a political reason for the reputation of Southern "dialects" (especially Neapolitan ones): namely colonialism and mass emigration. Since the Kingdom of Naples was literally conquered by Piedmont, which led to the dismantling of the rising industrial complex of the South and the agreements with huge landowners to keep them in charge here, us Southerners have always been poorer and less educated (until the last three decades) than the northerners. Then, with the mass emigration of "low skilled" workers from the south to the factories of the north, we were still poor and poorly educated, and the northerners believed that our languages were beastly grunts for beastly non-people. Therefore we became our own enemies trying to integrate with the cool and wealthy northeners who use their vowels, while being brainwashed from primary school that we had to completely lose even our accents just to be considered "normal". When I was younger and traveled around Italy, I subconsciously mimicked whatever accent the person I was with had, because I felt extremely ashamed of the way I usually spoke and didn't want to embarrass myself in front of them. I had to consciously stop myself from doing it, even when speaking a foreign language (I now consciously keep my Italian accent when speaking English because I came to the conclusion that using a random British or American accent made no sense at all).
As a linguist (and translator) I was so worried by the opening statement... and increasingly delighted by every sentence that came after it. I would LOVE to see more of this in the future
Ok, I can’t deny, watching Blue’s sanity break down in real time might be one of my favorite pastimes. It’s okay man, we still love you!
This reminds me how, over the course of 2021, we all mutually accepted that _Kiev_ was an exonym, and that we should be spelling it _Kyiv_ pronouncing it _-Keev-_ _Kee-eve_ (see comments).
And on the subject, as someone whose ancestors were from what is now Poland and The Ukraine, I am forever confused when people mention *the other* _Galicia._
Not as bad as Iberia somehow migrating from the caucuses to western europe... Also the three places called georgia.
@@candiman4243 wait three? I only know of two!
@@GhostBear3067 South Georgia Island. It's a bit past the falklands
Same here, albeit in reverse, as I'm from Portugal. Galicia being a thing elsewhere (i.e. not in Spain) surprised me.
It’s not actually pronounced Keev with a single long “e” sound.
I was told my Ukrainian friend when I started learning the language that there is a slight tonal difference. It’s not Key-ev like the original spelling so everyone’s correct to move away from that. But there is a slight tone change from the Ky to the iv part.
Welp time for Blue to learn all the Local versions of Italian like he’s catching Pokemon.
I have not seen Blue having SO much fun in a video in a LONG TIME. You can see his personality pouring through the script and his flavourful and cultured humour all over the place and it's such a joy to see how that in turns brings about a video that you can't possibly help but to love because of all the love put into such a silly topic. Great work!
When I went to Venice for the first time last year to see my family there, I discovered they ALL spoke Venetian regularly to each other, not Italian. It was fascinating, and being half Mexican, I could hear similarities to Spanish I didn't expect! I hope to become fluent in Venetian one day :)
This also made me think of how weird that some places never have their name localized. Can you imagine calling São Paulo Saint Paul or Rio de Janeiro River of January?
Yes, I can imagine it. In Texas, many of the Spanish place names survived, while institutions often use English versions (lots of things in San Antonio are named St. Anthony despite them being named after the same person)
Or calling Tokyo “East Capital”, likewise Kyoto with “Old Capital.”
It also doesn't help when there are already established cities with anglicized names that have wildly different cultures and environments. There is a significant difference between Sao Paulo, Brazil and Saint Paul, Minnesota.
My favorite city in the southern US has gotta be "Big River Texas"
And then you get things like the Sahara Desert. Desert Desert.
As a fellow Italian (language) lover, I appreciate hearing Blue speak Italian and express his love for the Italian names of Italian cities.
The sudden piping of Kass's Theme from BoTW at 1:17 made me jump bc I thought my phone was ringing
That note on the stress pattern reminded me of someone I met like ten-ish years ago. Finnish is my native language, we're known for being monotone, but linguistically speaking Finnish does have a stress pattern, it's just very same-y. Pretty much every* word has the stress on the first syllable, and it's also not particularly strong as far as emphasis goes, certainly not as strong as Italian. And I ran into someone who spoke Finnish, but with an Italian accent, and it was downright delightful to hear! He just asked me a question about how something worked, and I answered, and he called it brilliant (not my answer, the thing the question was about). It was a very short interaction among like a hundred similar ones, but I can still hear his exclamation of "NErokasta!" so vividly in my memory, with that super strong stress in the start.
And it's not just the accent, the strength of the emphasis, that set that interaction apart. It was also that we don't tend to exclaim "Brilliant!" when we think something is brilliant (maybe we should?). When he approached me to ask the question, I heard that singsongy way of stressing syllables in his speech, and I would remember how it felt to hear that even if I forgot every word of that encounter, but then he shouted that out and that little voice clip has permanently engraved itself in my brain.
*I'm not gonna commit to saying "every word" without that "pretty much" qualifier because I study English linguistics and not Finnish (and also sweeping statements like that will have you being wrong a lot), but I will say regarding the two examples I can think of that are fully unstressed: I've seen people write them as suffixes rather than postpositions, which kinda makes it seem like we don't register it as the next word if we don't hear that stressed syllable.
(Also the misadventures with IPA in the pinned comment are hilarious, they just keep adding to the "guy makes assumption, turns out wrong" story of the video in such a fitting and comedic way)
Note:Speaking of mutual comprehension, speakers of Italian and French are unable to understand each other very well. This is because there are more disparities between them when it comes to their sound inventories, or pronunciation.
However, it is much simpler for French and Italian speakers to identify vocabulary similarities when they are written down. They can therefore understand the text's main idea more easily.
English and Dutch has a similar phenomenon, in my admittedly limited experience.
@@cloudkittyeah, the germanics are kinda almost as screwy as the romance-s. Scandinavia are off doing their own thing like France, Germany is in much the same boat as Italy, and English is closest to Spanish with functioning, aurally, as a bridge between the two, but _looking_ weird af from either perspective. And then you have Finnish/Romanian off to the side mingling with the slavs.
@@thesquishedelf1301 Finnish has no relation to Indo-European languages. It has many loanwords, sure, but it is related to Uralic languages. Major ones are Estonian and Hungarian
@@tj-co9go thanks, I’m not an expert. That was… kinda what I was getting at, though. I’ve met Romanians who insist Romanian isn’t a Romance language, and it bears enough similarities with Slavic languages that it’s not exactly easy for romance speakers to get around.
@@thesquishedelf1301 I assure you it most certainly is not possible to understand as a slavic speaker
yes, it has the vibe of, maybe, czech? but it isn't similar in vocab, that's pretty obviously almost all latinate.
As someone living in Belgium, yeah, the pain of different names in different languages for the same place is a real pain
Finally, I get to apply my ancient (high school) knowledge of the Italian language to understand the short phrases Blue’s saying while not looking at the captions
As a former linguistics major this makes me so happy! This reminded me of why I liked linguistics in the first place - by learning about languages you learn so much about the people who speak them.
Also the dialect thing made me think of something we used to say when discussing Cantonese Chinese and its cultural significance (I'm from Hong Kong so this was something we got to study) - a language is a dialect with an army and a navy. (of course these days you can't say that because that would be sedition 🙃)
8:19 In the divine comedy you can find the intermediate form "Fiorenza".
The most well know example is the start of the 26th chant of the inferno where Dante rants about how sinful Florentines are (an opinion which definitely has nothing to do with his exile, he swears!).
I bet the "Remind me again why he's in charge of naming stuff?" guy longingly and dramatically stroking his beard in that quintessential deep thought posture didn't see it Cumae-ing when he got the Hellas kicked out of his Assyria as soon as Rome arrived.
I am both angry at your terrible puns and delighted by them.
I love linguistics and dissecting languages -- I don't have a degree in it but I have an intense hobbiest love of it -- so to watch this was an absolute joy! Also RIP Blue, you did a great job, languages are just... *waves hand* messy
3:25 They also got called Romans or Rum a lot.
To modern Turks modern day Greeks are Yunan from Yunanistan but Greeks of Cyprus or Turkey are still usually called Rum instead of Yunan. And of course during the Ottoman Empire Rum was by far the preferred term to Yunan. There are stories that sometime after Greek independence some Greeks talked with the Greek people of Lesbos who were calling them Hellenes and asked "Are you not Hellenes yourself?" and were answered with "We are Romans".
Watching other people's existential crises is much more fun than having one of your own.
That "Oh no!" from Blue made him sounding like Mario, it made me laugh a little
My favorite thing about this video is how Blue takes us through the research process. Starting thinking you already know something, doing the research, and updating your opinion based on what you learn during research.
Gotta love that mini mental breakdown at the end where Blue comes to grips with how much more about Venice he has to learn. lol
I was shocked when I read Count of Monte Cristo and realized Livorno became Leghorn. Leghorn!
Well I say, boy, I say
So what I’ve taken from this is that the next time someone tells me that English is just a garbled mess of other languages blended together, I can just point at Italy and say “We didn’t even start that.”
It's kind of a different thing in English though. Like, when people say that about English, they usually mean because of how much Romance influence it has while still being a Germanic language or something. The only example I can think of of English doing the same thing as Italian is when people claim Scots is a dialect.
@@devonhardy6447 American, Australian, Scots, and British English are four different languages; Im sure plenty would argue that Canadian English/French is distinctive from the mother languages as well, but I know little of either to say myself.
@@Nazuiko Acadian French is *drastically* different from Standard French, the the point of being nearly unintelligible. I went through French Immersion in elementary school, but they taught us *Standard French*, which was damn near useless when trying to have a conversation with the Quebecois.
Canadian English is somewhere between American English and British English. Americanized some words, kept the British sound and spelling of others.
@@Nazuiko I think the varieties of English are like a spectrum of dialects, the same way Arabic is in a way. Related and pretty intelligible over all, but there can be a wide range. Morrocan Arabic, for example, is not intelligible with Levant Arabic when spoken. Too much drift. But it is intelligible with, say, Libyan Arabic. Same with English. Americans and British can understand each other very well, though different vocabulary and pronunciation can be confusing. We can still do fine though. But American and Scots? I have no clue unless it's written down. The pronunciation is so different that while it sounds cool, I have no idea what they're saying.
And we haven't even touched all the versions of English. Indian, Jamaican, Belizean, South African, Singaporean, Nigerian, Bajan. All English dialects, but how well you can understand them is very dependent on how close it is to your own version.
@@Nazuiko eh. no. Scots is a language separate from English; it developed mostly independently of it, and is, even now, mostly not mutually intelligible. There was such a thing as Old Scots, when there was an Old English. American and British English are as yet dialects of English, descended of Old English, as are Australian and Indian English. (by the way, the largest population of native English speakers is in India, did you know that?)
5:50 That's a weird Megazord you got there.
Side note: Romania mentioned! Awesome!
Blue’s breakdown during the credits was amazing
07:33
*_Ghiaccio is screaming_*
4:45 I forget if you've made a video on the history of Romania. To me it sounds like all they're known for is Count Vladimir Dracula (a.k.a. Vlad The Impaler) as well as all of their vampire mythologies... and their Draco AK pistols. But not a lot of people understand how Romania came to be.
Another youtuber i dont knwo the name of, though more Tiktok than youtube i think, actually just had a short on him and apparently Dracula means "SON of Dracul", cuz his dad was also despicable?
That was news to me ... and yes, I want more Romanian and eastern European history in general; theres so much going on over there but the Anglosphere is dominated by the western 5 of Italy, France, Spain, England, and sometimes Germany if they want to.
@@Nazuiko he's the son of the dragon because his father was a member of the Hungarian Order of the Dragon (it was a commendation I think) not because his father was outright evil.
Extra History has a series on Vlad, I reccomend it.
He covered countries around Romania: Poland, Ukraine, Byzantium, the Ottomans. But didn't cover Dacia's history with the Romans and with except this video Romania always looked like empty space. Red covered Bram Stoker's Dracula and Castlevania though.
Romania came to be from a mix of Vlachs, Slavs and other ethnic groups north of the Danube (too many to count since Wallachia is the westernmost point of the Eurasian Steppes before the Pannonian Basin, most notable being Avars, Bulgars, Cumans, Magyars, Pechenegs), which got Orthodox Christianity from the Bulgarian Empire, the people weren't able to establish themselves because of all these nomadic empires but they survived thanks to the Carpathian mountains and from what we've learned from Russian history, the Mongolian empire is more lenient if you don't resist and give them tribute.
After the Magyars have settled west of the Carpathians local lords east of the Carpathians broke free from Hungary and established Wallachia and Moldavia and instead of using western, catholic, feudal Hungarian law they used Orthodox Byzantine law as basis for their government, then a bunch of history of trying to survive stuck between empires until they unite all the Romanians after WW1.
Interesting points in history Vlad the Impaler playing off the Hungarians and Ottomans against each other, Stephen the Great, Vlad's cousin and Prince of Moldavia, with 46 victories out of 48 battles against while outnumbered against Ottomans, Wallachians, Hungarians, Poles and Tatars, Michael the Brave briefly managing to unite Wallachia, Moldavia and Transylvania under him, Russian governor of the principalities Pavel Kiselyov established Romania's first constitution before Russia, Alexandru Ioan Cuza is elected Domnitor by Wallachia and Moldavia separately to skirt international law that prevented their unification after which a series of reforms that weren't to the ruling class' liking they looked to establish German backing by appointing a german king related to Prussia's royal family, this king joins the WW1 against Germany and Austria to unite Romania with Transylvania, get defeated and then join a day before the war ends to get awarded Transylvania and seals the deal after defeating the Hungarian Soviet Republic.
Please, as a violinist I am begging you for that second video idea, IT'S A NEED
7:34 - I have not laughed as hard at a History video in a loooong time, Blue, I have GOT to give you props for establishing your Italian pronunciation chops hardcore and THEN making me think of Mario the plumber as the punchline XDD
This is why I had to make a mother language for my fantasy empire before developing lingual drift, dialects, and straight up splitting points for the various city states encompassed by it.
*nods in Tolkien*
*Fëanor approves*
The best part is the base language the others stemmed from is used by the temple folk the same way doctors use latin- since no one actually *speaks* the mother language anymore, its used by the only thing everyone in the empire shares; Faith.
And an island nation off the coast but that's their perogative XD
Blue, you madman. How are you going to make something greater than this? This feels like the greatest example of Blue-specific humour and storytelling produced so far, and I really want more of it!
That little Mario "oh no" had me in stitches! Beautiful!
OH BLUE. YOU NERD. what an amazing video, thanks ^^
being french, i would *also* have blamed french, but my mom having been born in Sardinia, i am a tiiiiny bit sad that you didn't mention her native language ;)
(makes sense, though, it's an island, nothing like even corsican, and there's no "big" city over there ^^ nice to learn about other regional languages of italy, really, thanks again that's a GREAT start to the year with your channel :D )
Damn, I’m loving that this video gives Blue an excuse to flex his Italian!😄💙
*Insert Generic Italian Music*
I can totally hear it right now
This gives me the same vibes as when Red thought her video on the nine realms was going to be easy, only to soon realize how much more complicated the subject you guys are researching actually is. XD
This was a really interesting look into language evolution! I loved learning that Italians are basically considered fluent in two languages! Great work on giving us something both educational and hilariously entertaining as always!
*Mentions Petrarca, Dante and Machiavelli*
*leaves out Boccaccio*
You caused me an amount of pain that my degree in italian literature cannot stand blue, you did the 3 corone dirty...
In Polish we have some names similar to Latin/Italian equivalents, like Venice is Wenecja (pronounced exactly like in Italian, maybe with a different accent) or Milan is Mediolan (from Latin Mediolanum), but then we call Italy... Włochy.
Don't ask me why, I have no idea.
That sounds like it comes from the word "Vlach" which was used to refer to Romance language speakers in the Balkans.
Włochy ultimately comes from Proto-German "*Walhaz", which means foreigner, usually Romance or Celtic language speaking foreigners. In English, this eventually gave the Welsh their exonym name, for example. Germans at first used it indiscriminately for any Romance-language speaker, giving the Vlachs their name. This naming of Romance-speakers was picked up by the Poles at some point, even though they, obviously, don't speak a Germanic language, giving them the Polish name for Italy.
It's because the Germanic-speaking peoples called the Celtic peoples something like *Waliskos. When the Germanic-speaking peoples encountered the *Rumiskos, they called them more *Waliskos. Later the Slavic-speaking peoples used the Germanic names. The soft W sometimes became a GU-, V-, or B-.
So in English, we have "Wales" for the British part of Britain, "Gaul" (Gu-al) for Gallia, "Wallonia" for southern Belgium, "Wallachia" for southern Romania, etc.
@@marjae2767 You're right elsewhere, but the Romans called them Gauls long, long before any German was even recorded. In fact "Gaul" is likely an endonym, as it has been used by the peoples themselves from Ireland and Scotland (where the languages themselves are called the equivalent of "Gaelic" by their own speakers), through Gaul, and all the way to Asia Minor and the Galatians (who were a Celtic people who moved there in the 200s BC). "Celt" is the actual exonym here.
@@thomasrinschler6783 Although Gallae, Gauls, and Gaels sound similar, I'm pretty sure they come from different roots. Gallae/Galli from a native root, Gauls from *Waliskos, and Gaels from Goidil. Sorry I can't link to sources.
Just thinking of the scene from Casablanca of the French and Italian dudes arguing. "If he gets a word in, it'll be a major Italian victory."
You killed me with “Go go Gadget better Empire.” I love it.
As a linguistics hobbyist, not often you see non-linguists covering linguistics this well. Kudos to Blue! This video was amazing and only reinforced your professionalism as a true researcher!
Blue embracing his inner Ghiacco, love to see it
*Ghiaccio
Ghiaccio learning Venezia's local name would probably give him a fatal stroke
that Stradivarius teaser is going to echo in my brain until the video is released
“It’s fine, it’s fine. It doesn’t bother me, it bothers me, it BOTHERS ME A LOT… AND THAT ONE’S STILL GREEN!”
Kass’s accordion suddenly kicking in took me out so hard that I paused the video due to curling up like a pill bug with laughter- another moment in the OSP hall of fame!
I started studying linguistics about 2 years ago, and omg it’s such an interesting field. Blue, I’d love if you did more videos talking about languages and linguistics. Trust me, the field is interesting
As an Italian I'm so happy about this video and its fascinating topic.
On the other hand, sad to see Torino overlooked for the 100th times when it comes to talk about Italy 😢
Because to the rest of us it's Turin and you're all covered by a shroud. Your dome has right-angles and your king had to be dragged into fighting for independence from Austria. Your museum is Egyptian, your name is Celtic and your namesake was beaten by Hannibal in less than a week, after which you did nothing of note until the Lombards.
Turin suffers from being a latecomer in terms of relevance in the North-West. Bunch of squabbling Celts pre-Roman, backwater Roman fort for most of the Empire, bishopric overshadowed by Monferrato and even Chieri next door throughout most of the Middle Ages, not the original power-center of the Savoia (Chambery). It only starts coming into its own once most non-Italian history start to look away from the peninsula. But hey, the OG capital!
@@johnedwards1559 I've never been so burned while also learning so much about my city at the same time
IIRC a bunch of Swedish journalists went through the same linguistic journey as OSP Blue did during the Winter Olympics in Turin. They thought they were being extra respectful by calling the city Torino instead of Turin, until it was pointed out to them that the local name for the city is actually Turin, pronounced very similarly to how Swedes say "Turin".
Romanian is a REALLY PRETTY language and it's SUPER under-rated. The Latin and Slavic influences blend together in a very aesthetic way.
Out of anything, Blue’s mental break over linguistics is what makes this video so entertaining. I love it!
As an italian its always funny when people discover that under italian exists a mirad of local dialects (altho in many cases the local dialects are slowly fading out of use).
Standard Italian we could say is an artificial language mainly constructed around tuscan with some input fron lombard and sicilian (lombard cause lombardy has always been the most populous region and sicilian cause frederick II was not just a based king but also cause he commissioned the first grammatical standardization in italys history through the sicilian school).
What is even more interesting about the birth of standard italian is the fact that it was mainly carried by one man, national author number 5 and senator for life of the kingdom of italy, alessandro manzoni.
He carried in part the standardization work also through the his famous novel, The Betrothed (I promessi sposi), which is studied as much as dante, petrarca, boccaccio and ((Macchiavelli)) in the italian school system
reminds me of mandarin somehow
Can you make a Food episode? Like how did the Italians get introduced to tomatoes and noodles? Give me the history on pasta 🍝
Love your history vids
Blue, you could have talked about this concept for 3 hours and I would've been enraptured the entire time. This flavour of history is my candy. Please never be afraid to make videos like this; I promise at least some of us (me) will eat it up. Grazie mille.
OSP made an Italian Linguistics video??? Is it my birthday??? Is this like a last meal sort of situation and I'm going to die soon and Spiderman's visiting me in the hospital??? What's going on?? Thanks for the well-researched and entertaining video.
I am loving this as my great grand parents are from Naples and Sicily and my mom learned book Italian and no one could understand the other 😂😂😂
Finally! He gets language! You have finally learned the secret linguists learn in year one: languages are a complete mess and it is worse than pointless to pass judgement.
... Now if only you could learn the eerily similar lesson that history students are supposed to learn in year one...
I’ve just listened to this after a pretty draining day and honestly Blue’s joy, excitement and self-effacing jokes about Italy and Italian have totally revitalised me! Thank you! 😊
'Go go gadget better empire' is my new favorite Blue quote
6:38 this is Boccaccio erasure and I for one won't stand for it!
Grazie mille per aver parlato dei tanti dialetti che ha l'Italia! Io stesso parlo solo il dialetto romanesco (e ovviamente l'italiano), quindi vederti riconoscere tutte queste lingue è davvero bello. :)
this is one of my new favorite videos from Blue. I love etymology and the language rabbit hole, so this was very fascinating
I absolutely lost it at the Mario "Oh no!" that I had to pause the video because I was cackling too much. Great job, Blue 😭😆💀