Rome Fun
Many people think that Rome is a unique city and that Roman people are incredible. Incredible people that you can only love because of one characteristic that always arouses great sympathy for them: their dialect. With a funny accent and vocabulary mildly sounding Italian, the Romanesco language causes many giggles amongst Italian speaking tourists.
This dialect is one of the most popular dialects in Italy, made famous by various films. Here’s a quick historical overview: the so called “Romanesco” dialect, known to most by this word (some use the word “romano”), has experienced a rapid spread between the 1920s and 1930s, a moment when the heavy migration flux brought the population of native Romans to be numerically smaller than the immigrants. A few years later, in the 50s and 60s, a similar phenomenon occured, because of migration flows from the central and southern part of the country. The ’70s and ’80s led, instead, a profound change to the dialect, impoverished because of social twisting in the popular neighbourhoods (Trastevere, San Lorenzo, Testaccio), where the dialect was spoken fluently and whose version is part of the real heart of Rome. So, in those years, ‘Romanesco’ began to be in decline. But there is also another cause of “death” of the dialect in the capital: the cinema movement called “neorealism” (from 1950), in whose films always displayed the presence of “Romanesco speakers”, conveyed the message of the Romanesco language being a poor language of peasant and low education.
Today, the Roman dialect is spoken fluently by the inhabitants of Rome and its surroundings, especially in informal situations. Today the closest version to the “original” is the version spoken in the city. Just a little bit far form the capital and it changes and another dialect is spoken, the “laziale”.
So what would Rome be without Romanesco? This is a language that even some foreign tourists on holiday (staying in one of the available apartments (appartamenti a Roma)) can recognize. A holiday in the city is also reminded in these “social” aspects, in the behaviour and habits of people who populate the capital. In order to find the ideal accommodation, have a look for a nice hotel (Roma hotel) or apartment (appartamenti a Roma).
And to finish, here are some examples of typical Romanesco phrases (without “translation”…you have to go to Rome to understand the meaning): “m’ha sgamato”, “‘na cifra”, “famo er vento”, “s´è apparecchiato pe´ ttera”, “buzzicona”…