Note 1599 — Chapter XII · REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY (continued 2)

An unusual treatment of linguistic geography is found, subsequent to our period, in the De vulgari eloquentia of Dante. Whereas Isidore of Seville on Biblical authority had divided the languages of the world into three main groups, the Japhetic, Hamitic, and Semitic, Dante recognized the fact that these groups are further divisible into secondary groups each consisting of several kindred languages. He believed that there were three original European tongues: Greek, spoken in the southeast and in Asia Minor; a language spoken in the southwest; and one spoken in the north and east. “Man being a most unstable and variable animal,” these three original tongues became altered “according to the distances in place and time” with the result that certain “vulgar tongues” were formed. These tongues in turn underwent variations in different localities; the resultant forms were still further subdivided, until by Dante’s time there were in existence in Italy alone more than a thousand local dialectic peculiarities. See Mori, La geogr., 1922, pp. 289–292.

Andriani, La carta dialettologica, 1923, discusses Dante’s study of the local dialects of Italy as elaborated in the De vulgari eloquentia. The poet divided the peninsula and Sardinia into fourteen major dialectic regions. These correspond essentially with the geographical regions established by Flavio Biondo in his Italia illustrata (fifteenth century). With the aid of the latter work Andriani constructs a tentative dialectic map of Italy as Dante probably would have conceived it. Modern 485research in the linguistic geography of that country has served in general to confirm Dante’s assertions on the subject.