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The new language

This article is published in number 50 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until December 15, 2020

Warning, it will not be an article of those that begin like this: we need a slot for a brainstorming with which to crack on the stepchild adoption to be updated day by day. Or rather, I started it like this but it will not follow the geremiade, the cahier de doléances (Frenchism!) On the death of the Italian language that turns its neck to English and Anglicisms. Those things like why say spoiler when you can say unveil the ending? The Italian language, I would say, is alive and struggling with us.

In fact, all the English or derivative words mentioned above, together with rendering, brain trust, daylight, debunker, management, deadline, jet set, jet lag, damping and hundreds of others are contained in the 2021 edition of the Zingarelli. Lo Zingarelli, subtitle: vocabulary of Italian language. If I say that I have undergone a surgical operation to eliminate wrinkles, or I say that I have undergone a facelift, I say exactly the same thing, and I say it in the same language: Italian. In a wonderful article on the Treccani website, linguist Roberta D’Alessandro remembers that even scuffling is a forestry, derives from Arabic, and so scialuppa, from Dutch, and salvage, from French. The verb spoiler is already complete Italian, it has adapted to our conjugation, the past participle is spoiled, the future is spoiler, the present perfect is I spoiled, a practice that the English do not even dream of. Languages ​​evolve, in this period of accelerated novelty they evolve faster, but there is no linguist, the best, the most learned, able to stop the evolution. He can complain about it but he will remain closed in his complaint: languages ​​have always changed following usage. Or maybe following the trend.

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