Reply To: How we perceive accents

[Giovanni]

I don’t think there is a clear snobbery around accents in Italy,
if with the term snobbery we mean the attitude of detached superiority
that some people have as an ostentation of their presumed high social level.

We can also focus that the term “snob” probably derives from the latinian phrase
“sine nobilitate” that means “without nobility”, so that the only way to sound like a noble man,
without being one, seems to be to talk and speak like him.

In my opinion in Italy, rather than indicating socio-economic differences of people,
the “dialects” primary highlight their different origins, so that by talking
to a person in Italian language you can easily recognize the place
in which he was born and lived, regardless of his social and economic position.

So, referring to the italian case I would speak more of parochialism (“campanilismo”)
than snobbery.

This fact is certainly due to the particular history of Italy,
a country that has seen a very recent unification, compared to
other European countries, so that every place of Italy (a region or a municipality)
has developed its own independent language (dialect) with specifics accents and words.

Personally I’ve never taken a beamer for my Tuscan accent in Italy and probably I’m lucky
because there are dialects, such as “Napoletano” “Siciliano” and “Sardo”
,which in some parts can be completely incomprehensible even for an italian.

The reason is that the official italian language
has grown and developed from the works of authors such as Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio,
who were all tuscan poets.

This is also the reason why I usually fell comfortable speaking with a Tuscan accent.