Here we are. After a thousand adventures, you managed to find a place in that restaurant you had seen for a long time, even before organizing the trip. What they told you about Italy and Italians turned out to be true: in many places, it is not said that you always need to book, because here hospitality is the only element that dictates the law, whether you are a resident or a foreigner. “Add a seat at the table”, on the other hand, is a song inspired by the daily life of the past, present and future of this weird boot-shaped nation.
However, just as you are starting to anticipate the dishes you desire to taste and order, settling down at your table, you realize that the atmosphere all around you is extremely chaotic: there are children who get up and go joking with unknown customers, people who gesture and talk loudly, “private” conversations that become public without anyone’s care. Just for a moment, you feel catapulted into a Benigni or Sorrentino’s movie. Heaven or hell? I cannot give a right answer to this question.
What I can tell you is that all of this is an important part of the famous “warmth” attributed to our people. We are passionate and impassioned, it is not about good or bad behavior, it is just our temperament: not only we accompany our speeches with gestures (which also earned us a dedicated emoji 🤌. I burst out laughing every time I think about it), but we speak using a tone of voice that, for some people, may appear very loud.
But, why? Is there a reason?
Italian is a “vocalic” language, even at the restaurant
In fact, there is a technical reason: Italian is a language that has to be read – most of the time – as it is written: it is a “vocalic” language. In our alphabet, the 5 vowels present become 7 when we talk about phonetics, because they can be pronounced differently according to the accent they take. Then, there are a lot of other rules: for example, the consonants that become soft or hard depending on the letter from which they are followed, the diphthongs, the hiatuses, the weird pronunciations of “gn” and “gli” which are all Italian students’ nightmare.
In short, ours is a language able to keep us open-mouthed and which, for this reason, makes us particularly communicative…and noisy. I assure you that, if you can frame it in this way, you will find it extremely amusing.
There is another element that I imagine could appear to you for what is not: that involvement in conversations that could almost make them seem like discussions, with people who constantly interrupt themselves and seem to “argue” to keep their own word. You have to learn to listen and, above all, be excellent observers.
In Italy (but I am sure even elsewhere), interrupting yourself is not always a sign of prevarication; it is often a way to show enthusiasm. If I am eating a dish and you reach out your hand to steal something from my plate, I do not see it as rude behavior, but as a search for contact, sharing and complicity. Similarly, if we are having a conversation and you are passively listening to me, I may feel like I am not being heard by you or, even worse, like I am boring you.
The best feedback you can give me is participation, maybe even by interrupting me in order to involve me in the story of something that you feel similar to or that is so funny that it makes us burst out laughing! Obviously, rudeness exists all over the world and it is certainly no exception among my compatriots; however, in general, our attitude in public is very open and sparkling.
Even in a 5-star restaurant, where maybe you will find more elegance and grace, but not such as to turn the room into a mortuary.
Just think that, when we find ourselves in a slightly subdued environment, the first thing we say is: “But what is this?! A funeral?”
The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis will blow your mind
There is a very interesting theory that could explain everything we said before. According to the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, also known as the hypothesis of linguistic relativity, the language we speak would be able to influence our cognitive development, including the way we see, experience things and perceive the world that surrounds us.
In other words, language and thought would not only influence each other, but they would be able to determine mutually in a very close and complex relationship just to frame it in its entirety. There are many confirmations and critical arguments for this scientific hypothesis: if, as we usually say, “the truth is somewhere in between”, it could be realistic to think that, at least, part of this theory has its own foundation.
Therefore, Italians have “absorbed” our temperament from the language we speak, by changing it in turn over the centuries until it becomes exactly what it is today: the mirror of who we are.
