Grand Tour

The purity of the language spoken in Tuscany with respect to other regions of Italy was a belief widely held by travelers, for many of whom the “question of language” was a recurrent topic. But it was a question that ceased to be merely theoretical for the fairly large number of people who came to Tuscany with the principal aim of learning correct Italian. They formed a special stream of visitors, which overlapped and intersected with that of “ordinary” travelers.

It was not the capital of the grand duchy that won the contest for supremacy in the region, given that its fame was surpassed by the linguistic purity of Siena. Deseine had already (1699) complained that the Florentines spoke too deeply in their throats and with excessive aspiration, rendering their accent hard for foreigners to understand. Rogissart went further, asserting that the harshness of the Florentine dialect made one miss the accent of other regions, even if they were less pure: «in Florence one finds the elegance of the Italian language: but it is also true that the Florentines do not speak it as delicately as the Romans since they have a harder pronunciation, something which has given rise to the proverb ‘a Tuscan tongue in a Roman mouth’» (1701). Others (among them Coyer), while pointing out the difficulty caused by the guttural pronunciation of the Florentines, «which changes all the Cs into Hs», recognized its superiority, observing acutely that there was a difference between the language of the academy and what one heard in the streets, the spoken language.

But it was Siena, owing to the correctness of the inflection of its citizens (who were moreover friendly and extremely civil), that was the preferred destination for those who came to Italy to study the language. As far back as 1549 Moryson, one of the pioneers of the journey to Italy, intended to enroll at Siena University to learn Italian, but gave up because there were too many of his fellow countrymen there: «as in Siena there were a lot of Englishmen and Dutchmen with whom I was acquainted, and since it would have been far more useful to my purpose to be able to converse with Italians, I chose to settle at San Casciano». Siena was the center of good Italian both for the correctness of the pronunciation, a necessary distinction when you take account of the fact that the Florentines, while speaking a language of great purity: «pronounce in an unpleasant manner, from the stomach rather than the throat, which I found a hundred times more difficult to understand than the Venetian dialect» (de Brosses, 1740). This admiration was general and applied not just to the educated classes but even to the common people. The witty Mme. du Boccage noted: «I am told that [the girls in the countryside] speak as well as they walk, especially in the environs of Siena; that their responses are so correct, that a member of the Accademia della Crusca would not be able to change a syllable!» The most illustrious case was undoubtedly that of James Boswell (1765), an unstinting admirer of the Sienese, who during his stay alternated lessons in the Italian language with ones in the flute and the interpretation of Ariosto: «the Sienese is the most pleasing of all the dialects of Italy. To my ears it was a continuous melody. I experience a keen sense of pleasure even when people were simply speaking of the weather».