Dialect

As background, “dialects” (i.e., regional varieties of language) evolved from Latin throughout Italy as a result of the political instability that existed in that country from the fall of the Roman Empire to the unification of Italy in the 19th century. For more on Italian dialects, see DIALECTS OF ITALIAN.

Standardization of the language became a national goal and, while it has greatly facilitated economic progress, it has caused the dialects to slowly fade into history. For many of us, the dialect words and phrases link us to fond memories of our ancestors, so we don’t want to lose them. On this page, we want to recall the dialect of Torricella Peligna. We will build it with your help. Please submit your word (s) to us, providing both the dialect word or phrase and its English or Italian  translation. If you have a story that goes with it, include that as well. It is worth noting that the farmers (peasants) had a dialect within the Torricellan dialect. Where known, a note is included below. A humorous example using local dialect:

The Fallascosans called the Torricellans “Coccialuonghe” in dialect, which is “testa lunga” in Italian and “long head” in English. The Torricellans called the Fallascosans “Visciariel”, which means “small white beans” in dialect.  Those from Roccascalegna were called the “fruscillare” because they made “fruscielle”, wicker baskets used to make ricotta, and those from Pennadomo were called the “crapinare”, probably because they had goat herds.

Note that in dialect, the ending vowel is usually not pronounced with the full force the final vowel takes on in standard Italian. In dialect, the final vowel becomes somewhat muted sounding like “uh” in English and “eh” Italian or what is linguistically referred to as the “schwa” sound.