Comments by "" (@neutronalchemist3241) on "History Hijinks: Another Dumb Italy Story" video.

  1. Italian had been popularized in literature by BOCCACCIO, more than by anyone else (surely much more than by Machiavelli). His Decameron had been a massive success. Written a century before printing, it was copied not only by professionals, but by normal people that wanted to have their own copy, all over Italy (that Italy didn't have a meaningful use for a standard national language until the late 1800s is simply wrong. Anyone who traveled, IE merchants, needed, and used, a standard language. "literary" Italian, the language of Boccaccio, was not something only literates used in their writings). It's commonly said Dante is the father of Italian language, but in reality is the grandfather. Boccaccio is the real father. Being, among the "tree crowns" (Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio) the one that wrote in prose, it had been Boccaccio that gave to the Italian vocabulary and grammatical rules, and the success of the Decameron cemented it so much that every modern Italian can still read and understand every sentence of it (not so much the Divina Commedia, that requires more than a bit of attention to be understood by a modern Italian).
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  2.  @Daughterofminerva  Infact Nàpulə, Napule, etc., it's pronunciation, like many English cities are pronounced in a different way than how they are written. The pronunciation is not the same even at few kms distance. It's not like "Napoli is a modern invention, it was Napule before the late 19th century". If you pick a 15th century map of the city, it has "Napoli" written over it.
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  3. Italian had been popularized in literature by BOCCACCIO, more than by anyone else (surely much more than by Machiavelli). His Decameron had been a massive success. Written two centuries before printing, it was copied not only by professionals, but by normal people that wanted to have their own copy, all over Italy (that Italy didn't have a meaningful use for a standard national language until the late 1800s is simply wrong. Anyone who traveled, IE merchants, needed, and used, a standard language. "literary" Italian, the language of Boccaccio, was not something only literates used in their writings). It's commonly said Dante is the father of Italian language, but in reality is the grandfather. Boccaccio is the real father. Being, among the "tree crowns" (Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio) the one that wrote in prose, it had been Boccaccio that gave to the Italian vocabulary and grammatical rules, and the success of the Decameron cemented it so much that every modern Italian can still read and understand every sentence of it (not so much the Divina Commedia, that requires more than a bit of attention to be understood by a modern Italian).
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  4. You are also making some confusion between pronunciation and place-name. Napoli's local name had never been "Napule", Venice's local name had never been "Venisia", Palermo's local name had never been "Palermu". They had never been written like that, even when the official documents were written in the local language. Venice's local name was generally written "Venetia", and sometimes Venésia, Venéxia or Vinegia. Napoli had never been written differently than that (since when it lost the ancient name of Neapolis). Palermo passed from the Latin Panormus, to Panormo to Palermo, it had never been "Palermu".
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