| A few words in case somebody interprets that as if Italian is an artificial language. The drive for unification in Italy was big in 1800. The language a unified Italy would speak was decided long before because poets and writers already standardized on one of the language of Tuscany, the one of Florence. That was the "standard Italian" since 1200. Not that many people spoke it. Everybody spoke the language of it's area, sometimes not. All those languages derived from Latin but people could not easily understand each other, especially over long distances (even 30 km.) Only priests and literates had lingua francas, Latin and standard Italian. Some samples from famous authors: Ariosto, 1500, can be read quite easily nowadays [1] Petrarca, 1300, is a little more difficult and it takes a little to get accustomed with. [2] Dante, 1200, is also difficult sometimes but high school students read it with little help. [3] [1] http://www.orlandofurioso.com/testo-completo-dei-canti/1706/... [2] http://www.italica.it/canzoniere.html [3] http://www.filosofico.net/ladivinacommedia.htm |
Dante is usually credited for having chosen the Tuscany/Florence dialect to be the future Italian, later adopted by many writers and poets (that also contributed to the evolution of the language), so yes, I wouldn't say it is artificial at all, maybe the only artificial thing is the choice of a dialect over another.
And as I guess many already know many of the regional dialects survived, and in some regions more than others are still spoken. In fact an Italian is often bilingual in a sense. And if you happen to be in a book store in Italy it is not at all that rare to find a book from a contemporary author written in his local dialect.
BTW we study all of the three authors you mentioned at school ... not an easy task I assure you :P