When I arrived in Santu Lussurgiu in July, I kept having this funny question gnaw at me: is Sardinian my language to learn? Is it appropriate for a woman, in a rural village, to be actively speaking and learning Sardu?
This question stemmed from a few different experiences and things I’d noticed. First, Sardinian in public spaces in the village is spoken almost entirely by men and by the elderly. So, I was hearing it as a generational and men’s language and it was difficult to imagine what it might sound like in my own voice. Second, in many public spaces in rural Sardinia, there is still a profound division of gender, with men congregating with one another at one table or in one corner of the bar, and women, if they are present, in another. Most importantly, in these public spaces, while men and many teenagers are talking to each other in Sardu, women are talking to each other almost exclusively in Italian, and they are also talking to their children in Italian. While some of these decisions, in the private space of the home, could look and be very different, based on folks forty and younger I’ve talked to, most will say that in their homes growing up, their mothers spoke to them in Italian, and their fathers spoke to them in Sardu (the exception is families where parents didn’t know or spoke very limited Italian). But even this has a gendered variation, where sometimes the father will talk to their sons in Sardu, but to their daughters in Italian.
So, in the village, I’d need to actively defy this social order in order to practice basic conversation with other men, mostly older than me, in the bar at night, by myself, in order to achieve this goal. The few times I did it, despite the hospitality of residents of this village in general, it felt precarious, and like I’d made myself too vulnerable in a way that didn’t feel sustainable. This was exacerbated by the fact that I live alone and everyone knows my house—it’s at the very beginning of the carnival horse race for which Santu Lussurgiu is famous—my house number, my comings and goings, and my dog. So remaining anonymous in any sense in Santu Lussurgiu isn’t really an option.
Much of this changed when I started working with my Sardinian language teacher in the village, a poet, short-story writer, Sardinian language advocate and retired school teacher, since I now have a highly skilled speaker who is also a woman with whom I can consistently speak. But, seven months later, she is still the only women in the village with whom I speak in Sardu, and so the question for me remains: what are the gender dynamics and the politics of respectability and upward mobility behind these language politics, and what does it mean that so many women, despite many believing in the importance of transmitting Sardinian to their children, are choosing to speak to each other and their children in Italian?
By contrast, here in Cagliari, where Sardinian on the street is barely heard, in the immersion-style language classes I’m taking with an immense range of speaking abilities, Sardinian feels much less gendered and the class is skewed about 2/3rds female and 1/3 male. And there are very skilled female teachers and speakers closer to my age, who role model for me what my identity, and my voice, might sound like when I am speaking in this language. So, for this next month and for this immersion process, I’ve decided to live in the place where, ironically, much less Sardinian is spoken but where I feel more confident speaking, experimenting, and trying this beautiful new language on for size.
I’ll leave you with the song that was my soundtrack for the day, yesterday, shared with me by a new friend. It’s by a Sardinian Heavy/Black/Viking metal band called “Shardana,” and the title, “Sa Batalla,” translates to “The Battle.”
The lyrics of the song are in Campidanese, and refer to an important period in Sardinian
history when Sardinia was sovereign and self-governing under Judge William III (1256-1258):
Here are the words to the first verse:
Eccu su tristu dii
Candu is sadrus unìusu anti perdiusu
Gullielmu III guìdara su populu
Po unu destinu de carenasa….
This question stemmed from a few different experiences and things I’d noticed. First, Sardinian in public spaces in the village is spoken almost entirely by men and by the elderly. So, I was hearing it as a generational and men’s language and it was difficult to imagine what it might sound like in my own voice. Second, in many public spaces in rural Sardinia, there is still a profound division of gender, with men congregating with one another at one table or in one corner of the bar, and women, if they are present, in another. Most importantly, in these public spaces, while men and many teenagers are talking to each other in Sardu, women are talking to each other almost exclusively in Italian, and they are also talking to their children in Italian. While some of these decisions, in the private space of the home, could look and be very different, based on folks forty and younger I’ve talked to, most will say that in their homes growing up, their mothers spoke to them in Italian, and their fathers spoke to them in Sardu (the exception is families where parents didn’t know or spoke very limited Italian). But even this has a gendered variation, where sometimes the father will talk to their sons in Sardu, but to their daughters in Italian.
So, in the village, I’d need to actively defy this social order in order to practice basic conversation with other men, mostly older than me, in the bar at night, by myself, in order to achieve this goal. The few times I did it, despite the hospitality of residents of this village in general, it felt precarious, and like I’d made myself too vulnerable in a way that didn’t feel sustainable. This was exacerbated by the fact that I live alone and everyone knows my house—it’s at the very beginning of the carnival horse race for which Santu Lussurgiu is famous—my house number, my comings and goings, and my dog. So remaining anonymous in any sense in Santu Lussurgiu isn’t really an option.
Much of this changed when I started working with my Sardinian language teacher in the village, a poet, short-story writer, Sardinian language advocate and retired school teacher, since I now have a highly skilled speaker who is also a woman with whom I can consistently speak. But, seven months later, she is still the only women in the village with whom I speak in Sardu, and so the question for me remains: what are the gender dynamics and the politics of respectability and upward mobility behind these language politics, and what does it mean that so many women, despite many believing in the importance of transmitting Sardinian to their children, are choosing to speak to each other and their children in Italian?
By contrast, here in Cagliari, where Sardinian on the street is barely heard, in the immersion-style language classes I’m taking with an immense range of speaking abilities, Sardinian feels much less gendered and the class is skewed about 2/3rds female and 1/3 male. And there are very skilled female teachers and speakers closer to my age, who role model for me what my identity, and my voice, might sound like when I am speaking in this language. So, for this next month and for this immersion process, I’ve decided to live in the place where, ironically, much less Sardinian is spoken but where I feel more confident speaking, experimenting, and trying this beautiful new language on for size.
I’ll leave you with the song that was my soundtrack for the day, yesterday, shared with me by a new friend. It’s by a Sardinian Heavy/Black/Viking metal band called “Shardana,” and the title, “Sa Batalla,” translates to “The Battle.”
The lyrics of the song are in Campidanese, and refer to an important period in Sardinian
history when Sardinia was sovereign and self-governing under Judge William III (1256-1258):
Here are the words to the first verse:
Eccu su tristu dii
Candu is sadrus unìusu anti perdiusu
Gullielmu III guìdara su populu
Po unu destinu de carenasa….