“Who will ever embark on another enterprise like that? This is a unique testimony of our national history, “observes Giovanni Ronco, professor at the University of Turin, looking at the large and thick volumes, with the blue cover, which constitute the Italian language atlas. Despite the name, it is a collection of maps that show how some words were spoken in the different dialects of our country. The work, which was born in 1924 by Matteo Giulio Bartoli, is made in Turin by a dozen editors-cartographers with a mission: “Preserve our local languages, since no one will speak them in 50 years anymore” adds Sabrina Specchia.

It’s hard to say if the time of their dying will be this. Certainly, in the last century, dialects have changed profoundly, given the influence of the Italian. The talk that we hear summer, on vacation, has been different from the one long ago. “That is why the Atlas has more value: it is the only real picture of our dialects,” explains Ronco.

The 3,630 entries were collected between 1924 and 1965. The first to conduct the inquiries among the speakers was Ugo Pellis who carefully selected the raw material from the native speakers of the study areas, which is about a thousand locations throughout Italy.

There are 8,855 photographs taken during the investigations, over 5 million dialect responses, phonetic transcripts divided by lemma and placed on the cards. Thus, it is discovered, for example, that “hair” in certain areas of the province of Turin is referred to as “kavii”, but is much more widespread “kavei”.

“After so many problems with writing and printing, we could only begin publishing volumes in 1995, divided by topic: body parts, home, food. By the end of the year, the ninth will be released, “says Lorenzo Massobrio, lecturer and director at Atlas. But this time, the publisher of the edition will no longer be the State Polygraphy Institute, but the editors of the University, who will deal with everything from transcription to positioning on the phonetic map. They are the last geographers of an Italy that we will not hear anymore.