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Karyn Dest, Staff Writer
When you pass through Chipilo, Mexico (about one hundred miles outside
Mexico City), you might mistake it for Veneto, Italy.
For the last one hundred and fifteen years, the people of Chipilo have
spoken Venet, the main language of Veneto, almost exclusively. Time
seems not to have passed much there, as the Venet people in Chipilo have
preserved their heritage.
On any given day in Chipilo, you can travel from the shoe store owned by
Bortolotti to the supermarket run by the Minutti family to the
Stefanoni-operated dairy. The last names of the original fifty or so
families who traveled here in 1882 with only some rags and hopes of a
new country are still pervasive in this quaint Central American town.
One of the largest companies in Chipilo is an international company
called Seguisino, a word taken form the mother country of Italy. The
company makes a Venet specialty: imitated antique furniture.
Their ancestors first came to the small Mexican village in 1882,
searching for fertile land to farm and to run away from the poverty that
was plaguing Veneto at the time.
Although the village is very reminiscent of Veneto, Chipiloís citizens
do not think of themselves as Italians. While they share a language and
culture with their relatives, they see themselves as members of a
different race of people.
The two cultures are similar, yet distinctly different. Veneto has
progressed and has changed much in the last century while Chipilo
remains as a sort of isolated throwback to a different time.
Just as in Veneto, the three thousand citizens of Chipilo speak Venet,
which is a language in the Romantic tradition, like Italian or French.
Although the language has strong Latin roots, it also contains many
words of Germanic origin, especially in the more mountainous regions.
The Venet language can be characterized by softly articulating some
words, while changing from voiceless to voiced consonants at other
times. At the same time, Venet speakers avoid lengthening consonants in
their speech.
According to www.veneto.org, Venet is spoken at least
eighty-five percent of the time in Veneto as the language is used in
various parts of the region from Venice to Padua to Verona.
Since most of the towns in the area are under 10,000 in population, the
Venet language has been able to survive the ages because the language
tends to be passed down from generation to generation. Also, Venet is
the most widely spoken language of the region, allowing for Venetís
sustainability as well.
But with the end of the second World War, however, the Venet language is
facing a decline. In Italy, there has been a movement to ìitalianizeî
the Venet speakers. Some members of the newer generations are even a
bit ashamed of what has been termed a ìdialectî instead of a language
rich in history. For many who have turned to the Italian language,
Venet is almost the stuff of Venetoís folklore.
With the reemergence of cultural backgrounds and identities, local
languages like Venet are resurfacing and the problem of which language [not equal]
the local Venet or the national Italian [not equal] are being dealt with as well.
While citizens of Veneto have begun to use the language for refining
poetry and exploring their own backgrounds, the Internet and other forms
of mass media have diluted the culture, infusing the Italian language
into smaller, formerly Venet-only regions.
Despite its decline, linguists enjoy studying Venet. Because of the
interaction between those who speak Venet and Italian, many people of
the region now speak Popular Italian, which is a dialect for those who
have Venet as their native tongue and have a basic learning of standard
Italian. Because many linguists have prophesied the deaths of regional
languages like Venet in the distant future, the study of Venetís
downfall and the influence of media and other languages are of great
interest to sociolinguists.
But as Venet becomes a memory in Veneto, it may still link people in a
tiny town where the last names have not changed in over a century and
imitated antique furniture is a world export.
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