Italian Proverbs on Soil

The linguistic situation in Italy is rather heterogeneous and articulated. Indeed, in addition to the so-called Italian or “Standard Italian”, a direct descendant of a Florentine variety of Tuscan, several minor languages (sometime dialects) are spoken. Most of these languages are descendants of Latin and/or other Romance languages, and they can be strongly diff erent from each other and from Standard Italian too as consequence of several factors (historical vicissitudes, infl uence by conquerors, geographic isolation, etc.). Consequently, Italy is considered unique within Europe in terms of so much linguistic variation concentrated in a so small geographic area (Repetti, 2000). Taking into account such linguistic complexity, in this chapter some of the most characteristic and well-known Italian proverbs on soils have been reported. Many of these are known throughout the country, although used with variations typically characterizing the local language and/or dialect (Falcone 1612, Varrini 1676, D’Ambra 1886).