Swearing, Italian Style

ROME — The Italian language is so beautiful. All those vowels, those lovely flowing sounds, the mellifluous phrases honed by centuries of happy use. All that has changed.

Italians are using more and more “parolacce” (swear words). In private conversations, within the family, in public life, on mainstream media and — of course — on social media. We used to be surprised by the number of “F-words” in American movies; now our own equivalent, “C-words” — many of which refer to various parts of the human anatomy — are everywhere. Calling someone a “stronzo,” Italian for “turd,” is quite popular.

The respected singer Luciano Ligabue — Italy’s Bruce Springsteen — picked this title for his latest single: “E’ venerdì, non mi rompete i coglioni” (“It’s Friday, Don’t Break My Balls”). Swearing is the norm on national television, too; the art critic Vittorio Sgarbi, one of the pioneers, has hordes of imitators. On Radio24, the radio station owned by Confidustria (the Confederation of Italian Industry), the program “La Zanzara” (“The Mosquito”) encourages listeners to insult one another and, what’s more, to enjoy it. A few days ago, a woman told them to hurry up with the traffic news because, she had a hot date to perform oral sex — and the clip is now played regularly.

This is all a bit of a shock. Italian is known all over the world as the language of art, design, opera and good food. It brings nice thoughts to one’s mind and nice sounds to the ear. Even French, while also soft and elegant, is — we feel — a bit self-conscious, even a bit (O.K., very) haughty.

Italian, in contrast, is a generous, gentle language that everybody loves, even if they don’t understand it. Some even say that the immense popularity of Joe DiMaggio, one of the best-known baseball players of all time, was inflated by the pleasure broadcasters took in pronouncing his surname on the radio. The worldwide success of cappuccino is surely not just due to the ubiquity of Starbucks; people everywhere just love the smooth, foamy sound of that word.

And remember Anita Ekberg calling to Marcello Mastroianni from the waters of the Trevi Fountain: “Marcello!” If Mastroianni’s first name had been Engelhard, “La Dolce Vita” would not be one of the coolest movies of all time. If it were made now, she’d be more likely to call him, however seductively, with a word that remains unprintable in newspapers like this one.

How has this happened? There are three reasons.

Educational standards have changed; families have stopped being schools for good manners. For my generation — born in the 1950s and ’60s — swearing at one’s parents was unthinkable. Saying “Stupida!” to your mom was a crime serious enough to be sent to your room for the whole day (without a computer, of course, back then).

Today even Italian toddlers swear at their parents. Where do they learn such bad habits? Well, at home. Their parents use the same language with them, and appear nonplused when the family encounters it in public.

The second reason? Public discourse has become angrier, as it has elsewhere in Europe and in the United States. To introduce what may be now Italy’s largest political party, the Five Star Movement, its founder, Beppe Grillo — a comedian — announced something called “V-Day,” the “V” standing for a crude Italian word for “buzz off.” Not surprisingly, his voters don’t debate the issues like Minnesotans.

The most convincing explanation, though, is this: We simply don’t speak our own language as well as we used to. In the last 30 years or so, Italian, like most other languages, has been swamped by English words. But we put up less of a fight than the Spanish or the French. In Rome, we operate our desktop computer with a mouse, as they do in New York or London. In Madrid they use “el raton” with their “ordenador”; in Paris it’s “souris” and “ordinateur.”

Succumbing to the English invasion may make communication easier, but insulting someone effectively is an art in itself, requiring training, eloquence and imagination. Those common, ugly words sound like a declaration of impotence: “I’m too lazy to offend you properly, so I’ll call you a ‘stronzo’ ” — and we’ll both be the poorer for it.

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Beppe Severgnini is a columnist for Corriere della Sera, the author of “La Bella Figura: A Field Guide to the Italian Mind” and a contributing opinion writer.