La Bella Lingua - Dianne Hales

A celebration of the language and culture of Italy, La Bella Lingua is the story of how a language shaped a nation, told against the backdrop of one
woman's personal quest to speak fluent Italian.

For anyone who has been to Italy,
the fantasy of living the Italian life is powerfully seductive. But to truly become
Italian, one must learn the language. This is how Dianne Hales began her journey.
In La Bella Lingua, she brings the story of her decades-long experience with the
"the world's most loved and lovable language" together with explorations of Italy' s history, literature, art, music, movies, lifestyle and food in a true opera amorosa - a labor of her love of Italy.

Over the course of twenty-five years, she has studied Italian through Berlitz, books, CDs, podcasts, private tutorials and
conversation groups, and, most importantly, time spent in Italy. In the
process the Italian language became not just a passion and a pleasure, but a passport
into Italy's storia and its very soul.She invites readers to join
her as she traces the evolution of Italian in the zesty graffiti on the walls of
Pompeii, in Dante's incandescent cantos and in Boccaccio's bawdy Decameron. She
portrays how social graces remain woven into the fabric of Italian: even the chipper
"ciao," which does double duty as "hi" and "bye," reflects centuries of bella figura. And she exalts the glories of Italy's food and its rich and often uproarious gastronomic
language: Italians deftly describe someone uptight as a baccala (dried cod), a busybody
who noses into everything as a prezzemolo (parsley), a worthless or banal movie as
a polpettone (large meatball).

Like Dianne, readers of La Bella Lingua will find
themselves innamorata, enchanted, by Italian, fascinated by its saga, tantalized
by its adventures, addicted to its sound, and ever eager to spend more time in its
company.