Translator: Michele Gianella Reviewer: Alessio Politi
You speak Venetian.
And you speak Venetian, also.
The truth is, all of you speak Venetian.
And I don't mean those that were born, or live, in Venice:
I reallly mean, all of you.
You also write in Venetian; you just don't know it.
This is because Venice ended up being, over centuries,
a "bridging" town.
A bridge between cultures, between people, between knowledge, food and customs.
To the point that some of these customs
have become international, part of the entire world's heritage.
Every day, you use something that was invented in Venice:
objects, but not only.
By expressing yourself,
sending a message on WhatsApp, writing a post on Instagram,
you use something that was born in Venice.
I'll show you an image of it: here it is.
Can you see it?
No, because it is life-size.
Now I'll show it to you again, enlarged a million times.
Now you get it, don't you?
It's a period.
The full stop period!
And along with it the comma, the accent, the apostrophe, the semicolon.
In their modern day form,
they were used in Venice for the first time.
The press wasn't born there;
but punctuation is perfected there, which helps us to write and read better.
Beyond this meaning, "bridge" also means
to take and transform, recreate, propose and export.
During the sixteenth century
at least half of the books printed throughout Europe
were published in Venice.
It is here that cursive was invented,
which not by chance, is called italic in all the world's computers.
The pocket-book was developed
and from that moment on it became a transportable object.
All this is due to the genius of Aldo Manuzio,
who was not Venetian
but found his chance there
to experiment and present his ideas in Venice.
That's how Venice was.
He had the ability to attract, stir, melt
and turn into a new Venetian innovation
anything that could increase the fortune of the State.
There is not a single stone in the city that has not come from elsewhere.
This has also been the case for people throughout history, for the most part.
This ability to pick the best ideas and make them Venetian
is shown by a wonderful example
in a document that, for the first time in history,
speaks explicitly about protecting ideas.
"There are many men", we read from the original text,
"of different origins.
Men with ingenious minds capable of imagining different artificial objects.
Could we bind others
not to reproduce the works they invented,
then these men would use their minds
to discover things of no little use to our Republic."
Venice invented the patent on March 19, 1474.
But let's go back to words.
How many times,
in the darkest days of COVID19,
have we said, or heard say,
the words "quarantine" or "lazaret"?
Lazzaretto is a Venetian word and a Venetian invention:
it comes from the corruption of "Nazaretum"
or rather the church of St. Mary of Nazareth
built on the first island of the lagoon dedicated to this very purpose, on 1423;
the "Lazzaretto Vecchio"
Sometime later the Lazzaretto Nuovo (New Lazaretum) was established,
with the purpose of preventing goods and people from any disease.
by keeping them isolated for 40 days.
The quarantine, invented in Ragusa
after it had been for centuries a Venetian invention,
and was perfected by them,
is nothing more than "forty" in Venetian.
So by saying "quarantine", or "lazaret", you speak Venetian without knowing it.
Even the word "Ghetto" was born in Venice, along with the first ghetto in history,
established in 1516 to host Jews in the city.
It was not a vacation village, and the restrictions were significant;
but it was not a place of persecution or torture.
The word ghetto, which is found in many languages across the world
and is often associated with the concepts of separation, suffering and enclave
was, in fact, born very innocent as it precedes its very existence.
In these "ghettos" there were ancient foundries, "getti" in Venetian,
which is where the name comes from.
The first Ashkenazi Jews from Northern Europe
transformed word "getti" to ghetto, with a harder spell.
When you say "ghetto" you speak Venetian, and perhaps you do not know it.
You do so even when you say "Arsenal".
The arsenal in Venice was the first real assembly line in history,
capable of launching ships at an impressive speed,
to the point of entering the common lexicon of many languages.
English speakers seem, indeed, to be
among the fondest exploiters of Venetian words.
But they also use Venetian for other things as well.
Like the architecture of Andrea Palladio, for example.
Venice invents,
and then Andrea Palladio champions it,
the "villa civilization": the holidays.
When you take a holiday, it is something very Venetian.
Eyeglasses were also supposedly invented in Venice
and certainly the mirror was invented in 1540.
Before this time,
polished metals or rough glass were used,
which did not render a reliable image.
From that moment on, everyone was able to see themselves as they were,
and their perception of themselves changed radically, once and for all.
When you look in the mirror, every morning on Earth,
that sleepy image looking back at you
is actually you admiring a Venetian invention.
Venice invented an electoral system
before the year 1000. It was then refined
and became definitive in 1297.
And when two of the oldest modern day democracies,
the U.S. and the French one,
after their respective revolutions,
decide to give themselves a polling system,
where do you think they went fishing for the idea?
They came to Venice, studying their century-old system.
"Ballotage" is still a thing in France today.
And in English-speaking countries, they use what is known as a "ballot box".
Both systems are a legacy of the use of "baeote",
used by the Venetians to elect the Doge
and other State Magistracies.
I could go on telling you
how Venice opened in 1638 the world's first public gambling house:
the "Ridotto Grande."
A year earlier,
a musical performance had taken place
in the San Cassiano theater,
to which, for the first time in history,
a paying public had been admitted.
And this use of the ticket, that's so seemingly trivial,
instead forever upsets the canons of composition.
Instead, I will limit myself to greet you with a "Ciao".
A simple, direct, beautiful greeting, now used in many places on earth.
Well, it is Venetian:
when you say "ciao", you speak like the Venetians of a few centuries ago.
"Ciao" is the contraction of "sciavo vostro" [your slave],
an obsequious form of greeting all the rage in Serenissima days.
So when you say "ciao" to someone, you declare yourself his slave.
Be aware though it's not a form of submission, it's a homage.
The other person is not forcing you to do anything.
You just put yourself, spontaneously, at his service.
There is no violence in the hello.
On the other hand, Venice is, formally,
the first nation in the world to abolish slavery
in an official document in 960 -
you heard right: 960.
The last to do so was Mauritania, in 1980,
1020 years later.
This does not mean, though, that the Venetians did not have slaves,
or did not trade slaves in the course of history.
The Venetians also have a beautiful flag,
which is among the oldest and still exists and is used today.
It is also the only flag of a nation state
on which the word "Peace" appears.
This is also very peculiar
for such a militarly smart people,
who invented and engineered
side cannons on their ships
It is all part of the contradictions of a great people with a long history.
But "tout se tient".
Peace.
Your slave.
Sciavo.
Ciao.
(Applause)