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).