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Originally Posted by Sienna  I live in Germany and married into a German family with an italian surname. The idea of tracing the ancestoral path has often been toyed with but never begun. I've printed the paper to read later. |
Ciao Sienna. Do let us know what you find out.
Last year while in Perugia I met this charming young couple. He was
German and she was Italian born and raised in Vicenza. He looked somewhat typicamente
German but his Italian wife looked even more German than he does with
blonde hair, very light skin and very blue eyes. There cute children were all very blonde
anche. They would speak both Italian and German to each other. She was learning German
and he was learning Italian. They live in Germany. He was extremely interested in learning
Italian and only spoke Italian to me.
Germanic people having been mixing with Italian penisula people since Roman times if not before.
During the Roman Empire these Germanic people were in the Roman army, were slaves in Rome etc. etc.
The Normans who were Germanic were in southern Italy per moltissimo tempo. Samething went on in Spain.
After the Germanic or so called barbarians conquered both Italy and Spain the language of Italy and Spain did not change
or have much influence from these Germanic people. One of the theories that Italian and Spanish did not change that
much from the Latin base was because these Germanic tribes that invaded Italy and Spain had already become Romanized and
it was relatively facile per loro to adapt to the Latin language and culture.
An interesting concept or principal of history is we become like our conquerors and our conquerors become like us.
Case in point. I live in California and speak Spanish even though I'm not Mexican. California was conquered from Mexico by the U.S.
Teaching “italianness”: The Italianization effort 
Linear Mode
