Talking about language

Near the end of the list stands l’alfabetizzazione, and an English reader will build the wrong word out of it every time. In ordinary English « alphabetise » means one thing only: to put a list into the order of the alphabet, so a clerk alphabetises a drawer of files and nobody is taught anything at all. L’alfabetizzazione names the opposite sort of work. It is teaching people to read and write — what English calls literacy — and il corso serve all’alfabetizzazione degli adulti is an adult literacy class, not a filing exercise. The Italian noun is built straight off l’alfabeto, on the reasoning that to hand somebody the alphabet is to hand them the whole of reading. Its opposite is l’analfabeta, the person who cannot read, where English has to reach for « illiterate » and loses the alphabet on the way. And the Italian word has stretched exactly as « literacy » has stretched: l’alfabetizzazione informatica is computer literacy, knowing how to work a machine rather than how to file it.