Home » Vera Gheno: words tell who we are – Giulia Zoli

Vera Gheno: words tell who we are – Giulia Zoli

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Vera Gheno: words tell who we are – Giulia Zoli
Illustration by Andrea Ventura

It is 13.35 when he arrives, in great strides, all in black, soft trousers, sleeveless shirt, sports shoes, not a millimeter of heel for his 178 centimeters, a backpack on his shoulders. Vera Gheno, 46, sociolinguist, translator, collaborator of the Accademia della Crusca for twenty years and a fixed-term researcher at the University of Florence for a couple of months, has just left the students of her three-day workshop at the Festival of International in Ferrara, he has an agenda full of interviews and presentations of his latest book, The reasons for the doubt (Einaudi), and in a couple of hours he has to catch a train.

“Shall we put ourselves here?”. From May to October the tables of the trattoria il Sorpasso, in the historic center of the city, are arranged outdoors in the courtyard of Palazzo Crema. “I eat everything, not so much but well, with a preference for good wine and meat”, Gheno told me yesterday on the phone.

Gheno drops his heavy backpack to the ground and takes his seat, makes a quick calculation of the time we have available, then looks at me and smiles as if to say: “Here I am”. From another table someone is watching us, I point out that she is now a famous person, perhaps they have recognized her: Vera Gheno, that of the schwa. In his book Singular feminine (effequ 2019) Gheno has indicated the schwa (ə), the sign of the international phonetic alphabet that corresponds to an average vowel, as a possible ending to express not so much the neutral gender, he says, as “plurality”: not only the masculine and feminine, but also all non-binary genders. Due to the schwa in the summer of 2020 she ended up in spite of herself at the center of a fierce debate on the predominance of the male gender in the Italian language that continues to ignite souls and fill the pages of newspapers. Mocked by some, defended by others, denied by the Accademia della Crusca, in reality Gheno is naturally refractory to rigid definitions. “I’m interested in liminal issues of language, at the limits of the norm,” she says. “And make quality disclosure on these issues”.

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But it is not the merit of your book that people have begun to discuss the use of minister and advocate or to put asterisks and snails in place of the regular endings: “The times were ripe”. What has changed? “The Internet and globalization have put us in constant contact with diversity, making it a daily experience. On a linguistic level, this meant giving the word to everyone and making visible a language that was previously hidden. On the internet it happens that someone comes and gives a name to something, there is the possibility to name the difference equally, ”she says. “Schwa is probably not the solution, but it is certainly a symptom. The question exists: there are people who do not recognize themselves in the masculine or the feminine, and the overextended masculine no longer works “. Raising barricades is useless and counterproductive, there is room for everyone, “as long as you respect the other’s idea of ​​yourself”.

When he worked at the Accademia della Crusca, Gheno managed the Twitter account, and social networks are one of his favorite areas of study. It is here that the language shows its adaptability, it is here that we meet an informal Italian full of neologisms, abbreviations and alternative spellings. “Just today I received the blue check from Facebook!”, He announces him. It is the stamp with which the social network certifies the authenticity of the profile of a public figure. “For personal reasons I use Facebook to talk about me and my work, only kittens on Instagram,” he says.

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Chef Saro Mantarro offers us three white wines by the glass. For Gheno, who at the last second gave up the cut of beef fillet to enthusiastically order the most typical dish of Ferrara cuisine, the salamina da sugo, suggests a pecorino cheese fermented on the skins, but she opts for a fragrant muscadet.

“Maybe I was among the first to give scientific importance to broad language, beyond the binary of gender,” she continues. The expression “inclusive language” is close to her: “It presupposes an inequality between those who include and those who are included, it defines a society in which the normals include the non-normals. I prefer to talk, following the advice of the writer and popularizer Fabrizio Acanfora, about the coexistence of differences ”, she explains extending her fork towards the starter of fried green tomatoes that we are sharing. On the inside of her right forearm she has tattooed a large scissor, “in homage to the Hungarian tailor’s grandmother, Irén”. On her left side and on her shoulders she has other tattoos, including a quote from Frank Patrick Herbert, the author of Dune: “Fear is the mind killer”.

On 24 September, the Accademia della Crusca dismissed schwa and asterisks as “forcing the linguistic system”, inviting “a conscious use of the masculine plural” for all genders. Really if we adopt these endings extraneous to the spelling of Italian, we risk not understanding each other anymore? Gheno bursts out laughing. “In general, anyone who complains about chaos or claims that everything is fine as it is belongs to the ranks of those who have never had a problem with linguistic self-representation. Words are acts of identity, they tell who we are. As it happens the moment you mention the white cisgender male he takes offense because you gave him a label. For me, however, the possibility of being cis compared to trans was a wonderful discovery “. Gheno has published a dozen books with different publishing houses. “An editrix of mine told me I’m cheating, but I’m actually polyamorous,” he explains. Editrix? “You are a woman, should I call you editor?”.

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In the afternoon Gheno still has a public event, then he will take another train back to his Florence. There are the house, three cats, the parents and the almost thirteen-year-old daughter. “In Florence there is the part that keeps me on the ground”.

Trattoria Il Sorpasso
Via Saraceno 118, Ferrara

1 Fried green tomatoes 6,00
1 Salamina from Ferrara sauce with mashed potatoes 15,00
1 Turlu turlu (Large vegetable flan) 15,00
2 glasses of wine 8,00
1 Coffee1,00

Total 45.00

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