The famous Fidenza r

Fidenza is not famous for much, but apparently one thing it's known for is the sound the locals give to the letter r.

Americans, who generally pronounce their r's up against their teeth, often have trouble with the trilled r of Italian and the throaty r of French and German. I can manage a trilled r (if I concentrate) or a throat r, but I can't figure out how to do the Fidenza r, which combines the two.

Romano sports a Fidenza r and so do Franca and many other Fidentini. But our lovely banker, Debora, has perhaps the most pronounced Fidenza r of anyone in our acquaintance. She allowed me to video her saying an Italian tongue-twister (or more properly, throat twister) that's an r-centric variant of our familiar "quick brown fox": "Un ramarro marrone correva nel erba verde." (The brown lizard ran through the green grass.) Here she is:



(Those for whom the video isn't coming through can try this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keenp3gVo-c )

She's turning up her r here; in normal Italian conversation it isn't so extreme, and when she speaks English she doesn't trill at all. But when she talks about that brown lizard her r is so liquid that she sounds like she's talking underwater. The only way I can get anywhere close to that sound is by gargling.

Some people say this linguistic anomaly is concentrated in Fidenza, others that it's more of a regional thing. But there seems to be general agreement that it reflects the influence of the French, who ruled over Parma and its surroundings from the early 1800s until Italy was unified in 1861. And invariably Maria Luigia, second wife of Napoleon Bonaparte and, after his death, the Duchess of Parma, is mentioned as part of the story.

Maria Luigia during her reign as Empress of the French

She is one of the more glamorous historical figures of these parts, a decorative, much-loved, and oft-married monarch of the little duchy, and I think people like the idea of being connected to her linguistically.

Despite being a French empress, though, Maria Luigia was born a Hapsburg princess, a German-speaking Austrian, and French only by marriage. But perhaps that combination of French and German r's, stirred into Italian, is where the Fidenza r comes from. It's as good an explanation as any.