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Chapter XI
| 1 | Amid the cacophony of the many varieties of Italian speech, let us hunt for the most respectable and illustrious vernacular that exists in Italy; and, so that we may have an unobstructed pathway for our hunting, let us begin by clearing the tangled bushes and brambles out of the wood.
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| 2 | Accordingly, since the Romans believe that they should always receive preferential treatment, I shall begin this work of pruning or uprooting, as is only right, with them; and I do so by declaring that they should not be taken into account in any didactic work about effective use of the vernacular. For what the Romans speak is not so much a vernacular as a vile jargon, the ugliest of all the languages spoken in Italy; and this should come as no surprise, for they also stand out among all Italians for the ugliness of their manners and their outward appearance. They say things like 'Messure, quinto dici?' [Sir, what do you say?]
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| 3 | After these let us prune away the inhabitants of the Marches of Ancona, who say 'Chignamente state siaté'; [be as you are] and along with them we throw out the people of Spoleto.
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| 4 | Nor should I fail to mention that a number of poems have been composed in derision of these three peoples; I have seen one of these, constructed in perfect accordance with the rules, written by a Florentine of the name of Castra. It began like this:
Una fermana scopai da Cascioli,
cita cita se'n gìa'n grande aina.
[I met a woman from Fermo near Cascioli;
she hurried briskly away, in great haste]
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| 5 | After these let us root out the Milanese, the people of Bergamo, and their neighbours; I recall that somebody has written a derisive song about them too:
Enter l'ora del vesper, ciò fu del mes d'ochiover.
[Around the hour of vespers, it was in the month of October]
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| 6 | After these let us pass through our sieve the people of Aquileia and Istria, who belch forth 'Ces fas-to?' [What are you up to?] with a brutal intonation. And along with theirs I reject all languages spoken in the mountains and the countryside, by people like those of Casentino and Fratta, whose pronounced accent is always at such odds with that of city-dwellers.
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| 7 | As for the Sardinians, who are not Italian but may be associated with Italians for our purposes, out they must go, because they alone seem to lack a vernacular of their own, instead imitating gramatica as apes do humans: for they say 'domus nova' [my house] and 'dominus meus'[my master].
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