VIGO DI FASSA, Italy — On a Friday morning high up in the Dolomites, Monica Cigolla sits at her desk, looking at a newspaper proof. Past weeks’ papers lay scattered around her desk, their front pages covered with stories from the Milan Cortina games. Bound books full of newspaper issues from decades past line the walls, and yellowed clippings sit in a pile on a table.
This is where Cigolla has spent the past 30 years covering Vigo di Fassa as chief director of the region at La Usc di Ladins, a local newspaper reporting on five valleys: Ampezzo, Val Badia, Val Gardena, Val di Fassa and Livinallongo.
La Usc di Ladins is not like any of the news outlets flown into town covering the Games, or like most of Italy’s other publications. The weekly newspaper reports in Ladin, the Alps’ oldest language, dating back to Roman settlement in 1 B.C.E.
While a minority language in Italy, Ladin is the majority language in the five valleys covered by the paper, with approximately 30,000 speakers. The Dolomites’ geographic isolation allowed residents to maintain a distinct cultural and linguistic identity; unlike Italian, for example, Ladin has eight words for snow.
It’s not critically endangered like some minority languages across the world, with locals growing up speaking Ladin alongside Italian, and cultural and linguistic protections ensuring Ladin is taught in schools. But some Ladin experts worry the language could be at risk, as the confluence of tourism and globalization threatens to dilute Ladin with Italian.
And few events bring tourists like the Olympics. For Ladin locals, playing host to the Games — particularly in Cortina d’Ampezzo, the heart of one of the Ladin valleys — is a source of pride. But it’s also a site of missed opportunities, with Ladin advocates left feeling as if the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and their government should have done more to showcase their language and take matters into their own hands to ensure their culture gets recognition on the Olympic stage.
The Ladin valleys are accustomed to playing host to visitors in the winter, as vacationers come from around Italy and elsewhere in Europe to ski the iconic Dolomites. In the mid-20th century, life in many of Italy’s mountain towns transformed from one of survival into one of tourism — in part hastened by the 1956 Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo — bringing wealth, but also traffic and pollution, and a threat to Ladin culture.
“Sometimes it’s difficult also to keep up the traditions because we simply don’t have time during the touristic season,” Cigolla said in Ladin through a translator.
As for the language, kids are growing up increasingly mixing Ladin with Italian, and newcomers settling in these towns largely speak Italian.
“Even if we are so safeguarded, everyone more or less speaks Italian; this Ladin is getting more and more Italianized,” said Nives Iori, director of the Fassa branch of Union de Ladins, the cultural organization that owns La Usc di Ladins. She worries that, over time, Ladin could become a dialect of Italian, rather than its own language.
That’s why covering the Olympics in Ladin is so important to Ladin speakers like Cigolla and Iori. In the past few weeks, La Usc di Ladins — which translates to “the voice of Ladin” — has interviewed Italy’s Ladin athletes competing at home, published comics criticizing the financial and environmental costs of hosting such a massive event, solicited Ladin poetry about the Games, and covered everything else that happens when the Olympic show comes to town.
Monica Cigolla sits at her desk at the La Usc di Ladins office. (Rebecca Tauber / The Athletic)
Alexander Stuffer, who reports in Ladin for Rai, Italy’s public TV and radio network, grew up speaking the language in Val Gardena. He and a small group of reporters have spent the past few weeks interviewing the 21 Ladin athletes representing Italy at the Games. Beyond just covering results, it’s important to him that the Ladin language gets used in the public sphere, not just at home.
“When we report about this big event … they are testimonials of our culture and our language,” he said. “We are going to show to the public that it is possible to use our language also for important things.”
In part, writing about the Milan Cortina Olympics is typical for a local news outlet reporting on the Games in its backyard. But it’s also a crucial part of keeping the Ladin language relevant.
“You need, in order to preserve a language, to renovate that language,” Iori said.
At the forefront of that work is Daria Valentin, a Ladin linguist born and raised in Val Badia. She spent the months leading up to the Games creating a Ladin dictionary for the Games, translating terms such as “monobob,” “giant slalom,” “mixed doubles curling” and “anti-doping control” into Ladin.
Some Olympic terms already had Ladin translations, but for those without, Valentin made them up, using existing Ladin words to create new words. For example, Valentin grew up snowboarding, referring to the halfpipe as mez pipa, literally translating to “half pipe.” As she did research for the dictionary, she realized the appropriate word should be mez valon, with mez meaning half and valon meaning valley.
“With this mini-dictionary, I wish to make a small contribution to the preservation and promotion of the Ladin language and culture,” Valentin wrote in the introduction to the dictionary, which she translated into Italian, English, Spanish, French and German. “Whether you are here for the Olympics or out of pure curiosity, these words will accompany you in discovering an extraordinary territory and a language that preserves the memory and identity of the Dolomites.”
Through Ladin news coverage, it’s clear that hosting the Olympics is a source of pride, with pages and broadcasts of athlete profiles and results coverage. While the Ladin valleys beyond Cortina d’Ampezzo are not hosting specific events themselves, most, such as Val di Fassa, are within an hour’s drive of one of the venues.
“Here, everyone makes a winter sport, everyone,” Iori said. “I have children in the schools, also high school, they stopped the lessons … and the schools were invited to assist to the races.”
But La Usc di Ladins is also full of pieces criticizing the Games and their lack of Ladin representation. While Ladin speakers are part of the large group of volunteers at the Olympics, staff the hotels and restaurants frequented by tourists, and watch their own athletes compete on the ice and snow, their language and culture hardly has a presence in the Olympic venue — even in Cortina d’Ampezzo, an explicitly Ladin valley hosting Alpine skiing, curling, bobsled, luge and skeleton.
Many locals wish the IOC and the Italian organizing committee had done more to showcase Ladin culture through the Games. Cigolla and Iori said Ladin leaders hoped to be more involved in cultural planning, but do not feel organizers did enough to include Italy’s minorities. Especially in Cortina d’Ampezzo, advocates wanted to see the Ladin language showcased in events such as the opening ceremony.
“I think they did not a lot for the Ladin language,” Valentin said.
In a statement, the Milano Cortina organizing committee said it has “the utmost respect for the cultures of the territories that together shape the Games experience.”
“Throughout its activities, it has consistently promoted and showcased local identities, cultural excellence, and the people who bring these places to life and enrich them,” the statement continued. “The Organising Committee adheres to the Host City Contract, which necessitates the use of the IOC’s two official languages — French and English — together with the language of the host country, Italian.”
A Ladin flag hangs from a building in Cortina d’Ampezzo. (Simone Padovani / Getty Images)
In the weeks leading up to the Games, locals took matters into their own hands, hanging the Ladin flag across the valleys when the Olympic torch came through town.
“There was an unexpected reaction from people,” Iori said. “I think it was a nice demonstration of identity.”
As the closing ceremony approaches, the flags remain. As national flags from competing athletes fly across towns such as Cortina d’Ampezzo, Predazzo and Tesero, the blue, white and green flag of the Ladin people can be easy to miss. But once you know to look, it’s everywhere, hanging from apartment balconies and shop windows and hotel flagpoles.
The blue represents the sky, the white the snow and the green the forests and meadows. For locals, it’s a show of pride, a reminder of the Ladin history and identity all around, even if not always visible to the athletes and tourists taking over the valleys all month.
Iori said, “It was a way to say we are here, too.”