It is also possible that the Venetian and the other dialects have undergone a radical change, though this is not so likely as may at first be supposed. A piece of nonsense written in the seventeenth century gives an admirable idea of what the popular idiom was then and is now: Mi son tanto inamorao In dona Nina mia vesina Che me da gran disciplina, Che me vedo desparao. Gnao bao, bao gnao, Mi son tanto inamorao! Mi me sento tanti afani (Tuti i porto per so amore!) Che par proprio che sia cani Ch'al mi cor fazza brusore; Che da tute quante l'ore Mi me sento passionao. Gnao bao, bao gnao, Mi son tanto inamorao! In most respects Venetian would approach closely to standard Italian were it not for the pronunciation; yet to the uneducated Venetian, Italian sounds very strange. A maid-servant who had picked up a few purely Italian words, was found to be under the delusion that she had been learning English. The Venetian is unable to detect a foreigner by his accent. An English traveller had been talking for some while to a woman of Burano, when she asked in all seriousness, "Are you a Roman?" A deficiency of grammar, a richness in expressive colloquialisms, and the possession of certain terms of Greek origin, constitute the main features of the Venetian dialect as it is known to us. It was used by the Republic in the affairs of state, and it was generally understood throughout Italy, because, as Evelyn records, all the world repaired to Venice "to see the folly and madnesse of the Carnevall." With the exception of Dante, every one seems to have been struck by its merits, of which the chief, to modern ears, are vivacity and an exceeding softness. It can boast of much elegant lettered poetry, as well as of Goldoni's best comedies. To the reading of the latter when a child, Alfieri traced his particular partiality for "the jargon of the lagunes." Byron declared that its _naivete_ was always pleasant in the mouth of a woman, and George Sand mentions it approvingly as "ce gentil parler Venitien, fait a ce qu'il me semble pour la bouche des enfants." SICILIAN FOLK-SONG.