Inglish
My brand-new master course in Verona includes 80 hours of English lessons. I tried to tell the tutor delicately that I'd rather prefer advanced Italian (as I doubt the professor will be able to teach me anything on the side of an intermediate group), but she didn't get my point. I'll just sit it out, then, it's not so bad either. But it does give me a lot of time to think of Italians and their idea of English.
Considering that it's a movie-translating country, it's surprising how much the Italians love everything that is foreign. The favourites are the Scandinavians (mostly Sweden - sorry, Marie), US and UK, but most other civilised places are all fine too. There is a very special way in which "the Nordic countries" are seen (north means north of Austria, by the way, though France doesn't count). Mostly this includes an understanding that anything to do with the state is definitely much better organised*, that the job market works better, that there are more women in the parliament, that the sky is more blue... **. And of course, the English language is revered up to the point of foolishness.
I thought this tendency of praying towards North-West just a slight quirk of the young population. In fact, I didn't really see it much in Valdagno. This is why I was so surprised when I suddenly heard one university professor after another sticking English phrases into their speech. When I asked for Italian equivalents, I was told that "leadership" and "mentoring" and such don't translate, so this is how they are used. Alright. Then I heard "public speaking" and "week-end" instead of perfectly Italian "parlare in pubblico" and "fine della settimana" and started to think something was not in its right place. In fact, there are:
1) English words integrated into Italian, such as "il computer", "lo shopping", "lo smog" for new objects or actions. Mostly used the same way in other languages too.
2) English words integrated into Italian, though original alternatives exist, such as "weekend", "office", "meeting", "mouse" (pronunce: mau:z).
3) English words integrated into Italian, but by a different meaning than originally; or words that look like English, but aren't. These include "mobbing" (bullying), "sponsor"(buyer, as in someone who orders a project), "pullman" (bus, but no idea why it's supposed to be English), "week" (short for "weekend"), "stage" (apprenticeship, derives really from French (I think), but sometimes pronunced as English).
Really, I'm not hoping for the 1920s back when all words of foreign origin were changed to Italian ones (and, as legends say, each bar turned into "quisibeve": "hereonedrinks"), but I can't help noticing that as the English words sink deeper into the language, they drift away from their original meaning. Where a native English speaker would remain perplexed, Italians understand each other perfectly, saying "brekk" instead of "break" and "buon wikk" ("have a good weekend").
Needless to say, these very same Italians that are so eager to pick up new words to use for making themselves look cool, don't really speak English too well. They do like the Nordic countries, but somehow still travel south. They can't manage films with subtitles as the national film-translation business has never given them a chance of reading from the screen. This is not a problem for me: I prefer good Italian to bad English. But I couldn't hold myself back from writing on the evaluation-sheet of the most eager of our non-English-speaking Inglish speaking lecturers to take some lessons so that she'd at least know how to read "outsourcing" from her Powerpoint slides. The karma will surely get back at me right when I get a sudden strange urge to use French expressions in my presentations...
*this is usually expressed as: "you know, abroad the maternity leave isn't so messed up", not really considering any places very near Italy where the maternity leave doesn't even exist or is anyway likely to be much more messed up than in the rich industrial Veneto.
**In fact the only things for which the foreigners are ridiculed are food and fashion. The gag-effect as a reaction to socks-in-sandals and midnight cappuccinos is infectious. Soon you will see me stop writing about the Italians who fuss about how much milk you can put in your coffee at which time of the day; and start fussing about Germans who ask for a cappuccino in the afternoon***.
***that's a big no-no.
Considering that it's a movie-translating country, it's surprising how much the Italians love everything that is foreign. The favourites are the Scandinavians (mostly Sweden - sorry, Marie), US and UK, but most other civilised places are all fine too. There is a very special way in which "the Nordic countries" are seen (north means north of Austria, by the way, though France doesn't count). Mostly this includes an understanding that anything to do with the state is definitely much better organised*, that the job market works better, that there are more women in the parliament, that the sky is more blue... **. And of course, the English language is revered up to the point of foolishness.
I thought this tendency of praying towards North-West just a slight quirk of the young population. In fact, I didn't really see it much in Valdagno. This is why I was so surprised when I suddenly heard one university professor after another sticking English phrases into their speech. When I asked for Italian equivalents, I was told that "leadership" and "mentoring" and such don't translate, so this is how they are used. Alright. Then I heard "public speaking" and "week-end" instead of perfectly Italian "parlare in pubblico" and "fine della settimana" and started to think something was not in its right place. In fact, there are:
1) English words integrated into Italian, such as "il computer", "lo shopping", "lo smog" for new objects or actions. Mostly used the same way in other languages too.
2) English words integrated into Italian, though original alternatives exist, such as "weekend", "office", "meeting", "mouse" (pronunce: mau:z).
3) English words integrated into Italian, but by a different meaning than originally; or words that look like English, but aren't. These include "mobbing" (bullying), "sponsor"(buyer, as in someone who orders a project), "pullman" (bus, but no idea why it's supposed to be English), "week" (short for "weekend"), "stage" (apprenticeship, derives really from French (I think), but sometimes pronunced as English).
Really, I'm not hoping for the 1920s back when all words of foreign origin were changed to Italian ones (and, as legends say, each bar turned into "quisibeve": "hereonedrinks"), but I can't help noticing that as the English words sink deeper into the language, they drift away from their original meaning. Where a native English speaker would remain perplexed, Italians understand each other perfectly, saying "brekk" instead of "break" and "buon wikk" ("have a good weekend").
Needless to say, these very same Italians that are so eager to pick up new words to use for making themselves look cool, don't really speak English too well. They do like the Nordic countries, but somehow still travel south. They can't manage films with subtitles as the national film-translation business has never given them a chance of reading from the screen. This is not a problem for me: I prefer good Italian to bad English. But I couldn't hold myself back from writing on the evaluation-sheet of the most eager of our non-English-speaking Inglish speaking lecturers to take some lessons so that she'd at least know how to read "outsourcing" from her Powerpoint slides. The karma will surely get back at me right when I get a sudden strange urge to use French expressions in my presentations...
*this is usually expressed as: "you know, abroad the maternity leave isn't so messed up", not really considering any places very near Italy where the maternity leave doesn't even exist or is anyway likely to be much more messed up than in the rich industrial Veneto.
**In fact the only things for which the foreigners are ridiculed are food and fashion. The gag-effect as a reaction to socks-in-sandals and midnight cappuccinos is infectious. Soon you will see me stop writing about the Italians who fuss about how much milk you can put in your coffee at which time of the day; and start fussing about Germans who ask for a cappuccino in the afternoon***.
***that's a big no-no.
2 comments:
A "Pullman" originally referred to a kind of luxury railway sleeping wagon (the Oriental Express, for instance, had Pullman sleepers). Accordingly, "Pullman" buses (or Auto-Pullmans) are luxury buses. It's as simple as that :)
well, there's nothing luxury about the Italian pullmans....
More fake-English words:
outplacement - strategic help from the public sector for supporting the unemployed resulting from company restructuring processes;
and.. and...
I can never remember them once I've stopped searching on the internet for understanding if it's really English or not.
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