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.

lezioni d'italiano per stranieri

Every Tuesday and Thursday morning I spend one and a half hours studying Italian. But it's not a mere session of grammar or vocabulary. The language class is much more than that. In fact, it is not too far from a kind of a zoo.

I owe a lot of thanks to Vides, an NGO that coordinates (among their other activities) the twice-weekly classes made specially for the numerous local foreigners. The differences from your average training-firm sessions are considerable. First of all, it's free. The teachers are volunteers - retired Italians that don't mind explaining alphabets, grammar rules or catholic traditions to immigrants of all shapes and sizes. The students are almost all women (the men, if there are any, go to work and can't spare mornings in classes). The didactic materials are anything that comes up - improvised conversation, photocopied grammar exercises, fiction books, Italian textbooks from Asian countries, and - always - world maps. Usually a study-group will involve as many nationalities as there are students and the cultural, geographical, linguistic and what-not differences give the teachers an inexhaustible amount of conversation material. This is what I mean by a zoo: making a usual introduction round can, and usually will, resemble a ride around the world.

Ciao, I'm Maris, I come from Estonia. Ess-too-nii-aa. It's in the northeast of Europe. (Pointing on the map) here, near Finland. No, not Latvia. Estonia. I live on this island here (interested nods and smiles at the mention of an island; luckily Saaremaa is big enough to be visible). And so it goes on. I'm unique in not having moved for work, and in coming from an EU member country (with the new exception of the numerous Romanians).

There is usually someone from India, someone from Moldova, one or two Romanians, a Russian, someone from South America, someone from Morocco, someone from Ghana or other parts of Africa. Africans tend to be quite advanced, though the accent can be quite strong. Indians and the Ghanese speak good English - this usually makes the teacher a little uneasy, because the opportunity to explain things in their language seems to be in reach, but is yet too far (few local Italians older than 40 will know English). Some of the women speaking only languages that use alphabets other than the Latin one are in for a difficult stretch of learning the letters the toddler-way: having the alphabets spelled out to them in a high voice accompanied by a mimic normally used to keep babies from crying (but then again - how else could it be done?). The Brazilians and also, Romanians, are greatly advantaged as their own languages work in much the same way as Italian does; they move along fast, but often retain the melody of their native language. Great numbers of Muslim women have only come to Italy to tend to the family while the husbands work, and usually don't interact with Italians (the same is true for many of the Indians I see) and this slows down their learning process considerably. I've always seen them as intriguing puzzles - you never know what's inside.

Then there are the Eastern-European women who have come to work as nurses to the elderly or housekeepers; not because this is their calling, but because ironing bedsheets pays so much more in Italy than being a lecturer, teacher, or even a dentist does in Russia. Often their families back at home have no other source of income, sometimes the husband is ill (or worse, likes to drink), and the teenage children need a lot of support without being able give much input of their own yet. These women (badanti they call them here) tend to live alone, devote themselves entirely to work and send as much money as possible back home. This is not very difficult to understand for Estonians. Despite all the economic growth and the pretense of being a developed "Western" country, the same amount of money still buys three times more food in Estonia than here in Italy; the difference in salaries compared to Finland not too many kilometres away is quite striking; and all the time more people leave for a shorter or longer period abroad. But seeing the other side of this migration is a very stark contrast to what I've gotten used to thinking when I hear "work abroad".

One of these badanti from Moldova - let's call her Ana - is 42, has lived in Italy for 10 years already and calls home every day to her pride and joy: her 17-year-old son. She learned to use the email to see the photos he sends her. I hear how much she pays for his education, all the necessary books and materials (it's an appalling amount of money), how long she hasn't seen him and how well he does in school. It's enough to make any woman feel a little sad.

Then there is the 6-year old Indian girl - an unbelievably sweet little being - who used to come to the class with her mother for a while and speaks better Italian than she does. I wonder who, or of which culture, she will consider herself to be in 10 years' time?

This exciting and mysterious carousel of colourful saris definitely makes up half of the reasons why I go. The second (or should I say the first?) is my own learning process. After spending some time in a fun, but too simple group, I'm now the single student of a former lawyer who knows Latin and French, is fluent in Esperanto and considers English to be a wacky language where people say "apple" and write "banana". I insist on translating random pieces of text to start getting a grip on how Italian could sound nice when written down; on going through explanations of the passato remoto (a scary grammar dinosaur that is yet alive and well in the South of Italy); and discussing the grammatical aspects of the dialects. He insists on explaining the Latin roots of important words (sometimes ones that exist in English and I learned when I was 10); describing how the grammar used to look a long time ago; and dismissing the dialect-issue. I think we both appreciate ending up together though. People who go to the language classes are generally practical and busy (why else did they move?) and I'm likely to be the most bookish one. Or at least the one with most time to muse over passato remoto.

Even if I miss out on a number of lessons for various reasons (the silliest one was last time when I missed a plane and didn't make it back from abroad on time), it's comforting to know that there is a way to follow what my language does. Before I discovered the classes, I was quite lazy with learning, as most people around me spoke English. By now I've switched to Italian as an everyday communication language, but talking to friends doesn't help me remember the gender exceptions (la foto; il problema) or get the hang of the subjunctive properly. Without the classes I'd most likely end up in an embarrassing situation where I talk as a local, but am completely illiterate. Well, to some degree this is already the case. But I'll keep trying. More delightful info on the passato remoto to come!

venessián

In a way, Veneto is an unlucky place for foreigners, especially the areas outside the cities.
What I mean is the linguistic variety so typical to Italy. Veneto is one of the regions where the local dialect is still in booming everyday use. As the standard Italian is the one once used by Dante, more or less the Tuscan way of talking (without the particular "h" that they like to pronunce in every word), your average Venetian will speak something only remotely recogniseable. True, most of them will switch to Italian when they understand they're not talking to a local. But not all of them, and most of what is said will have passed already.

Among locals, Italian is used only as a written language and in highly official situations. Everywhere else from the marketplace to the bank, the things will be done in venessián. It's not political, though it might seem so. Simply, the people will use their first language by default unless something suggests otherwise. Italian connotes a distance, and thus will seem strange to speak in one's kitchen. Then, regardless of the education system and the media being all in Italian, without a regular speaking practice this average Venetian (if aged over 40), won't be able to speak the official language even if they tried.

I'm sharing a flat with two Italians. As cosmopolitan as they are, speaking Italian to each other merely due to my presence is too strange to do. Thus, even though everything spoken directly to me will be in Italian, I get a lot of passive venessián practice from day to day - from my flatmates, their families and friends. By now I understand almost all of it, am able to pretend to speak it to some extent, and have started to mix some words into my Italian without noticing. It was only a matter of hearing it enough - what at first sounded like a smooth babble broke into understandable words and phrases at one point with no effort whatsoever. I do think of this as my greatest linguistic achievement to date. And I've come to appreciate that a local talking to me in dialect is his/her way of introducing familiarity into the conversation, and to be taken as a compliment - it means I'm not acting the part of the stranger in the situation.

So what is the difference? Linguistically, venessián is closer to French (of 200 years ago) and Spanish than Italian. Obviously, with the influences of the media and everything else, the differences are smaller nowadays. But the heritage is still visible in a Venetian that speaks English with a hint of Spanish pronunciation and understands much more of spoken Portuguese than a Milanese would. Mainly, what happens to the official Italian in Veneto is that everything is softened down - ch (k) turns into ci (ch), z (ts) turns into ss; o is dropped off the end of the nouns (veneziano - venessia:n), the l and r is pronunced only halfway, the sharp past participle ending "-to" disappears in elongated vowels. I guess one has to hear it to know what I mean. By other Italians this is considered as one of the ugliest dialects of the whole country. I think of it as a sign of diversity and authenticity.

Then, apart from mere regional or linguistic differences, there is the half-political pride of the 1000 years of the Serenissima - Republic of Venice that still lives on in the Veneto. After all, once upon a time the Venetians controlled the market, a large part of the Mediterranean coast and the international communication of the time (venessián!). But this is something else.

The main possible practical value of the venessián is visible in the tourist-ridden money-making Venice. A ride in a gondola negotiated in English will cost x euros (depending on the mood, weather, season etc). The same ride negotiated in Italian will cost 2/3 of it. But if you know how to approach the gondoliere, and say in a stretched intonation, half-rolled r-s and with an air of not really caring about the response: "ció... mi porti to a San Marco?", you'll probably end up paying only a third of the tourist price.

Why would I mind learning a language that allows me to roam a place like Venice without the mark of a foreigner?