The Land of My Forefathers - wife beating and snake bite capital of Northern Italy (maybe not, the competition is quite strong)
I'm just about to, finally, put the finishing touches to the notes I intend to place with my gallery of Sardinia photos. The notes stretch to almost 8,000 words, which is almost certainly too much. They are super-concentrated, content wise, and will be useful if I ever write anything serious about Italy.
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Whilst writing about Sardinia I also jotted down a few thoughts about speaking Italian which aren’t really Sardinia specific, so I've decided to put them down as a blog entry.
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Some Italians I meet are a little confused about my attitude to Italy. How can it be that someone who is, at best, ambivalent about the merits of their country has gone to the effort of learning its language? Then I explain that I have an Italian family and the question changes to how is it that my Italian is as bad as it is. Mind you my Italian is a lot better than some Italian's English …
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In Sardinia, last week, the hotel receptionist asked me, in English, what our plans were for our last morning on the island. I told her, in English, that we were planning to go shopping and maybe pick up some ceramics. Unbeknown to me she misheard the word ceramics and thought I had used the Italian work to describe pork products. In Italian, she politely asked me what type of products I had in mind and I said, in Italian, that we were quite interested in picking up an ashtray. She went quiet for a moment or two then asked, in Italian, for clarification. I realised what had happened and was tempted to continue with the misunderstanding and explain to her that the English liked to use ashtrays that gave off breakfast smells when you used them, but decided against the idea and put her straight instead.
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Most of the time when we're in Italy Tracy and myself restrict ourselves to a handful of essential phrases that we have learned off by heart:
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Where is my change?
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Have you put up prices since you served the previous customer?
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Do I look American?
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Could you fill my bottle of mineral water with mineral water and not tap water please
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The typical Italian's fear that all British are mindless football hooligans is especially useful in these situations; tapping, as it does, into their race memory of the last bunch of tourists who got annoyed at being ripped off back in the 5th Century.
Actually, my Italian isn’t all that bad. I understand most things that are said to me but when it comes to speaking the language, aside from the fact that I'm not 100% keen on the place, I am also held back by a couple of additional factors.
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Firstly, there's the question of accent. I grew up in London when there was such a thing as a Londoner and a London accent. Italian sounds quite peculiar when spoken by a South London cockney. It's not just the tone of the accent either. I physically cannot roll my R's like a proper Italian can. So when I ask, for example, is there meat in a particular dish 'c'é carne?' it sounds to an Italian like 'c'é cane?' which means dog and doesn't go down at all well. It works both ways though, as Italians cannot pronounced 'th' sounds which can be irritating for people with names like Keith who will have to become accustomed to being called Kate if they plan to spend any time in Italy.
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The accent thing doesn’t seem to bother relatives from the West Midlands and South Wales who cheerfully pronounce Italian in the most shocking ways without any concern at all. My uncle was a star at exaggerating this and could do Italian in Birmingham or Elvis. Elvis was his best …
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'Allora grazie molto'
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'Attenzione! Elvis ha abbandonato l'edificio'
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He's dead now. Elvis and my uncle.
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The other, and largest, obstacle to my speaking Italian is that I grew up surrounded by people who, when they spoke Italian, spoke local dialect rather than proper Italian. Mum comes from a hard, tough valley where the locals were as hard and tough as the rock they vainly tried to grow food on. People from this part of the world traditionally drank more than they talked, a lot more. If unemployment-driven, drunken wife-beating ever became an Olympic sport I can confidently predict the Piacenza team will be there in the finals with the Russians. Much of the local dialect involves reducing words to single consonants. Hard men don't muck around pronouncing a whole word.
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For example, a favourite local expression used to describe people is:
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son dur com un sas
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The non dialect, proper Italian, version would be something like ..
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Sono duro come un sasso
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Which in dialect means 'I'm tough, like a stone'. The English equivalent would be 'well 'ard'. It's not that difficult to speak my mum's dialect really. Yes there are some unique words but mostly it's about taking away as many letters as you can from a sentence whilst still retaining a very slight trace of comprehensibility. We could do the same in England. I'm sure that if I went into a pub looking for a couple of pints and said
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'Tw br pls'
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I'd get served. Eventually.
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Sadly there is a little bit more involved. There is also the question of idiom.
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Once, when working in an office in Milan, the receptionist expressed concern that I had drunk three cups of coffee that morning and that I should worry about strain on my heart. I smiled and told her not to worry because 'son dur com un sas'. Later, the Finance Director explained that in Milan that expression meant that I was boasting to her that I was experiencing a rock solid erection. No wonder she looked a little shocked when I smiled at her. Ooops.
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Growing up with dialect can be a very difficult thing.
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