Category Archives: Italian language

Italian language

Fess Up: What Happens when a Name Can’t Be Translated into Italian?

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During our US trip last year, Ross and I visited the Texas History Museum in Austin (new since I graduated from the University of Texas in 1986). They had a temporary exhibit on Davy Crockett, the near-mythical frontiersman who was a Senator from Tennessee before moving on to Texas, where he died at the Alamo. The exhibit included a section on the Crockett revival of the 1950s or 60s, when Disney did a movie and kids wore coonskin caps (raccoon skin, with the tail on). There was a huge poster for the movie, evidently taken from the Italian release.

Most Americans probably remember that the actor who played Davy Crockett was named Fess Parker. Fess is a weird sort of name even in the US, I can’t think what it would be a nickname for. But in Italian, “fesso” means a complete idiot – not the name you want to associate with a movie hero! So the Italian movie poster renamed the actor “Fier Parker.” Fier is a non-existent name in Italy (and probably everywhere else), but you would assume it’s related to the word “fiero” – proud.

I laughed out loud in front of the poster, drawing inquiring looks from a man standing nearby, so then I had to explain to him what was funny.

August 20, 2003

John Sanders tells me that “Fess Parker was born Fess E. Parker. The E. did not stand for anything. Also Fess Parker is a graduate of the University of Texas. I read that Fess Parker learned as a young boy that fess meant ‘Proud’ in England of old.”

Richard Munde adds: “I remember my seventh grade French teacher telling us that Fess Parker was a huge star in France because of the Disney Davy Crockett series. Fess, she said, was French slang for ass and so he was re-named there too. (Can’t remember what they called him, though.)”

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bio, Italian language, parenting

Raising a Bilingual Child

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Our daughter is bilingual in English and Italian, and some people have asked “how we did it.” There really wasn’t much to it. While I was pregnant, I read the only book  I could find on the subject (The Sun is Feminine Amazon UK | US), which happened to be written (in English) by a German linguist married to an Italian. She suggested following the “one parent, one language” rule: each parent should speak only one language (preferably his or her native one) with the child, right from birth, so that the child is able to identify each language with a specific person, and thereby learns to keep the languages separate.

So that’s what we did. For the first 15 months of her life, Ross was mostly in the US, from then on she was mostly in Italy, but, wherever we were, I addressed her only in English, Enrico only in Italian. Enrico and I communicated in English, as a matter of habit – I didn’t speak Italian when I first met him! But when we were with Italian speakers I spoke Italian, and Ross heard me doing it. So by age three she decided that, while she could understand English perfectly well, there was no need for her to go to the effort of speaking it, since it was obvious that everybody understood Italian. I would always speak English to her, and she’d always reply in Italian. Heads would turn on the street as people tried to understand what was going on.

The summer she turned four, we took her on a trip to other parts of Europe, visiting various friends. One couple were English and German, raising their own bilingual kids in Germany. Rossella realized that she had to speak English to be understood by these adults, but for some reason she remained convinced that all children spoke Italian. My friend’s son, the same age, was similarly convinced that all kids must speak German. They struggled for days to communicate, until Ross finally said to him, in great frustration: Ma tu devi parlare inglese! (“But you have to speak English!”)

We didn’t have a TV for the first couple of years we were in Milan; we got one around Ross’ third year so that she could hear more English, on videotape. We got a multistandard VCR so we could watch films imported from the US, and built up an impressive collection of Disney movies. (Fortunately, Enrico and I liked them, too.)

If Ross were growing up in the US, it would probably be difficult to get her to speak Italian. Many American schoolkids don’t value the ability to speak a foreign language, and of course no child wants to be observed doing something uncool or different. But, in Italy, she gets lots of positive reinforcement for being bilingual. When she was in elementary school, her friends’ parents used to say: “Go play with Rossella and learn some English!” And everyone tells her how lucky she is to speak it so well.

We know several other multilingual families, and it’s interesting to observe which language the kids will drop into, depending on environment or what they’re talking about. In one family we know, she’s a multilingual Italian (speaks Italian, English, French, and Spanish fluently), he’s German. Between them they communicate in English, the only language they have in common. He speaks only German to the kids, she only Italian. So they hired an English-speaking nanny, and the kids are trilingual. Another couple are Americans whose kids were born in Italy, attended Italian schools, and spoke English at home. The parents sometimes spoke French as their “secret” language when they wanted the kids not to understand something, which motivated the kids to learn French! (Ross has been taking French in school; many schools offer English and a choice of French or German.)

It’s no longer necessary to maintain linguistic purity for Ross’ sake, so our family language has become an idiosyncratic mix that still causes heads to turn. I was wondering recently why people stare at Ross and me in the subway when we speak English; English speakers are not rare in Milan. Then I realized that they’re probably staring because we’re not speaking pure English; we blend it freely with Italian, especially when talking about activities that take place in Italian, such as riding or school.

Being bilingual has disadvantages. I sometimes realize after the fact that I’ve said or written something that was far too literal a translation from one language or the other. An American friend, who’s been in Italy even longer than I, once said to me: “I’ll make a jump at the new house on my way back.” This sounded weird in a way that I couldn’t immediately put my finger on. Then I realized that she had translated literally the Italian “Faro’ un salto;” Italians use “make a jump” the way English speakers use “stop by.” That’s what she meant and what I, being fluent in both languages, heard. Anyone who wasn’t bilingual in English and Italian would have been thoroughly confused.

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bio, Italian language

Italian Accents

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“Stanlio, non fare lo stupeedo!”

When an American speaks Italian with a particularly bad accent, Italians often refer to Stanlio e Ollio: Laurel and Hardy, whose accents in the Italian versions of their films are legendarily hilarious, full of flat Rs and words stressed on the wrong syllable.

I used to wonder why these films had been dubbed so badly. Laurel and Hardy are funny enough without silly accents, and why pick on these guys in particular in the dubbing? Everyone else gets dubbed into a normal Italian accent, usually very well.

Then I learned that the films were not initially dubbed by Italians; the voices are those of Laurel and Hardy. When their first talkies came out, it was impossible to dub a new soundtrack onto an existing film. The only way to make an Italian version was to reshoot the whole thing, with the actors doing the Italian dialog themselves. They either read it off cards or memorized it phonetically (as some Italian actors do today when acting in English films). But no one had instructed them in the finer points of Italian pronunciation, so they made mistakes like ‘stuPEEdo’ instead of ‘STUpid-oh.’

Italians found this so funny that, even when technology improved and it became possible to use Italian voices to dub a new soundtrack, the silly accent was maintained, and sticks to this day as a cliche of Americans (or Brits) speaking Italian.

Ask an American to imitate an Italian speaking English, and most of the time you will get the sort of accent heard in American mafia movies, which appears to be loosely based on the pronunciation of someone’s Sicilian or Neapolitan ancestors.

To an Italian ear, there are marked differences in regional accents, and some regional dialects are so different in pronunciation and vocabulary as to be unintelligible to outsiders. Many northern Italians despise the ‘uncouth’ accents of southerners, and would be offended to be lumped into a language category with them.

But maybe that’s changing.

I’ve been meaning for some time to talk about Andrea Camilleri’s Montalbano books, a series of police mysteries set in a small town in Sicily. Part of the appeal is that they are written in a semi-Sicilian dialect, giving a flavor that could be achieved no other way, though the publishers and Camilleri himself initially feared that the general Italian public would not be able to understand it. It turned out not to be a problem, even for me; after the first chapter or so, I didn’t find the language difficult. I’ve noticed that the language is becoming more and more Sicilian as the series goes on; perhaps Camilleri assumes that his devoted fans are now trained to handle it.

Montalbano in book form has been popular for years, and now has been made into a series of TV movies. Accent was again expected to be a problem, so for the first series our hero was made to sound ‘more Roman than Sicilian.’ For the second series, airing now, the accents sound quite Sicilian to me, though not so much that I can’t follow the dialog. Montalbano is wildly popular with all age groups, which seems to be having an interesting side effect: the Sicilian accent is now considered cool. My daughter and her Milanese classmates yesterday begged their school custodian, a Sicilian, to say ‘quattro’ (four), which he pronounces ‘quacchro’. He was baffled, and probably thought at first that they were making fun of him. But they explained that they like to hear him speak because he sounds just like Montalbano; then he was flattered!

The Montalbano books are being translated into English and appear to be selling well. They must lose something without the dialect, but they are still interesting stories with great characters, so I recommend them to mystery-lovers, and to anyone who might enjoy descriptions of Sicilian scenery and food. Montalbano loves good food, and so, presumably, does the author; the stories are frequently side-tracked by mouthwatering descriptions of dishes that Montalbano puts away with pittito lupigno (wolfish appetite). This is one aspect that, sadly, is not preserved in the television series; I guess they didn’t want to make it into a cooking show.

Montalbano links:

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English Not Spoken Here

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At least not very well. English is taught in Italian schools from third grade on, but most people who want to learn it properly take courses outside of school and try to do a study tour in the UK or US as well.

Still, things are changing…

When I first arrived in Italy 10 years ago, all film titles were translated into Italian, with sometimes peculiar results. The first James Bond film, known in English as “Dr. No” was translated as “Licenza di Uccidere” (License to Kill). So the film distributors presumably found themselves in difficulties many years later when the English-titled License to Kill (with Timothy Dalton) was released (but I wasn’t in Italy at the time, so I don’t know what they did about that).

Almost all films are still dubbed into Italian; in Milan, you can see English-language films only in selected cinemas on certain nights of the week (one film per week). Personally I find this annoying – I like to hear the original voices. But they do it extraordinarily well. The same doppiatori (dubbing actors) tend to dub the same actors year after year, film after film, and some of them are prodigiously good – especially the guy who does Woody Allen – sounds just like him, if Woody Allen spoke Italian that well (for all I know, he may – he spends a lot of time in Venice).

What’s annoying, however, is the insistence on dubbing even the songs in musicals – it’s very difficult to translate a song so that it maintains the meter and rhyme scheme of the original, especially when it also has to maintain exact meaning in places where a song is accompanied by action. So most of these translations are abject failures.

Fortunately, this is no longer done for the few non-animated musicals that Hollywood still produces; Evita was entirely subtitled. But it’s done to all cartoon musicals, presumably because kids aren’t expected to be able to follow subtitles. So, much as I love Disney movies, I either see them in an English-speaking country, or wait til I can get them on DVD.

Dec 3, 2003

Since I wrote the above, I’ve grown less tolerant of dubbing. Perhaps I’m spoiled now by the greater availability of English-language films: at my local Blockbuster, via Amazon, via cable TV (if we had it), and occasionally even at the cinema. The few times we have seen dubbed films at the cinema recently, I’ve found them hard to follow, although I have no difficulty following Italian film or TV. I suppose the difficulty of dubbing dialog that makes sense and suits the mouth movements in the original language makes for some occasionally convoluted phrasing that is simply harder to understand. And, some of the time, half of my brain is busy wondering what the original line in English was, which distracts me from the next line.

There is a growing tendency, in Milan at least, to show some big movies in English for a week or so, I suppose for the benefit of a fairly large non-local audience. We can be confident that The Return of the King will be shown in English somewhere that we can get to it. However, it is opening in Italy far later than anywhere else in the world ­ late January! Augh!

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