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Irish – where it all began

March 17, 2016 by EmmaP

I’ve lived more of my life away from Ireland than in it, but of course I always think of it as home and part of my children’s identity too. Language is key to that. At school I learned Irish for many year starting at the age of 4, and it’s not an easy language to learn. But I really believe that early start got me to where I am today.

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I was lucky to go to a primary school that had a positive attitude to the language, and in later years I was one of those kids who didn’t really mind wading through the 18th century epic poems, mad grammar and spelling, and the much-maligned kitchen sink drama of Dingle housewife Peig (a book known to be ritually destroyed after completing the exam). What made it tough for people was that it was mandatory: you had to pass it to enter university and get a civil service job. But it’s a wonderful language to hear and speak and has a deep, rich heritage, very close to the traditional music that I play and love.

My parents weren’t able to help much with my Irish homework – it was not taught well in the 1940s. But my siblings and I benefitted from the first great strides made during the 1970s to standardise the teaching of the language. An early advantage I discovered when moving away from home was how useful a secret language it could be — though you might get in trouble commenting about others on the London tube.

Irish – also called Gaelic, but that’s more for foreigners – is actually the official language so the country is technically bilingual. This means that street signs and paperwork are in two languages and as an EU minority language, taxpayers’ money pays for interpreters sitting in the European Parliament. Many people still think of it as a dying language, that too much is invested in it. A begrudger might indeed think I’ve lived away for too long and am too romantic about it. In reality only about 80,000 people speak Irish  on a daily basis although this number has been growing and the many second-generation Polish and Nigerian children often famously learn it better than their peers.

Moving away from Dublin in 1995 I could not have imagined the blossoming of the language seen in the last 10 years, becoming cool enough that you’ll hear teenagers speaking it on the bus in Dublin (well, certain parts of the city). The Irish language TV station TG4 is an innovative broadcaster, full of lovely young faces, and if we were living in Ireland we might well have our children at the local gaelscoil (Irish school) to ensure they’re learning better than I ever did. You can actually study the language in most countries in the world.

I’m a strong believer that the learning of Irish from an early age – a language so structurally different to English – leads to a population naturally able to take on more languages (and indeed carry a tune). Many a smart politician during the Celtic Tiger was delighted to welcome the Dells, Googles and Facebooks who wanted to build their European headquarters in Ireland, encouraging them to take advantage of one of Europe’s most multi-lingual (and youngest) countries. And they’re still there, though the graduates have been leaving in droves since the recession – a story for another day.

After learning Irish from the age of 4, I started on school French at 10, then German for a few years and by the time I got to university (having survived all those exams about the modh coinniollach) I was all set to take on Italian or Russian. Italian won out and here I am, many years later, working on i pronomi possessivi with my 6 year old who can roll her Rs much better than I ever will.

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gaeltee.com

When my daughters were small, I would use some Irish phrases in everyday chat – Tabhair dom do lámh (give me your hand), Oíche mhaith (good night) or Tóg go bog é (calm down). I would have used more except we were living in Norway and needed to focus on getting used to Norwegian or just practising English.  So for 7 years we mixed it up a bit.

Now, in Italy, we’re living through a third language and I’m figuring out how to do the trilingual thing with them – learning Italian, speaking English everyday but also remembering their Norwegian. (We only speak English at home).

But some of those old phrases are hard-wired – they’ll respond when I say them – and this morning the older one assured me she could say a few Irish words to her classmates if they were curious: Dia Dhuit (“Hello”, or literally “God be with you”) and Dia ‘s Muire Dhuit (“I’m grand thanks”, or literally – and I kid you not – “God and Mary be with you”.)

Conas tá tú – she waved at me as I walked away.

Tá mé go hiontach – I’m grand thanks!

Filed Under: Italy, Language, Translation

Watch up Trump, here is coming il Presidente!

March 7, 2016 by EmmaP

This story hasn’t really hit the news and I can’t think why. An Italian has been pretending to run as a presidential candidate in the US and thousands have fallen for the joke.

You couldn’t make it up. The BBC revealed last week that an Italian marketing professional Alessandro Nardone transformed himself 8 months ago into “California congressman” Alex Anderson who was running as a candidate* for the US presidency. This was for a gag, to promote a novel Nardone had written about this character, Anderson. As part of the stunt he launched a pretty comprehensive online campaign with the benign tagline of #americaisnow, and to his surprise it actually took off and after a while he was getting media requests to join campaign debates. He never even left his small town in northern Italy and friends helped him record a campaign video at the local bar: in the video he whizzes along on his moped waving an American flag to loud guitar music, up to a group of “supporters”, stopping short of kissing one man on the cheek.  He has over 20,000 twitter followers and attracted more each time he slagged off Hilary Clinton.

Fair play to him – he’s a smart guy who pulled off a crazy idea, he clearly understands social media, and indeed probably knows more about the US than many of its actual voters. He even thinks Edward Snowden should be president (or did he mean to say running mate?).

Now as a language nerd (and this is a language blog) I wonder – how could he have come this far? Reading through his website and twitter account, you should be able to see something is not quite right, but no-one realised anything was up.

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We’re talking, of course, about bad English. That’s not to say that native-speaking politicians, or their interns, displays full mastery of the language. Anderson/Nardone seems to walk the thin line – he has enough confidence to get his meaning across, it’s just all a bit wobbly in the delivery.

How did people go with his opinions – or even understand what he was talking about? Here’s his bio which reads smoothly enough, if a little odd (and hilariously fake):

Alex was born thirty-nine years ago in the heart of Los Angeles, and grew up in San Pedro with his mother Ann, his father Ron and his inseparable friends seagulls, which he used to watch at the harbor, every day at sunset. After graduating from Yale, Alex got a PhD in International law and economics and, after only a few months, passed the exam becoming the youngest District Attorney of whole California.

Then it gets stranger and harder to read:

…in this case, the young Anderson seems to have what it takes. What do I mean? Wanting to be vague we could talk about simple cursus but as the Huffington Post here love to be precise, we say Skull andBones. It tells you nothing? But of course yes, who does not know the secret society the most famous and influentialof the Globe? Okay. So happens that both Bush senior as Bush son they so proudly part, just like Anderson, starting from his grandfather, to get to the “small” Alex. Strange life, right?

Were those people who followed him actually paying attention beyond the headlines on the website?  Wonderful headlines like this one:
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Someone clearly did some decent proofreading along the way (you can still get one of these for just $6!):

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And then, as usual, it’s the status updates written on the fly that really show that something is (linguistically) very wrong.

Didn’t anyone notice the Italian accent shining through here?

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Or mixed-up possessive pronouns?

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But this guy claims to have been retweeted more than Jeb Bush and has more twitter followers than many other candidates*. Which makes us wonder how important Twitter really is at this level of “politics”. That’s something to look at in another post.

I could also look more at the general quality of English from someone like Trump or, indeed the Italian prime minister and some people even get picky about what Obama might have said wrong.

But hey, we do live in a democracy. Even – apparently – one that can cross oceans.

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*The complete list of declared candidates for the 2016 US election comes to 1,591. It includes characters like “Riff Raff”, “Luther T. The Merciless Lieutenant Ridiculous Warlord Stock”, “The Muslim Dictator Trump”, “Vladimir Putin” and the out-and-out “Antichrist”. But obviously you don’t have to be registered, or indeed real, to throw up on an online campaign.

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About Wash your Language

I’d love to help you polish your English! I offer web copywriting and editing as well as translation from Norwegian to English and Italian to English. Read more.

Filed Under: Italy, Language, Translation

That’s Amore, amore

February 17, 2016 by EmmaP

Valentine’s Day is behind us, for this year. But in Italy words of love are everywhere, every day and in every situation. It’s there in the plaintive teenage graffiti, the songs on the radio, the kisses on the street and, I’ve really noticed, in the way people address each other. “Amore! Come va?”

And why shouldn’t everyone be addressed as “love”, especially when life is beautiful in such a beautiful place? A parent to a child, a friend to another, a shop assistant to the customer – everyone can be called “amore”.

In Norway you’ll commonly hear the lovely phrase skatten min – my treasure (or more precisely, for these days, “my taxes”.) But it’s not really relevant to strangers. Where is the love that’s so strong and all-enveloping it’s used all the time?

And I mean, all the time:

“Ah my love, this cash register is closed”

“Oh my love did you not do your homework?”

“Sorry love, did I bump your car?”

Amore
Florentines love their graffiti

An old Yorkshire greengrocer might ask “what’ll you have luv?” It’s affectionate and charming. But that’s not really love, it even needs to be spelled differently to be sure there’s no awkward reminder of the big word itself. This is no grand passion he’s echoing.

English has many words of affectionate greeting (any of which could be used to translate Amore) – darling, sweetheart, dear, baby – but they’re taking us far from the original sentiment.

In Ireland what do we say? Pet or dote. They’re both affectionate and, characteristically, a bit different (with the emphasis on the soft Irish t). But like so many expressions in that wet-and-windy/changeable country, they’re at one remove from straightforward language and simple expression of affection.

In Canada I hear “bud” used a lot (especially to kids dressed in any kind of sporting attire). I’ll admit it’s not my favourite word but it is clearly affectionate and certainly bandied about enough to cover the recipient with a sense of commonly-understood affection and kindness, with a certain jostling parental remove.

Here in Italy, as well as Amore, people might be called caro/cara, or Tesoro, something my kids get called by strangers and now (why not?) by me.

But I’m going with Amore. Simple, ancient, melodious, universal. It’s what it’s all about.


Read more about the street art of Florence in my 2017 blog post

Filed Under: Italy, Kids, Language Tagged With: Amore

From Norway to Italy

December 12, 2015 by EmmaP

In the summer of 2015 I moved with the family and all our worldly goods from Oslo to Italy, and what a change it has been! So many aspects of daily life are different, and it has been fascinating to settle into a normal life in a beautiful place. I’ll be sharing some of my observations about how people communicate in different ways, some of the interesting expressions particular to a place and the little things that can sparkle a day.

I have a degree in Italian language and literature (from many years ago) and it’s a real pleasure to be able to speak it on a daily basis – even when facing civil servants, teachers or doctors. It is also helping my kids manage the change, having a mum who can understand their homework and translate to their friends.

Firenze Boat

The initial switch from Norwegian to Italian was tricky – and still is when we have Norwegian visitors – especially when managing some of the smaller words we use everyday.

O – in Italian “o” means “or”: pizza o pasta? But in Norwegian “o” is how Oslonians pronounce “og” which means “and”. So we’d find ourselves ordering too much food at a restaurant.

(Ah, food… now there’s a subject I could devote a whole blog to, how the issue of food rocks your life when you move from Norway to Italy)

Vi – in Italian “vi” means “you, plural”: vi abbiamo visto sulla spiaggia (we saw you on the beach). This was confusing as in Norwegian it refers to “us”: vi har sett dere pa fjellet (we saw you on the mountain). Hence much confusion as to who was doing what.

Switching from “ja” to “si” took a bit of work to change as have the Scandinavian habits of head-nodding,  “umm ummming” and taking in a loud breath instead of using words – all very un-Latin.

Pulling out your hands and using them to help communicate, that’s taken some getting used to. And it goes without saying that people talk more here… much much more.

But in general I find Italian much more approachable, and don’t feel so self-conscious about trying out something and making mistakes. There are so many filler words and expressions you can use (bahs, mas and ehs) that communicating is more flowing and more visual. And just a few more smiles to help things along. You can also shout more (and be shouted at) but hey, I’ve lived in New York and can handle that fine.

Stay tuned for more stories of cultural shift.


About Wash your Language

I’d love to help you polish your English! I offer web copywriting and editing as well as translation from Norwegian to English and Italian to English. Read more.

Filed Under: Italy, Language

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A Blog and More

I write about language and the quirks of our family life in Dublin and previously in Italy and Norway. Read More…

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Språkvask is the Norwegian word for proofing text. Literally it means “language wash”; a more poetic way of saying it!

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