London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

Il degrado della lingua italiana

The French are always the one’s worrying about the revolting infiltration of English upon their beautiful and august language — and rightly so — but in my experience it is the Italians who should be worrying. One need only look at their newspapers to see the wretched expansion of English into one of the most beautiful languages of Europe, and indeed the world. Carla Bruni is “la first lady”? What’s wrong with “prima signora” or some other such equivalent.

“Il day after” should be “Il giorno dopo”.

I’m sure there must be some way of phrasing “political trash” in Italian.

“Black out” could be “mancanza di alimentazione” or “guasto a linea elettrica”. Admittedly, neither are excellent headline material compared to the nine-letter bisyllabic “black out”, but this tendency to include Englishisms in printed Italian should be resisted by editors & readers alike.

Published at 11:16 am on Friday 7 August 2009. Categories: Newspapers Tags: , , .
Comments

‘Englishisms’ plaguing the Italian language is so grave that it might (or should) have become already one of the most used pickup lines in, say, the library gild.

There are few things so jejune and defacing than saying (let alone writing) in Italian “il killer” instead of “il assassino” or “il sicario”. I really dont get it.

Reversely, a close language like Spanish (from Spain) seems to be quite resilient to this banale trend. Unfortunately, that doesnt mean that Spanish (in Spain) is not impoverished. It definitely is. Whereas in America Spanish is plagued by anglicisms but with occasional delightful flashes (typically, Iberian archaisms otherwise kept alive and kicking), in Spain itself it is just a plain, dull, language.

But at least we still say “Primera Dama”, dont we?.

Mountolive 8 Aug 2009 4:13 am

I think we must remember that the influence of popular American culture and hence American English (rather than British English) has much to do with America as the liberating power.

Giuseppe 8 Aug 2009 9:47 am

If you think Italian newspapers got bad, you should check out Korean newspapers and compare them throughout the decades.

Hoija 10 Aug 2009 6:40 am

Che peccato – definitely tragic. And ironic considering how historically influential Italy used to be.

Margaret 12 Aug 2009 3:55 pm

Perhaps ‘prima donna’ is a better translation of ‘first lady.’

Leo 13 Aug 2009 2:20 pm

So sad.

Alessandro 14 Aug 2009 12:48 am

This article doesn’t even mention the two words that bug me the most in the Italian press: “partner” and “killer”. What about “amante” and “assassino”? They can’t say that Americans invented those concepts after all.

valeria kondratiev 14 Aug 2009 11:59 pm
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