I don’t remember there being a gradual introduction to Italians using English words in Italy. It dawned on me one day four years ago when I was teaching English in a classroom full of teenagers. Slang expressions like “top”, “mood”’, and “trash” (which I’m sure our younger readers will know about) were all being thrown around as though they were as common as grazie or ciao.
“La nuova serie di Stranger Things è top” – or the new season of Stranger Things is top – one student told her classmate-cum-friend as she was eagerly detailing what happened in season three.
I thought nothing of the students using such words; rather I was impressed that they managed to use them so effortlessly in conversation even if their English speaking skills were subpar. I unwisely dismissed this slang as teenagers being teenagers, and wrongly put it down to their age and access to overseas content via their smartphones.
That was until around a month later when a private student of mine, Roberta, who was a fair bit older than said students, was giving me tips on which shows to watch to improve my Italian.
“You could try watching Nudi e Crudi,” Roberta said. “But it’s a bit, how can I say it, like – trash.”
It’s not just the younger generations. And it didn’t stop there. When coronavirus hit Italy in March 2020, the then-prime minister Giuseppe Conte addressed the nation in an emergency broadcast saying the whole country was going into lockdown for seven weeks. Lockdown. I was sitting on my sofa wondering why he used a random English word when confinemento – or confinement – works just as well.
The words green pass and smart-working were omnipresent on TV channels and in national papers, too. Bear in mind that these two aren’t even English terms; they’re invented Anglicisms with smart-working meaning remote working and green pass being the same as our Covid pass. These same terms are still in use three years later.
So when Fabio Rampelli, the vice-president of the Chamber of Deputies, announced his proposal last week – supported by the prime minister, Giorgia Meloni – to fine any use of English in official public communications, I was in two minds about it.
Rampelli is from the Brothers of Italy party, and his proposal left a sour taste in the mouth. He has previously suggested abolishing English from the EU now that the UK had left and questioning why Italians say “hand sanitizer” rather than il dispensatore di liquido igienizzante per le mani.
But his latest suggestion is a fine of up to €100,000 for anyone using English.
Since 2000, the use of English words has shot up by 773% according to data from Italy’s Treccani dictionary. There are now around 9,000 English words printed in the latest edition.
But then, doesn’t every language evolve over time and borrow words from other countries? “Of course,” says Paolo D’Achille, a linguistics professor at Roma Tre University, “but we’re not talking about centuries of evolving, like French borrowed words in English. We’re talking about a massive boom in two decades and we’re talking about new words in our language such as lockdown being introduced only in English.”
He continues: “Here in Italy we tend to use English words when we talk about something prestigious or when we try to sound smart. There’s an elitism to it. And when these new words come up, those who don’t understand English, usually the elderly, feel inadequate and are unaware of what’s happening. This is the difference.”
This is not just a concern of right wing politicians. Only last year, the former prime minister Mario Draghi, and whose views are on the left, asked why Italy had all these English terms.
Putting restrictions on the use of English in public office is not confined to Italy. France made that clear in its 1994 Toubon Law, which made it obligatory to use French and not English in office.
This is not the first time Italy has banned English words. Nouns such as sandwich (tramezzino) and cashmere (casimiro) were created to deter English use under Mussolini’s dictatorship. He even went so far as to dub George Washington as Giorgio Vosingtone.
That’s why Rampelli’s call for a ban strikes such a nerve. It feels like history – particularly fascist history – is repeating itself.
