05.31.08

What was their name again?

Posted in culture, language at 12:14 pm

The Huxtables

There’s lots of American TV on here in Italy. We can watch Lost, sometimes just a few episodes behind (and dubbed into Italian). Heroes has also been dubbed. Lots of the Law and Order shows are on. And we also get the classics. Like The Cosby Show. Except it’s not The Cosby Show here. It’s I Robinson - The Robinsons.

Side note: Why was it called The Cosby Show if their name on the show was Huxtable?

So why did they change the name of the show (and the family) in Italian? I’ve heard several theories, but the most plausible is quite simple: Huxtable would be difficult to pronounce in Italian. The “H” is always silent in Italian, and is only used to change the sound of other letters. The “X” has a “Z” sound. And almost every word in Italian ends in a vowel sound (in English it ends in a vowel, but not a vowel sound).

But if you zoom out a little bit, you see how difficult it can be to take this American show, with all of its little cultural inside jokes, and transplant it into another place. And so if the show’s theme would be difficult to translate, just take the idea and put it into an Italian context. If the name’s too difficult, just change it.

Context is everything!

12.07.07

Speaking English in Italy

Posted in culture, language at 4:52 am

I have been puzzled by something lately. I went to the doctor the other day, and he prescribed an inhaler for me. The directions for taking the medicine are as follows:

Pr. VENTOYLN spray

S. Un puff al bisogno (massimo quattro volte al giorno)

Obviously there are two English words in those two short phrases: spray and puff. In Italian, the word for spray is spruzzo. The Italian word for puff is sbuffo or soffio.

So why is the English word used? I can understand using an English word for something that originated in English, or for which there isn’t a word in Italian. But I see more and more frequently English creeping into the conversation. Italians have a beautiful language that I hope to someday master, but it seems like if I just wait around long enough the job will get easier and easier.

11.03.07

Vegetables as Expletives

Posted in kids, language at 4:56 pm

I have to say it … one of the most fascinating parts of learning Italian has been learning the more colorful phrases. Obviously, our kids have picked up some pretty good ones. There’s an expression in Italian: Che cavolo! Literally, what cabbage! It’s not a bad thing to say, and in fact is even a sort of childish expression. It’s probably closest in English to “What on earth?” or maybe “Oh my!” But it’s a hard thing to translate.

Except for Trey, who I heard say in English the other day (without batting an eye), “What cabbage!”

10.21.07

Bad Translations

Posted in language at 1:50 pm

Movies in Italy are almost always dubbed, which means we usually have to wait a bit after a movie comes out in the US before it comes out here. Apparently there was a movie out called Superbad a while back. I’ve never seen it (and I don’t think I will) but I had to chuckle when I saw the poster advertising this movie here. It was called Suxbad. The letter “x” is often used as an abbreviation for per, a conjunction. So an Italian would pronounce the title correctly: Su-per-bad.

But this foreigner wondered why anyone would call a movie sucks-bad. It was a couple of weeks before I got it.

07.27.07

The Language Switch

Posted in kids, language at 3:04 pm

Even before we left the US, I was a little concerned about whether or not the Italian was going to come back after six months of little use. Some friends of ours who moved from Italy invited us over for dinner just before we came back to Italy. They speak a crazy mix of Italian, Spanish, and English at home, so we settled on Italian as the common language. And it was tough. It sort of reminded me that I really did lose some of that ability.

But somehow a switch has been flipped. It started at customs at the airport, when I had to explain to the agent why I was bringing 12 pieces of luggage, plus carry-ons, into Ancona. But I pulled it off!

Then today I noticed that the kids started calling me papà instead of dad. Later, Trey told me a story, and after realizing there were Italians around, he switched to Italian. All of these are little things that make me think that we will be able to switch back into our second language.

But keep reading the blog to read about all of our language goofs!

01.09.07

Being Bilingual

Posted in language, travel at 8:28 am

So I suppose by now I can be considered bilingual, though I still stutter and stammer my way through Italian on occasion. I noticed this weird little quirk when we were in Germany, an obviously non-Italian-speaking country. Whenever someone started speaking to me in German, Italian would come out. Many people in Germany speak English. But for some reason my brain heard German, switched into foreign language mode, and Italian came out. I had to force myself to use English.

Have any other bilingual people out there experienced something similar? And what language comes out when you’re trilingual?!

12.18.06

Hocchei

Posted in kids, language at 10:23 am

I just finished checking our daughter’s homework. She had to write a story of a conversation between her and the Christmas tree. I came across this word that I hadn’t see before: hocchei. Very few words in Italian begin with an “h,” so I knew something wasn’t right.

I asked Chloe what she meant, and she said, “You know, like when they say o-kay” It then dawned on me that she had phonetically spelled the English word “OK,” which Italians use all the time. I told her how to spell “OK” and that it was an English word, and she was surprised.

My kids really do speak Italian well…

12.11.06

We’re just like every other family

Posted in kids, language, technology at 11:13 am

Today a CD-ROM I ordered arrived in the mail. I’ve been looking for a really good Italian dictionary to help in lesson writing. The Italian-English one that I have is great, but it doesn’t define the words, it only gives you the translation. So you lose some of the original meaning. I was happy to find a dictionary on CD-ROM - so much easier to use than a big heavy book.

I was showing the kids how to use it, since they often need to look up words for their homework. I left the room to let them play around. In about 8 seconds they learned how to get the program to pronounce the words shown. And then they figured out how to make it say “poop” and “pee” and other fun words like that. Aren’t they precious?

High Speed Internet

Posted in family, language, technology at 9:31 am

One thing that Europe definitely has going for it compared to the US is high speed Internet. Being a missionary means that we use the Internet a lot. Since we have such a fast connection, it’s easy for us to be online and connected to friends and family back home.

A couple of months ago, the phone company called to tell me they have upgraded our speed to 20 MBps, and for €1 more per month, they would send me a decoder box so that I could watch TV through the Internet. I was a little skeptical at first, but signed up for the free trial.

And we’ve been really impressed. Most of the local channels are streamed to us, as well as a lot of pay channels - some come from London, so they’re in English. They put tons of movies on there, most for free, but some pay-per-view. The kids love to watch Looney Tunes (in Italian) and the kids’ movies. We hardly ever watched TV before since we get such bad reception. Now it’s kind of fun to watch the news in Italian and see how much we can pick up on. The other day the kids were asking to watch a movie and Lance said, “But Dad, it’s good language learning!” I gave in - he was right!

I can only guess based on stories I’ve heard, but the Internet really has changed what being a missionary is like.