doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Italian lessons for me

Two questions: How do ITALIANS pronounce "Fiocchi"?

And, has anyone been to the Beretta factory in Gardone recently? How do you arrange a factory visit? Can you just show up, or do you have to make some arrangement ahead of time? We just want to do the normal visit; we're not industrial spies nor do we have the money for bespoke guns. Would like to see their gun collection, maybe ask some questions about historical guns, buy the t-shirts and snap caps, etc.

(I can read Italian fairly easily, but my spoken Italian....is actually Spanish. Strangely, it often works....Italians are generally very tolerant of dumb Americans, it seems).

Depends on what part of Italy they are from. Some with a hard "c" and some with a soft "c." There are dozens of dialects and sub-dialects in Italy, with wild differences in vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation. My wife speaks French, and when we got married she could converse easily with my Mother's side of the family, but barely got by with my Father's side of the family. All the grandparents and aunts/uncles had been born in Italy, only a couple of hundred miles apart.

In Italian "i" is pronounced as a long "e". So it is "fee oh chee".

They probably think you are Argentinean when they hear you speak.

Send me an email and I can give you a contact. We haven't exchanged emails in a couple of years, but he did work for Beretta and his English is very good.

Pete

Hey Pete what's the Argentinian got to do with it..

BTW...its pronounced fee-�h-kee

Claudio

OK, so it's pronounced both of the two ways I alternately pronounce it. That was easy.

Claudio, I SUSPECT that what Pete's getting at is the fact that Italians are the largest "ethnic origin group" (Have I got that politically correct?) in Argentina. So people who aren't Argentinean say Spanish there has an Italian flavor. It certainly sounds a little exotic to my untutored ear.

It sounds odd, but the second largest Argentinian "ethnic origin group" is "English" which I suspect means people whose ancestors spoke SOME of some brand of English. Wouldn't be very surprised if most of them were actually Hibernian, Hebridean, Manx, unreconstructed Rebs, and sheepshaggers from all the rainy Brit moors, bogs and mosses. "English" indeed! An ethnic slur if I ever! (Just kidding; I come from a family of renowned kidders, kidnappers, and aficionados of fine English livestock.).

Pete, I will send you my email. Many thanks to all three of you.

Claudio,

In the 1890's my great grandfather traveled from Italy to Argentina then to America. He was searching for a place to relocate his family. Being from the hill country in the south of Italy, he had little choice. Over the next 20 years, 60% of the village immigrated. Some to the US and some to Argentina. I am told that I still have relatives in Argentina.

Many times, Italian-Americans traveling in Italy will mispronounce a word. Usually they pronounce it as though it were Spanish. The Italians are use to this and will normally inquire if you are from Argentina. As the Italian community there is very large.

What was stated earlier about dialects is true. However, people are taught proper Italian in school and are naturally exposed to it in the media. Yet at home, they often "slip" back to their dialects. It is usually very difficult for an Italian-American if they learned a dialect at home. In many cases, they learned a dialect and colloquialisms that are no longer in use today. I was with a friend having diner at his relative's in Italy. In dialect, he asked for a napkin. Every one, including me, started laughing. What he had asked for was "a small blanket". Then one of the old women said that she had not heard that term used since she was a little girl.

The dialects are laced with words from former conquests, eg French, Spanish, Austrian. It was the Latins who "settled Rome" and imposed their language through out the peninsula.

Today, in large city's you can do just fine with English. In small towns, Italian helps, but most people will gladly help you if you show that you are trying.

Pete

I found that out in the boonies in Southern Italy, the country people speak a dialect that is full of Spanish words and could understand me pretty well. This was south of Naples in the former "Kingdom of the Two Sicilies," a Spanish realm for several hundred years.

It helps that the Italians generally are an exceptionally gracious and welcoming people; they make me feel rather crusty and cold at times.

What Pete described is exactly what happened to me. My parents immigrated from a very rural area in the Napoli (Naples) region and I spent my summers as a boy there. Because my parents were basically uneducated I learned the dialect of the region. I can understand 'real' Italian but I only really speak my dialect. I went back in 2007 for the first time in about 15 years and definitely noticed that there was less dialect around. When I asked my family about it they said that basically because of how open communication has become due to telecommunications and travel technologies that they now use 'real' Italian as the local dialect has a stigma associated with it of being uneducated.

But to go back and answer the question.....like Lcadio said its fee-�h-kee

There is a story of two Argentinians that visit Italy for the first time,
and after being there for a few hours one says to the other:
"Che, have you noticed that everyone here has an Argentinian surname?"

(This actually relates more to the way they are than to immigration issues)


JC

JC,

Good one. That is the way they talk...

Pete