One cheese panini, two ham paninis and a large fuckaccia, please!
Torna Maggie Corcoran. In questa lezione d’inglese scoprirete persino dove sono nati Antony Hopkins e RIchard Burton.
At this moment I’m travelling on the Port Talbot – Gatwick train, leaving Wales and heading towards Milan. After a few days of erratic Internet connection I have just switched my computer on to read your witty and helpful comments on In gamba. ☺ I was just thinking of all of you (honestly!) because I have just bought my PANINIS in the buffet car of the train. Aarrgh! The shame of it! It makes me laugh and it makes me cringe, I feel embarrassed to be British.
I have noticed that the Brits seem to adopt and adapt Italian words mainly for food: bruschetta, focaccia, panini and gnocchi are all ‘in’ words in every eating place at the moment. All exotic sounding words but even after a few glasses of vino they are all still so difficult to pronounce! “I would like a tomato BRUSSHKETTA, a large onion FUCKACCIA, one PANINI and some JUNNOKKI with pesto please”
My home town Port Talbot (the Welsh equivalent of Dalmine) – land of Richard Burton, Antony Hopkins, Kathryn Jenkins and Michael Sheen – is full of Italian owned catering businesses: Antolin’s, Monopoli’s, Vizani’s, Ferarri’s etc.
Most of these Italians came to Wales in the late 1800’s (mainly from Bardi in the Val di Ceno or Abruzzi). These clever and gregarious Italians didn’t venture into agriculture or mining, instead they went into catering (mainly ice-cream). However, this meant setting up shops and advertising their names. So they adapted their names to suit their customers, for example, Ferrari became Ferrari’s and Giuseppe became Joe’s.
Dear creatives, this is what you call business and not smoothie language.
Those of you lucky enough to have seen my curriculum will know that I have a mission to persuade you to use native speakers and my motto is “What would your client prefer?
Brunello or……………………….Tavernello?
My perfect English……………or your Inglish?”
If you want to see for yourself write to corcoranmaggie@libero.it
I promise it is written in English not Welsh ☺
(Maggie Corcoran)