Italianalysis No. 1 May 29, 2011

In Italy, sport is religion, religion is politics and politics is sport.  Robert Dennis, 28th May 2011

One word novel (or screenplay) December 6, 2009

A pair of shoes with steel toecaps (punta accaio) in the window of a shop at the Central Station in Milan (only €29!) are labelled: antiinfortunistiche A quick Google translation returns the phrase ‘accident prevention’. However, I feel that the word antiinfortunistiche rates as a finished work of prose, replete with its own critique of capitalist mores, conjuring up scenes [...]

Up close and impersonal December 6, 2009

‘One can then maintain that it is not true that a code organizes signs; it is more correct to say that codes provide the rules which generate signs as concrete occurences in communicative intercourse. Therefore the classical notion of ‘sign’ dissolves itself into a highly complex network of changing relationships. Semiotics suggests a sort of [...]

A new P2 November 27, 2009

I just received this message from WordPress.org and initially thought it referred to a supposed reincarnation of the Italian Masonic lodge whose members in the 1980s included at least one of Tony Blair’s close personal friends. The reality is somewhat less cataclysmic: WordPress has a novel group blog theme, which goes by the name of P2.

Flashman November 27, 2009

‘The pushiest of the photographers [in Rome in the 1950s], Paparazzo, even lent his name to tabloid snappers.’ Another Magazine Aut / Winter 2005, La Dolce Vita

Lost parrot November 27, 2009

Papagallo smarrito (Lost parrot) Photocopied notice on a tree in Milan, May 2008 The notice relates that ‘un bimbo piange per lui’ (a little boy is crying for him). A bimbo in Italian is a small boy, not a mildly offensive term for an attractive but vacuous woman.

Loafers February 18, 2009

In Italian, the little crusts of bread you use to wipe the last bit of pasta sauce from your plate are called scarpette – literally “little shoes”. Flip-flops in Italian are known as ciabatte (“ciabbatas”). (Flip-flops are also known as infraditte (“between the toes” – ditte in Italian means both fingers and toes), a reference to the litle [...]