換個角度認識意大利 | ENCOUNTERING ITALY OFF THE BEATEN TRACK

Walking through this gate to go to work/teach every day

每天都要進出這個鐵閘去課室和房間

1. Stereotypes both on Italy, and Italians’ on the outside world | 意大利的黑板印象和意大利人對世界的刻板印象

I grew up having Pizzahut's pizzas with pineapple topping, I still like it today. I first started to gain more Western friends when I lived in Australia, I came across the debate of whether putting pineapples on pizzas is appropriate. I thought it was just a casual discussion topic amongst friends (in the West's social context), but little did I know the Italian kids I met in the summer camp took this question very seriously. "Do you have pizzas with pineapples?" Yes, my favourite pizza is Pizza Tropicale. With crossed arms and a stern expression, the kids showed their disapproval of my unsophistication. "Do you cook spaghetti with ketchup?" No, of course. I didn't want to disappoint them twice., I actually do... The kids applauded for me. I'm not exaggerating, I got interrogated about my preference in these dilemmas on a daily basis.
 
"Do you have a girlfriend?" was the second most popular question I was asked. I'd normally counter-ask them "How about you?". Most of them said they were looking for one; not a basic ragazza/o but ragazza/o svedese. I learned that the Italian word for "girl" (ragazza) and "boy" (ragazzo) also means "girlfriend" and "boyfriend". Quite a number of them emphasised their urge to date a Swedish person. I had no idea why their dream partner had to be Swedish but they all got very excited when the new half-Swedish/half-Italian boy joined halfway in the camp.
 
9 out of 10 Italian kids and young adults (my colleagues in the camp) said they wanted to do Erasmus so bad. The Erasmus program allows students to study or intern abroad, it promotes cultural exchange, language learning, and international collaboration, fostering global understanding and connections. So many kids and other colleagues who are in uni said their itch was to be able to do Erasmus, doesn't matter if it's a week-long exchange or a 3-year-long degree.

我自小喜歡吃Pizzahut的夏威夷披，至今還是很喜歡。當我在澳洲開始結交更多西方朋友時，才發現原來應不應該放菠蘿在pizza上是個在西方被熱烈討論的話題。我原本以為這只是我朋友之間的無聊的話題而已，沒想到在夏令營遇到的意大利青年對這個問題非常認真：「你吃菠蘿pizza嗎？」是的，我最喜歡的pizza就是夏威夷披（有菠蘿）。孩子們雙手交叉，表情嚴肅地表示不滿，「那你用茄汁煮義大利粉嗎？」不會，當然不會。我可不想再讓他們失望了。（其實我真的會呢……）青年們做為我鼓掌。我沒有誇大，幾乎每天都被他們問這些有關意大利美食偏好的問題。

「你有女朋友嗎？」是我被問到的第二個最熱門的問題。我通常會反問他們「那你呢？」大多數青年說他們正在找，但他們很有要求；最好的是瑞典人的女朋友/男朋友。意大利文中的「女孩」（ragazza）和「男孩」（ragazzo）也可以意味著「女朋友」和「男朋友」。不少青年人強調他們特別想和瑞典的ragazzo/a拍拖。至於為什麼他們心儀對象一定要是瑞典人，我真的毫無頭緒。好笑的是有一天，真的有一個半瑞典半意大利的混血男孩加入夏令營，女孩都興奮不已。

十個意大利孩子和年輕人中有九個（包括和我同齡的夏令營同事）說他們非常想參加Erasmus。Erasmus是個讓歐盟成員國的學生到國外學習或實習的交流計劃。成功報讀Erasmus的人會到處有文化交流、語言學習和國際合作之類的非一般學習／實習體驗。很多青年和正在就讀大學的同事們說，他們的夢想就是可以考上Erasmus，即時去一兩個星期也沒關係。

No proper whiteboards were provided by the school, I had to join together and stick separate A3 sheets on the wall then write on them

因為公司沒有給我們白板，我要先把A3紙貼在墻上，然後再當它們是白板開始在上面寫字

2. School system | 教育系統

From what I heard from my students, the Italian education system looks like this;

3-11 years old: primary school

12-14 years old: secondary school

15-19 years old: high school (liceo/instituto) of the following options:

• Liceo classico (humanity subjects)
• Liceo Linguistico (languages)
• Liceo musicale e coreutico (music)
• Liceo scientifico (science)
• Liceo artistico (arts)
• Instituto tecnico (technical/vocational)
• Instituto professionale (professional/vocational)

Whenever students are losing their concentration or starting to fall asleep, I ask “So, who’s your most hated teacher and subject at school?” “I hate Latin and the Latin teacher the most!” They replied. Latin is a compulsory subject for those who study at a Liceo Linguistico. "Latin is difficult to learn, boring, and useless! I’d rather learn English” my miserable students ranted. Well, Italian is considered the contemporary language that has the highest similarity to Latin, yet these Italian-speaking Liceo students (presumably language lovers) still find it challenging to learn… 
 
One more interesting thing about Italian schools was —— the “school uniform” was a dream for every kid. Italian high schools (liceo) don’t have school uniforms and most of my kids were jealous of the school uniform I had, which was rather not preferred by almost every kid in Hong Kong.
In Hong Kong, we’d die to pay HKD$20 (to be transferred to a random charity by the school) to wear our own clothes on the last day of school before Christmas.

根據我這夏令營的學生們聽來的，意大利的教育系統大概是這樣的：

3-11歲：小學

12-14歲：初中

15-19歲：高中（Liceo/Instituto），高中有以下幾種選擇：

• Liceo classico（人文科目）
• Liceo Linguistico（語言）
• Liceo musicale e coreutico（音樂和舞蹈）
• Liceo scientifico（科學）
• Liceo artistico（藝術）
• Instituto tecnico（技術/職業）
• Instituto professionale（專業/職業）

每當我發現學生開始失去注意力或昏昏欲睡時，我就會問他們：「你們在學校最討厭的老師和科目是什麼？」他們回答：「我最討厭拉丁文和拉丁文老師！」拉丁語是那些在Liceo Linguistico學習的學生的必修課目。「拉丁語難學、無聊又沒用！我寧願上英語課。」那些可憐的學生向我抱怨。意大利語被認為是與拉丁語最相似的現代語言，但這些說意大利語的Liceo學生（意味他們也愛學語言）仍然覺得學拉丁語很有挑戰性……

關於義大利學校的另一件有趣的事情是——「校服」是每高中生的夢想。意大利高中（Liceo）沒有校服，我的大多數學生都羨慕我中學時有的校服。好笑的是，幾乎所有香港的學生都不太喜歡校服。在香港，我們都恨不得花HKD$20（捐給學校，學校在轉給慈善機構）在聖誕party當天穿便服上學。

My students (who would wear bikinis to class)

我的學生（會穿比堅尼上我課）

Cities and towns where the kids come from

學生來自意大利不同的地方

3. Linguistics | 語言學

I can talk about this all day long. I've always had a keen interest in observing and learning the science and mechanism of languages. I've never officially studied linguistics at uni or anything (which was something I regretted not doing), the below analysis is based on my personal conclusions of my observation and is rather biased.

For me, the Italian-English accent is definitely one of the cutest and most subtle things I found on earth. Unlike English and other Germanic languages, Italian as a Romance language, tends to require speakers to pronounce every syllable of a word. So, if an Italian speaker were to say "nature" in English, they tend to say "na-tu-re" instead of "na-chur".

Second, Italian vocabularies tend to have a pronounced consonant as the final letter of most words. For instance, "musica" (music) and "accento" (accent). Therefore, even when an Italian speaker knows "music" in English doesn't have the letter "a" at the end and tries to skip the "a" sound, they are still likely to keep a hinge of consonantal sound after the "c" - "mu-sic-keh". More examples: "om-work-keh" (homework), "won-neh" (one), "an-deh" (and). No matter how many times I reminded them not to make a consonantal sound at the end of words when speaking in English, they just couldn't control their tongue/mouth but allowed the cheeky little "eh" sound to sneak in...

I didn't mean to, but I also picked up a few slangs and swearwords from the kids;

- che cazzo (wtf)

- che schifo (how disgusting)

- merda (sh*t)

- dimme (tell me/ you can start speaking)

這是我可以說不完的話題。我一直對觀察和學習語言很有興趣。雖然我從未在大學正式讀過語言學（這是我的遺憾），以下的分析都是基於我個人的觀察得出的結論，因此可能有些偏頗和unprofessional。

對我來說，意大利人的英語口音絕對是地球上最可愛和微妙的事情之一。與英語和其他日耳曼（Germanic）語言不同，作為羅曼語（Romance）族的意大利語往往要求說話者發出每個音節（syllable）。所以，如果一個意大利人說出英語的 “nature”，他們很大機會會發音成 “na-tu-re” 而不是 “na-chur”。

其次，大多數意大利詞彙的末尾都有一個明顯的響音（vowel）。例如，“musica”（音樂）和“accento”（口音）。因此，雖然英文字 “music” 最尾沒有字母 “a”，很多意大利人仍然可能在 “c” 後保持一個響音的聲音 - “mu-sic-keh”。更多例子：“om-work-keh”（homework 作業）、“won-neh”（one 一）、“an-deh”（and 和）。無論我提醒他們多少次在說英語時不要在詞尾任意加上vowel的音，他們就是控制不住...

我不是個喜歡說髒話的人，但我也從孩子們那裡學到了一些髒話和slang：

• che cazzo（wtf）
• merda（sh*t）
• che schifo（真噁心）
• dimme（告訴我/你可以開始說話了）

In the middle of nowhere in Sicily | On our way to hunt for fruits in the nearest town

西西里島的荒蕪之地 | 那個兩小時的單車旅程的途中

4. Ancestry |（找不到一個合適的中文字）

Like most other European peoples, Italians have a very diverse ancestry. Physical features include blonde, ginger, brunette, eyes of different colours, dark facial hair, and light facial hair, some had more Arab-looking appearance (which surprised the unsophisticated me the most), and some claimed to be fully Italian but had Greek, Albanian, French, and Berber last names.

和大多數歐洲人一樣，義大利人的ancestry也很mixed。外貌特徵包括：金髮、紅髮、棕髮、各種顏色的眼睛、深色鬍子和淺色鬍子。有些西西里人看起來更像阿拉伯人（我有點surprised），有些人自稱是純正義大利人，但卻有希臘、阿爾巴尼亞、法國和柏柏爾文（Berber）的姓氏。

5. Dances 跳舞

Throughout my stay in the summer camp I was heavily brainwashed by the never-stopping dance music. Now, those music aren’t lame songs that Smooth Radio (UK) would play but songs that every Italian would recognise, know, and know the dance moves of. The second after the DJ starts to play those songs, residents of the camp (of all ages) start dancing instantly.

在夏令營我被永遠不會停止播放的營舞音樂洗腦了。這些音樂可不是英國Smooth Radio播的又老土又悶的歌，而是每個意大利人都認識，而且會知道怎樣跳的歌經典夏令營營舞歌。DJ一放開始些歌，營裏的住客和職員、男女老幼，來自意大利東南西北，都會自動跳舞。