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Ayayay

A friend of mine comes from La Spezia in Italy and speaks a local Italian dialect. The sentence 'Yesterday there was oil, now it's oil and water' spoken in this dialect consists almost entirely of vowels: Aiei i ea eio aoa i e eio e aigoa.

Sent by: Agnes

Comments

fernanda, dallas tx 2010-11-11

To Agnes,not only la Spezia has a dialect, but every town from the smallest, to the big city I know I am from Carrara few kilometers from Spezia

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Alba, Rome/Italy 2010-09-04

Is very easy actually.
Footing= comes from foot. This word came from England to France by the end of 18th century, and than came to Italy around '20 of 19th century.
Spot = spot on
phon = ¹óö³ó²Ô (from German)
box = It is like a big box and it does make sense to call it box. However, most of the people use the word Garaggio for garage.
beauty case = again is normal but it depends on your mentality. You call it vanity, we like to call it beauty.
block notes (read: block no tess)= In Italy I hear people saying blocco note, and If I'm not wrong it comes from French "bloc-notes".

Ciao:)

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Irene 2010-01-29

"Phon" actually comes from German: ¹óö³ó²Ô is a hot wind (like scirocco) and therefore a good word to be used for a hairdryer.

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Dona, USA 2009-06-17

No, not "phon" for hairdryer.

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Alexandra, UK 2009-05-05

Alessio, 'film' is the British English word for movie, so actually film isn't a fake word! I do love the Italian pronunciation of it though. And beauty case might be used by a native English speaker too. However, your other examples are definitely a bit odd! I know it's used in its correct sense, but I also like 'il part-time job', again because of the pronunciation.

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Alessio (elbite), Milan, Italy 2009-04-09

Yep, in Italy we use several 'fake' English words, but Italians don't usually know that. We definitely like to use a lot of Italenglish words, but maybe no one knows how and why this weird linguistic process starts (ignorance, creativity??). Here are some other examples of fake English words: in Italy box means garage (metto l'auto in box, I put the car in the garage), film means motion picture - movie, beauty case means vanity box, flipper means pinball table - pinball machine, block notes (read: block no tess) means notepad. Greetings from Italy!

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GiX, Italy 2009-04-07

Most of them come from '60ies tv I think. I'm 24 years old and as I was born my parents used those words, there's a good chance you can find them even in an Italian vocabulary.

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Valerie, Quebec, Canada 2009-03-31

I, as a French-speaker, don't think this is very hard to pronounce... maybe it's because our vowels in French are a lot closer to Italian vowels than English vowels.

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Deborah, Manchester 2009-03-09

When I was living in Italy I came across a number of what looked liked English words. However, I have never ever heard them used by any native English speaker, despite confident assertions by my Italian friends that they were indeed English. Footing meaning jogging, spot meaning advert, phon meaning hairdryer! Where did they come from?

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Alex 2008-10-18

It's impossible to say!

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