Italian language

Italian Accents

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“Stanlio, non fare lo stupeedo!”

When an American speaks Italian with a particularly bad accent, Italians often refer to Stanlio e Ollio: Laurel and Hardy, whose accents in the Italian versions of their films are legendarily hilarious, full of flat Rs and words stressed on the wrong syllable.

I used to wonder why these films had been dubbed so badly. Laurel and Hardy are funny enough without silly accents, and why pick on these guys in particular in the dubbing? Everyone else gets dubbed into a normal Italian accent, usually very well.

Then I learned that the films were not initially dubbed by Italians; the voices are those of Laurel and Hardy. When their first talkies came out, it was impossible to dub a new soundtrack onto an existing film. The only way to make an Italian version was to reshoot the whole thing, with the actors doing the Italian dialog themselves. They either read it off cards or memorized it phonetically (as some Italian actors do today when acting in English films). But no one had instructed them in the finer points of Italian pronunciation, so they made mistakes like ‘stuPEEdo’ instead of ‘STUpid-oh.’

Italians found this so funny that, even when technology improved and it became possible to use Italian voices to dub a new soundtrack, the silly accent was maintained, and sticks to this day as a cliche of Americans (or Brits) speaking Italian.

Ask an American to imitate an Italian speaking English, and most of the time you will get the sort of accent heard in American mafia movies, which appears to be loosely based on the pronunciation of someone’s Sicilian or Neapolitan ancestors.

To an Italian ear, there are marked differences in regional accents, and some regional dialects are so different in pronunciation and vocabulary as to be unintelligible to outsiders. Many northern Italians despise the ‘uncouth’ accents of southerners, and would be offended to be lumped into a language category with them.

But maybe that’s changing.

I’ve been meaning for some time to talk about Andrea Camilleri’s Montalbano books, a series of police mysteries set in a small town in Sicily. Part of the appeal is that they are written in a semi-Sicilian dialect, giving a flavor that could be achieved no other way, though the publishers and Camilleri himself initially feared that the general Italian public would not be able to understand it. It turned out not to be a problem, even for me; after the first chapter or so, I didn’t find the language difficult. I’ve noticed that the language is becoming more and more Sicilian as the series goes on; perhaps Camilleri assumes that his devoted fans are now trained to handle it.

Montalbano in book form has been popular for years, and now has been made into a series of TV movies. Accent was again expected to be a problem, so for the first series our hero was made to sound ‘more Roman than Sicilian.’ For the second series, airing now, the accents sound quite Sicilian to me, though not so much that I can’t follow the dialog. Montalbano is wildly popular with all age groups, which seems to be having an interesting side effect: the Sicilian accent is now considered cool. My daughter and her Milanese classmates yesterday begged their school custodian, a Sicilian, to say ‘quattro’ (four), which he pronounces ‘quacchro’. He was baffled, and probably thought at first that they were making fun of him. But they explained that they like to hear him speak because he sounds just like Montalbano; then he was flattered!

The Montalbano books are being translated into English and appear to be selling well. They must lose something without the dialect, but they are still interesting stories with great characters, so I recommend them to mystery-lovers, and to anyone who might enjoy descriptions of Sicilian scenery and food. Montalbano loves good food, and so, presumably, does the author; the stories are frequently side-tracked by mouthwatering descriptions of dishes that Montalbano puts away with pittito lupigno (wolfish appetite). This is one aspect that, sadly, is not preserved in the television series; I guess they didn’t want to make it into a cooking show.

Montalbano links:

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India

Watching Television in India

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I rarely watch television as such. At home in Milan, our TV is used mostly to display videotapes, DVDs, Video CDs, and Super Video CDs. Italian television (almost completely in the hands of Prime Minister Berlusconi now) is so awful that it’s not worth switching on (except for Montalbano, about whom morehere).

So if I watch actual television, this usually occurs in a hotel room in some other country, when I’m too tired to do anything else. It’s a useful window onto a country and its culture. In the US, I was appalled at the number of true crime and crime re-enactment shows, in addition to the usual series about police and various sorts of private investigators. Flip a channel, see someone get killed. Yuck. No wonder so many Americans think they need to defend themselves with guns.

On my way back from Mussoorie, I spent a couple of days in a hotel in Delhi, where, since I was tired and not feeling well (sinus infection again), I spent many hours channel surfing, which was very educational.

There were CNN and MSNBC, in local editions with Indian announcers discussing Asian and Indian news and markets, as well as the usual international top of the hour stuff. There seemed to be a channel for each major Indian language, of which I could follow only Hindi (and that not as well as I’d like, given all the years I once put into studying it). There were Hindu, Muslim, Christian, and Jain religious shows. There were American cartoons dubbed into Hindi, and Hindi films with English subtitles. There was even a Hindi sci-fi series that looked rather like the original Star Trek, complete with cheesy 60s-stylish costumes.

There was MTV with the usual international pop stars, but there were also about six channels of Indian music videos, some of them numbers from films (almost all Indian movies are musicals), others stand-alone videos by popular singers. One of the most popular pop musicians is Daler Mehndi, a pudgy Punjabi who sings and dances to infectious bhangra dance music. He wears bright silk suits and turbans, and is generally surrounded by scantily-clad dancers. At least one of his videos appeared to have been shot somewhere in Italy.

At any hour of the day, you can see Amitabh Bacchan on every other channel. He’s a film actor, already famous when I was in school, sort of the Robert Redford of India, except that he’s made far more movies. I didn’t find him attractive when we were both younger, but I must say he has aged very gracefully; that touch of gray at the temples adds a lot. He’s still going strong, in fact was shooting a film in Mussoorie when I was there. (I didn’t see him, but it was big news in Mussoorie, and through a classmate I met a couple of bit players from the film.)

On an Indian equivalent to America’s Home Shopping Network (yes, we have them in Italy, too), I saw a long series of ads for ‘Sriyantr’, a crystal amulet purported to bring peace and prosperity to you and your household, for only Rs. 1999 plus postage and handling. I couldn’t make out all the Hindi, but it ran something like: ‘Aids concentration for exams or in driving! Small enough to put on your dashboard or carry in your purse!’ There were testimonials from a a student who passed his exams, a formerly nervous driver, and a businessman whose business perked up after the entire office gathered around Sriyantr to dopuja [worship] – I wonder how any non-Hindus in the office would have liked that?

One testimonial came straight out of myth. In the ‘Mahabharata,’ India’s great epic, the five Pandava brothers all marry Draupadi, a princess. Kunti, Draupadi’s new mother-in-law, tells her that it is critical for the brothers to remain united (they will eventually have to face their numerous cousins, the Kauravs, in battle), so she must try very hard not to play favorites, which would cause strife in the family.

So far, true to the original Mahabharata. The Pandavas, Draupadi, and Kunti are shown in elaborate costumes, smiling nervously at each other. Then Kunti takes Draupadi aside and gives her the magic item which will help to ensure family harmony: Sriyantr.

This seems to me a somewhat vulgar use of religion, a bit like having Jesus Christ endorse rosaries, which I’m fairly sure wouldn’t play well over here.

 

If you’re interested in knowing more about The Mahabharata, I highly recommend Peter Brooks’ version; you can buy it on DVD from Amazon here.

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travel in India

India, 2002

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Nov 12 – arrival in Delhi, 1:30 am

After the intense disappointment of not being able to attend my class‘ 20th anniversary reunion in Mussoorie last year, I wanted this trip so badly that at every step of the way I feared something would to prevent it. I was afraid I would be refused a visa (though there was no reason I should be), some major terrorist thing would happen, or that for some unfathomable reason I’d be refused entry at the airport. So, when I finally passed the immigration counter, I was light-headed with relief, and deeply happy.

I was met at the airport by my very reliable travel agency, Uday Travels. In India, especially if you’re a woman travelling alone, you need a good agent there on the ground. For each of my trips, I arranged in advance by email to be met at the airport by a car and agent, and most of my in-country travel was also arranged by them.

We drove from Delhi airport to Gurgaon, where I’d be staying with a classmate and his family. The traffic heading into Delhi at that time of night is horrendous: miles of trucks, which are only allowed into the city after midnight, and must pass a security checkpoint. We were fortunately going the other direction, but it was difficult to cross the line of traffic to get into the lane going the other way. India drives on the left, by the way. Roadside dhabas (snack stalls) vie for the truck drivers’ custom with huge, backlit signs and colored neon lights. The names are Hindi, but in roman script: “Manju ka Dhaba.”

My cellphone works! I was able to exchange SMS (text) messages with my husband and daughter. Being able to communicate more easily I hope will reassure them about my safety here.

Gurgaon used to be a small town in the state of Haryana. It is now a suburb of Delhi, calling itself “The Millenium City,” and it’s booming. Many multinationals, anxious to escape the crowding and expense of Delhi, have set up their regional headquarters in Gurgaon. There are gleaming tall buildings equal to any in Europe, some of them architecturally very interesting. It’s after 2 am, but I can see people inside working. Some may be employees of India’s famous call centers, providing English-language customer support worldwide.

There are tall apartment buildings, sometimes clustured together in blocks. My friend and his family live in one of these. The building is very well designed, and completely different from any apartment building I’ve seen before. Rather than a hermetically sealed box, it’s all angles and openings, both horizontal and vertical, so that air and light flow into the interior. The apartment entrances have screen doors as well as solid doors, so you can choose to be open to your neighbors, which creates a feeling of community. Yet it’s far less noisy than our Milan apartment, and at night it’s completely quiet.

My friends’ apartment is on two floors, with an interior staircase and a large exterior terrace two stories high, a wonderful place to sit and chat and enjoy the evening air (even a bit too cool, this time of year).

I arrived there at about 3 a.m., and went to sleep with a smile on my face. I had finally made it back to India.

I slept til 11, and woke up very slowly. I read The Financial Times, a four-page pinkish paper. It included discussions on tax reform, and simple and useful advice for investors. It’s wedding season, so there was a financial guide for new brides, advising them to retain financial independence: “You’re walking on clouds now, but you never know what the future may hold.” Another article touted platinum as “the hottest trend, especially in wedding-related jewelry;” Indian brides are traditionally given expensive jewelry. As the guide for brides pointed out, this becomes the bride’s personal property.

From the balcony I can see a wild green parrot and a squirrel. I suppose the wildlife has not been entirely driven out of Gurgaon yet. There isn’t much of a view, though, due to smoke and haze. Visibility is maybe 2 km.

Milk is delivered in sealed plastic bags that look like little pillows.

Delhi is taking steps to reduce its horrible pollution. The daytime ban on trucks is one such. A new bus and underground metro system, due to launch December 26, should also help. (Delhi has had buses for years, of course, but the new ones will replace the old smokers that contribute so much to the atmosphere.)

In the afternoon I took a car into Delhi to try to find a gemstone to replace the one lost from my engagement ring a few days ago (it wasn’t a diamond, fortunately). I went to a fancy jewely shop in the South Extension market (sort of a mini-mall), and found it full of families buying wedding jewelry. The man told me that the only loose gems they had were diamonds, an investment that didn’t interest me. He said I’d have to go to Old Delhi to find loose gems of any other kind. That’s an expedition that will require some planning.

Another shop in the market sold music and movies, including Video CDs – full length movies on CD in MPEG 1 format – for about $4 each. I bought a few to see how they look on my DVD player at home. The Video CD format is popular throughout Asia; you can buy standalone Video CD players, I assume that the players as well as the discs are cheaper than DVD.

That evening several classmates and friends who happened to be in Delhi (or live there) came for dinner, so we spent many hours talking, reminiscencing, and laughing.

 

Nov 13 – Delhi to Dehra Dun

The next morning I had to get up early again to catch a train to Dehra Dun. The train wouldn’t even be at the platform til 7, but it was one of those situations where if you leave early you end up sitting around at your destination for an hour, and if you don’t, traffic sets in and you’ll be late. So we sat at the station, and I chatted with the tour guide over sweet, milky tea.

Standards have declined since I last took the Shatabdi Express. It used to have only one class, and my agent didn’t mention that there’s now an Executive Car, which costs twice as much ($14 instead of $7), but is a lot cleaner. So I was in second class, and was not much amused to find small cockroaches crawling around my seat.

The windows are tinted yellow, to reduce summer glare, so the heavy mist outside looks unhealthy (and, this being Delhi, it probably is).

By the time the train reaches the countryside north of Delhi, the sun is up and people are in view, mostly men out shitting in the fields. (Where do the women go?) More palatable views include ponds with birds: white egrets, and something with a gray body, white breast, and black head.

Signs and Portents

Though an ever-increasing proportion of the population speaks English, Indian signage has lost none of its unintentional hilarity. A few examples:

Tress Passers will be prosecuted.

Accident prone area – please drive slow.

Plants on sale – also on rent

“Real fruit se full” This tag line for a brand of ice cream is a weird mix of Hindi and English. The  Hindi word se means “of”. But the construction follows Hindi grammar, so the sentence translates as “Full of real fruit.”

Traffic lights are the standard red-yellow-green; on some, the word “Relax” is painted onto the red light.

“Indian marble – looks Italian!”

more signs

Nov 13 – On the Shatabdi Express to Dehra Dun

Cockroaches aside, the Shatabdi is very civilized. We are first given bottled water and a newspaper, then served an early tea, with a thermos of hot water and two “tea kits,” consisting of a tea bag, sugar, and powdered milk. There is also a packet of two biscuits (cookies, to you Americans). At first I was afraid that this was all the breakfast we would get, and was glad I had brought along my own packet of biscuits. But after the first stop a full breakfast was served. I took the vegetarian option, which proved to be a spicy vegetable mix wrapped in mashed potatoes and fried (croquettes), served with spicy ketchup, and white bread with butter. And more tea.

Dehra Dun

We arrived in Dehra Dun, the end of the line, at about 1 pm. As soon as the train stopped, coolies (porters) swarmed aboard to take the luggage. Their uniform consists of a lunghi (a man’s sarong), red shirt, and turban, with a brass identification/license plate on a string tied to the upper arm or slung diagonally across the chest. One of them put my small bag over his shoulder and balanced my big bag on top of his turban. I ended up paying him 25 rupees (about 50 cents), considerably more than the official rate. Yes, I am a tourist patsy. After years of experiencing India as a poor student and having to haggle over every rupee, nowadays I just can’t be bothered. Especially when one rupee is worth all of 5 cents – so very little to me, but sometimes a lot to the recipient.

My classmate Yuti was on the same train, but we weren’t seated together, so we didn’t meet till we got off the train in Dehra Dun; she had to run down the platform to catch up with me and the fast-moving coolie. Outside we hunted for a taxi. To get from Dehra Dun to Mussoorie, you don’t want to use the official taxi office, because those taxis will only take you as far as Picture Palace bus stand at the beginning of Mussoorie, and you’d have to change to another taxi to get to Woodstock School on the other side of town. The total cost ends up being the same, but to avoid the hassle of changing, we sought out an unofficial Mussoorie taxi. Only official taxis are allowed to park near the station, so actually getting into the taxi was a business. We were taken in a three-wheeled scooter taxi to a little lane nearby, where we waited for our car, which turned out to be a very mini mini-van. We stopped for lunch at a restaurant in Dehra Dun, then headed on up the hill.

Mussoorie begins at about 6000 ft (2000 meters) up the first range of the foothills of the Himalayas. To get to Woodstock, you have to continue from there on a steep and winding road which runs up the ridge through Landour Bazaar. There are far too many cars nowadays, so there is always a traffic jam at the foot of Mullingar Hill (the steepest and narrowest part of the road); inevitably one or more cars have to back up and find ways to fit around each other; it’s like one of those puzzles where you slide the tiles around to get the numbers in order, and the fit is almost that tight! It can take half an hour to untangle the mess and get everyone on their way. On the whole it’s faster to walk, but not with luggage.

(Back when I was in school, when students arrived for the beginning of the term we would be dropped off at Picture Palace, where coolies would meet us to take our trunks, and we would walk from there to school.)

Uday Tours & Travel Pvt. Ltd
10/2459 Beadonpura, Karol Bagh
New Delhi [India]
Phone : 91-11-574 9207, 571 1278, 581 6352, 575 4840
Fax : 91-11-572 8103 or 575 7108
E Mail : uday@del2.vsnl.net.in & utt@ndf.vsnl.net.in

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Woodstock School

Woodstock School Meta-History

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The reason (well, excuse, really) for this trip to Mussoorie was to get started on a project for Woodstock School. The school will celebrate its 150th anniversary in 2004, an occasion which calls for a book of some sort. Detailed histories have previously been published, covering the period up to 1983, and a glossy picture book was produced a few years ago. The school has also recently published a collection of essays by alumni (yes, including me), and a book about alumni artists and their work. A group of alumni is working on a history made up of personal stories collected during reunions (see Living on the Edge).

So what could we do that would be new and different? And how can we attract a larger audience than the few thousand alumni, former staff, and families who are somehow personally connected to the school? And why me to head this up?

I puzzled over that last question, but, the further I get into this project, the more it seems that I was destined for it, in spite of a lot of things that I am not.

My connection with Woodstock, unlike others’, does not stretch back generations. The epitome of the old Woodstock family is the Alters: D. Emmet Alter was principal from 1940 to 43. One of his sons, Bob, graduated in 1943 and later returned to the school several times in several capacities, finally as principal from 1968 to 1979; he was instrumental in transforming the school into the international institution that it is today. Bob and Ellen Alter’s three sons (Steve, Joe, and Andy) all attended Woodstock; Steve, a novelist now teaching at MIT, wrote about it in All the Way to Heaven: An American Boyhood in the Himalayas.

Tom Alter, a nephew of Bob, took Indian citizenship and is now a well-known actor and cricket commentator, based in Mumbai. He married a woman who taught at Woodstock at one time. There are other significant Alters; I need to construct a family tree to sort them all out!

I had never heard of Woodstock until Bob and Ellen Alter came on a recruiting visit to Dacca, Bangladesh, around January of 1977. My family had arrived there in October of 1976 (my dad as local head of Save the Children), confidently expecting that I would be able to attend the American school in Dacca for the 8th grade. We were wrong. The school was so small that it had room for only 15 students per grade, and the 8th was already filled. We considered a Bangladeshi school (“English medium”, meaning that all teaching is done in English) but the standards were too different: they were way ahead of me on math and sciences, way behind me on English and writing.

So I began 8th grade work by correspondence, through the Calvert School in Maryland. I initially started it with another girl in the same plight as myself, being taught by her mother. That didn’t go too well, either: I didn’t like the mother.

This had been going on for a few weeks when the Alters appeared. Clearly, my school situation needed fixing, and Woodstock seemed like a good solution. All I remember about my meeting with them was being very concerned that I would be allowed to put up my own posters in my dorm room; I had carried those posters carefully from Pittsburgh to Connecticut to Dacca; they were part of my travelling “home.” The Alters assured me that I could stick up whatever I wanted in my room; I sought detailed advice on what sort of tape to bring.

My 9th grade year at Woodstock would begin in July of 1977, and, having gotten a late start, I had to finish 8th grade in a hurry. I abandoned my study partner and finished 8th grade at double the speed recommended by the Calvert School. I had some help with algebra from an American friend then living with us; otherwise, I did it all on my own (both my dad and stepmother were intensely involved with their own work).

I started 9th grade at Woodstock just in time to save my sanity. The four years I spent there nurtured me, gave me self-confidence, and helped to heal the wounds of my parents’ divorce and other upheavals. Years later, my therapist told me that if I hadn’t gone to Woodstock, I would probably have ended up “gibbering in a corner somewhere.” So my involvement with Woodstock, though it does not (yet) span generations, has been extremely important to me.

In my time, the school was undergoing an important demographic shift, from a student body composed largely of American and Canadian missionaries’ children (mish kids) to a more international mix. My own class represented the “ideal” of 1/3 North Americans (mostly mish kids) – 1/3 Indians – 1/3 Other.

As usual for me, I didn’t fit in with any particular group. In fact, I took pains to set myself apart from some, being vociferously atheist in a Christian school. Nor was I a typical Woodstocker in many other ways. Hiking was popular, given our stunning Himalayan environs, but after a horrible (for me) required 9th grade activity week trek, I never again went on any sort of organized hike.

The school is famous for its music program. I dutifully took piano lessons for three years, but was the despair of my teacher, combining beautiful, long-fingered piano hands with no musicality whatsoever. I gave up on choir after less than a semester because the music was boring.

But Woodstock is so all-embracing a community that I soon found my own niches and ways to contribute. I became a public works artist: I painted murals on the walls of the girls’ dorm; made large batiks to decorate the elementary school; was called upon to create Bottom’s ass’ head and the lion costume for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” I was for a time editor of the school paper, and later president of the girls’ dorm. I worked on the yearbook. And, during my senior year, I got interested in the community around us, Mussoorie and Landour.

I originally had an ulterior motive. During Activity Week every autumn, students leave campus in chaperoned groups, in pursuit of activities that interest them: trekking, community service, tourism, sports, music, etc. The tradition was that seniors could set their own programs for Activity Week and go pretty much where they liked, or at least the boys could. For safety reasons, girls could only leave town with chaperoned groups, although they could do independent projects alongside whatever the group was doing. The only way for me to avoid supervision was to stay in Mussoorie and do some sort of project right there. So I elected to stay in a guest house near the school, and learn about Mussoorie and its history.

There wasn’t much printed material available in Mussoorie, so I had to get out and see things and talk to people. My homeroom teacher, a long-time staff member well integrated into the local community, arranged for me to meet some of Mussoorie’s leading lights, such as Ruskin Bond, a famous Anglo-Indian writer.

Though I reveled in my week of unsupervised freedom, I did not actually break any school rules. But I had some adventures, met lots of interesting people, and got better acquainted with some I already knew. Mr. Abhinandan, the tailor who had been making my clothes for years, invited me to his house for lunch. I hadn’t realized that, being strict Jains, he and his wife were prohibited from actually eating with me, so the lunch consisted of them serving me! Which was somewhat embarrassing, but the food was excellent, and I enjoyed talking with them.

So that was how my interest began in the town beyond the school.

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