sunnysider

Thanks for the reply.

I essentially agree with you.

duffer

Anyone see the Iran V Nigeria match last night?
No me neither.

MarkRD

It's a kind of cliché even amongst Italians that football is the only thing that unites the nation and gives them any sense of patriotism.

But sadly, it's true and they do get excited about being Italia, and at least (usually) it gives them a sense of pride which is hard to gain in many other areas (as the average Italian will tell you).

But did you see how they (the players) all jumped on each other when they scored the first goal on Saturday night? That sums it up really..a kind of collective hysteria.

Mind you, "Italians" have been prone to a bit of collective hysteria in th epast too.

primularossa

[QUOTE=highlander1;11304354] so what does it means being Italian after so few generation of being officially together ? maybe Primula Rossa could help here. QUOTE]

This would need to open a new thread about "what does it mean to be Italian". Very interesting and more complicated now also because in the last 20 years, in addition to the regional differences, we are also having a lot of immigrants who are integrating in the Italian society, raising also new issues on "italianity" for the Italian society (Balotelli and Pirlo in the national team say a lot about these recent changes). Nevertheless, Italy has ALWAYS been a place where several peoples passed and eventually stopped. From the greeks, to the etruscan, the phoenicians, etc in the ancient times, then the several barbarian populations, the arabs, the normans, the spanish, the sefardite jews, the french....

I would say that I am not keen at all in defining what is Italian and what is not and what does it mean, and I do not care much. For me, anyone who is willing to contribute to the life of this country, can be Italian. You also, if you want. And this country is essentially a State with a constitution, laws, institutions and so on. Other definitions are impossibile. Do you know how many LANGUAGES - not dialects - are spoken in Italy? try to count them....

And I make you a question: What does it mean for you to be British?

ciao, primula

MarkRD

Some interesting points being raised here, especially by primula, about what it means to be Italian and what is (what I call) Italian-ness ..

Very hard to define of course, but personally I don't really buy all this theory about Italy not being a 'united' country because of it's fractured past, regional differences, invasions by foreigners over the centuries etc. That's happened in Great Britain, albeit on a less greater (excuse the pun) scale and perhaps not as recently. Even "Great Britain" is a relatively new term. And nobody knows more about regional differnces than the British..England, Scotland, Wales etc...each even has its own football team!
Interesting point about languages...in GB too we have Welsh and Gaelic, their existence being on a par with say German in Alto-Adige or Slavic in Friuli. Their recognition and co-existence doesn't take anything away from the sense of Italy as a nation.

MarkRD

...but then news items like this get through ...

HADENOUGHPIZZA

lets not go there Mike , I cannot understand how he did it .

Garbatellamike

Mark please Hadenough - not my fault..................................... this time

jonwel

But are we going to say that the Motta Visconti murders prove something about Italy??? Don't these atrocities happen in all countries? Or maybe the Daily Wail wants to make political capital out of the murders to get its own back for the England-Italy defeat?
BTW I'm not a football fan...

HADENOUGHPIZZA

The murders have nothing to do with the football beyond being used to establish an alibi . This sort of crime happens everywhere UK included and I doubt if even the Daily Mail would make political capital out of this , just wants the story ....

Sorry Mike ,

jonwel

Well exactly, which makes me wonder why we're discussing it in this thread...

HADENOUGHPIZZA

Mark' fault ! I'm surprised to see he's a DM reader , but to be fair the thread was already going a bit off topic

MarkRD

Not a DM reader but it came up under Italy news ... you know the old habit .. look for Italy news in UK newspapers and UK news in Italian newspapers..

but we digress.

Garbatellamike

So this football game then - why do they throw themselves to the ground and roll around so much?

football = 90 mins of pretending you're hurt!
rugby = 80 mins of pretending you're not

HADENOUGHPIZZA

Ok so I'm in Milan all day tomorrow and will have to shift my gym lesson to Friday evening - can I expect the find the place half empty ? If Italy win will prominent politicians tweet insults about their coffee ?