Maybe1day

What is a Cleb or Kleb? Berlusconi started this a few years ago referring to his. Adopted now by RAI and MS. If they mean Club, Can someone explain the
pronunciation?
Renzi and his "Alibi", Example, I took my handkerchief from my pocket, it was an "Alibi" to show off the embroidery of said item!!
Widely adopted now!!

Maybe1day

Walahi, veramente, truly, wirklich, vraiment, realmente e sono un miserabile ignorante inglese, purtroppo non parlo Gaelic o Celtic, bastardo ignorante che sono, pero queste 6 lingue mi
servono parecchie. Scusa per non aver messo la prima parola in detractive cursive Arabic ( وَٱللّٰه‎ (Egyptian))

ononno

Well doesn't the whole world speak Google and Facebook nowadays?

Pica

What are you suggesting?

Maybe1day

Arabic doesn't come out very well on here (وَٱللّٰه ), Nuff sed.from wanna de wurst persins in de world fer langage compertens, ie. a Brit!

Lorna at Vicenza

I have a whole list of very badly pronounced but now commonly used English words that I show to all my Italian students.

Words like: kleb - regby - bedge - bas - pab - booling - boorgher - eyeron maiden - vrestling - vriting.......... It's a long list.

Garbatellamike

ree-tie-red for retired was my favourite

Serrano

'eyr spry' is pretty good as well. Fortunately I have none of the first word, so the second word is irrelevant.

ononno

And a long battle with your kids English teachers, like me.

Lorna at Vicenza

And sometimes with my own kids when I've told them to pronounce something properly.
"Mummy, if I say it properly my friends won't understand me."
- Well bloody teach your friends how to say it properly then.

I think the word at the time was swag, but there are other words that they just can't bring themselves to say the Italian way. Words like Yorkshire, Canterbury, bus, pub etc.

jonwel

"Regby cleb" isn't a Berlusconian invention; I've been puzzling over it for 42 years! The mystery is that

a) pronouncing a "u" as an "e" has nothing to do with either English or Italian phonetics
b) they seem to have no difficulty in giving "pub" a reasonable southern English pronunciation - they don't say "peb".

Of course, the easiest thing for Italians would be to give a northern English pronunciation to "rugby" and "club", but that's too near to a natural Italian pronunciation, so it can't be right!

In a French-English dictionary I saw "club" given as "cleub", because the French seem to have difficulty with a southern (and RP) "u". The Italians may have learnt "club" and "rugby" from the French and I've noticed that they pronounce the French "eu" as a straight "e", e.g. Pegeot., or Catherine Denève.

Well bloody teach your friends how to say it properly then.
Hmm... yes, they can teach their friends but not their teacher!

jonwel

This came up in another thread, but it's more relevant here: the Italian Comune is the Town Hall, or the local council. Not the Commune, unless you're thinking of a hippy colony or some historic attempt at revolution!

Maybe1day

Interesting how meanings have changed, Alibi in an old Encyclopedia (1950s) referred to not having been able to have committed a crime. Democracy was another classic, it referred to the election of men or representatives directly by the electorate, something that is far removed from the situation today in most of Europe. (Read Partitocrazia in Italy as an example)

jonwel

Well, "alibi" is just Latin for "elsewhere". If you were elsewhere you couldn't have committed the crime. Has that changed?
"Democracy" comes from the Greek "rule by the people". Everyone has their own interpretation of how exactly the people rule! If the parties had a democratic internal regime and were responsive to what people around them wanted, we might say that partitocracy and democracy were the same thing... some hope!

Seldomseenkid

I think tecchnically it is a domiciliazione bancaria