Progress! I met a group of Italian university students this week! They are from different places throughout Italy, from La Spezia and Bolzano to Rimini and Calabria. They’ve started something of a battle among themselves to teach me their respective accents and expressions, which are sometimes drastically different from each other. For example, in Siena, some consonants are “aspirate”, for example, the “c” is sometimes pronounced more like an “h”. In Siena they don’t say “la coca-cola,” normally pronounced “lah coh-cah coh-lah”); rather, they say “lah hoh-hah hoh-lah”.
My new friends, and most of the Italians I’ve met, seem very intrigued by President Trump and always ask me what I think about the election and the current political situation. For the most part, going off of what the media shows, we all agree that he is somewhat of a “pazzo” (“crazy”). They find it particularly amusing that he wants to build a wall separating the US from Mexico and that he wants to make Mexico pay for it.
After answering some questions about the US political system, I asked about Italian politics. The first response is usually somewhat of a scoff, then I eventually find myself listening to a heated discussion, full of raised voices and gesturing, between two of my friends who have very strong and opposing political ideas.