Huh ? Italianized English
Saturday, February 24th, 2007 -- J. DoeThis post is not written by Buzzurro, the native Italian speaker, but by J.Doe, the native English speaker.
I realized several years ago after saying to Buzzurro “Non sono fatti dei soldi!” (I’m not made of money) and seeing the ensuing confusion on his face while he responded with a loud “Huh??” that some things just cannot be translated literally. In the ensuing years in Italy I paid a lot of attention to this fact and didn’t do it again.
3 years later we moved to the US. I thought that I’d never have this problem again. How wrong I was.
A few days ago on the phone I told someone that I would “navigate the internet” She responded “huh?” and then I realized that in English the verb used referring to looking on the internet is “surf”, so I corrected myself and I said ‘I’ll surf the internet to find the website.”In Italian one would say “navigare which usually translatess as ‘to navigate, as in a boat.” but it’s also used in reference to the internet.
Yesterday in the supermarket after the cashier had a rude customer who happened to be in front of me in line and she commented on his behavior I said “Yeah, he’s not refined.” She responded with a big “huh?” and I thought again to myself “Uh oh, what did I say?” Then I figured it out. In Italian if someone is rude you can say “e’ raffinato” (not refined) referring to a person, being well-mannered. The word raffinato is literally translated into the word “refined” but in English the word “refined” usually refers to processed foods, such as refined sugar or refined flour, and not people.
I could write on and on about the gaffes I made in the English language. Who would ever think that I as a native English speaker make errors in English? As Buzzurro says, “Maybe I should teach you English.”
Huh ???
Very funny. I cant’ even speak Italian and I make the same mistakes. The other day I said, “The house of my friend” instead of my friend’s house…sad sad…
Yeah, I can relate, I am learning Italian, and I was learning the verb to understand, “Capire” and as the english translation, I wrote
“To Understando”….Nice….I think it might be a good sign, that the synapses in my brain ae starting to change. Maybe not in a good way, though! LOL!
You can say that a person is not refined. It’s perfectly acceptable! There are many people out there without acceptable manners… Maybe the clerk at the store hasn’t had the opportunity to read much literature?
Are you sure?
Andrei: Yes, Jill is right - we use refined here in Australia to describe a polite, well-mannered person. It alludes to them being brought up well (refined) as opposed to not being brought up well and not taught proper manners (crude).
I’m not sure, Jill refers to literature, but maybe the use of the term to describe well-mannered people is more prevalent in the UK and Australia, where our ‘English’ is very similiar.