Italians are renowned for being very friendly and welcoming people but are they really?
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| at Pepino's enjoying a pinguino! |
Italy is a very traditional country with a long history, traditions and deeply rooted customs that oftentimes feel weird to all those coming from the other cultures; as language, Italian is the perfect reflection of the social intricate system that started in the Roman times.
In all Italian 101 classes, on day 2, students learn about the difference between 'ciao' and 'buon giorno' or 'arrivderci' and the use of the titles in daily life.
Many languages share a similar or more complicated social and linguistic system but what makes it peculiar to Italy is the cultural aspect behind it.
Naturally, as a newly arrived non-Italian, nobody will expect you to master all the written and unwritten rules both social and linguistic right away... but after 6 months in the boot or returning visitor, yes, you will be expected to know how to greet different people and how to coordinate your formality according to the situation.
This is rather important if you are living, working or studying in Italy if you wish to blend with the locals and show your respect for the culture.
For our private classes and workshops: turinepi@gmail.com
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| each Turin neighborhood has a daily market |
In Italy, there is only one basic rule to remember: personal connections are key! Especially family connections and long lasting friendships, like basically: from birth! Italian real friends are like family and you can count on them as you would with your immediate family.
In fact, to much astonishment of everyone else, professional credibility as a concept doesn't exist anywhere in Italy. Italians have no idea what it could even be or mean, nor do they value it and with it: know-how. Sad but true and family / friends reviews and recommendations or opinions hold the ultimate validation.
At the same time, reputation has a different meaning and it is never applied to the professional environment because ... it doesn't really matter in that context.
In fact, for the good and the bad, Italians are still considered as an extension of their own family and this is made very clear since kindergarten where the first networking starts.
Compared to most countries, making new 'real friends' in the boot is very hard because unless you are born within a network or you spend a considerate amount of years within a group of people, it is practically impossible to penetrate any new social fabric. And in a way, this is very similar to a caste system defined by locality which makes the whole introduction and relocation to Italy even harder than it already is ...
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| Galleria subalpina = Turin's gallery 2/3 |
If you look closely, most things in Italy revolve around their geography, their immediate territory or locality because since the Middle Ages up to 1861, the boot was divided in many smaller kingdoms, duchies, city states, republics and colonies, protectorate-like areas, possessions of other European countries. And way before that, some parts were raided, invaded and conquered by foreign peoples coming from everywhere.
When visiting different Italian regions, do some people watching and you will easily recognize the legacy of this multiethnic past in the MANY physical features: Italy is really a genetic microcosm!
no need to go on on Finding Your Roots because especially in Southern Italy, you'll see nordic types together with Middle Eastern and even African features, plus all degrees between, including some green eyed redheads!
After all, before the Romans stopped over to rest their army on their way to the UK, Turin was inhabited by a celtic population, like Asterix and the Irish.
All around the 20 regions Italians display where their ancestors came from and most of all: from their native accents, they always reveal the area they grew up in.
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| Turin has the longest AND widest arcades in Italy: 12km /7.45 miles |
What you look like physically, what you are wearing (!) and how you speak both in terms of accents and oral expression are your business cards in Italy, and this is even more true when you are tryng to buy a property, rent something, make an appointment, or even do a phone prank.
Lots of Italian radio stations still do phone pranks and you'll find many SoMe accounts where regional accents and dialects are the protagonists and with them many stereotypes.
As a native Italian, not being identified as somebody belonging to a specific area or network, people will be very cautious and wary of you, especially in rural areas (everywhere in Italy) and in the South of Italy where a great part of the population has moved out to find fortune wherever they could, from Northern Italy, to Germany or Australia.
Outside of their native area makes no difference because all that matters is that people are not where their roots and family are.
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| The top remembers the Piedmontese immigrants to South America who came back to fight in WWI. At the bottom, Christopher Columbus looking at South America; come rub his pinky for good luck! |
Speaking of physical features and accents, whenever one is lacking, the other can make it up kind of like the 2 factor ID and this is why and how all immigrants, particularly those working the lowest jobs, learn the local dialects right away, before learning standard Italian. In many areas and especially among the elderly, against the odds of looking like a foreigner physically, a local dialect and accent immediately make you a local and, in a way, also a closer person, compared to any other native Italian from another area because it projects you deep inside the new locality and allows to network and survive in the new social environment.
Interestingly, up to the 1970s, over 50% Italians spoke dialect on a daily basis in formal context too, and to this day, in many areas, particularly Rome southward, but not only, Italian is still not the common language, nor is it spoken uniformly following the same standard.
What non-native Italians usually learn as 'standard Italian' is properly used as such in Florence northward, while Florence southward the language gets more regional interferences till turning into a spoken dialect with a couple words of Italian.
The regional and dialect differences are rather wide as each one of the 20 Italian regions are divided into smaller linguistic regions roughly following the municipality distribution.
On top, in Northern Italy we have two bilingual regions: Valle D'Aosta (French) and Trentino Alto Adige (German), in Southern Italy we have pockets people speaking Greek, Albanian Catalan, and the North: Slovenian, Provençal, Occitan and Ladin languages, a cultural legacy of old borders. And of course, all the Italian dialects are molded on French, Spanish, German and Arabic depending on the area as they are the perfect mirror of Italian layered history!
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| Porta Palazzo market the largest outdoor market in Europe |
One thing though unites the boot: the use of the professional titles.
As Italy transitioned from the monarchy to the republic in 1946, professional titles have taken over the role of those assigned by the king and are to these days used everywhere as a sign of respect to the family one was born to, the investment they made to allow you that social and professional role, and to celebrate your efforts in accomplishing your studies.
During your Italian visits, you will frequently find out how many professional titles are also sort of 'inherited' as many professions in the boot are strictly regulated by the law that limits the number of licences and certifications to carry them out. So when finally somebody in the family makes it to pass the certification, gets the license or opens up their new firm or studio, this automatically becomes a family tradition.
If in the past it was customary to have 'families of' doctors, notaries, lawyers, architects because the idea was that the kids were inheriting the profession through the family blood, nowadays with the struggling economy, it is much more a matter of granting a future to the new generations.
Not to mention that Sir and Madam are very general titles that apply to everyone in the society... don't really qualify anyone socially. And knowing exactly who you are interacting with is key in Italy in all aspects of life.
Therefore, as a non-Italian you will be expected to know that Italians are Dottore or Dottoressa if they graduated from college (!), Professore or Professoressa if they are teaching middle / high school or university, Ingegnere, Architetto, Geometra or Maestro depending on who you are referring to.
Naturally, some titles have followed the times and allowed their female version, while others have been following other philosophies, 'keeping the masculine because professions have no gender' as architetto, or new forms like avvocata instead of avvocatessa considered lower than avvocato - its male counterpart.
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| Miretti's award winning artisan gelato in Turin |
Students of Italian outside of Italy always find it interesting how subtleties can make such a big difference, but if the devil is in the detail, he definitely loves Italy and Turin as you can read on:
and if you can understand Italian, enjoy our shortstory about how the devil fell in love with Turin - after all Turin is the magic city of Italy and Europe 🌟
Email Lucia: turinepi@gmail.com
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| Galleria Umberto I aka Turin's galleria 1/3 |
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