Italian gave us these English words but note the intonation

My previous posts have looked at the Italian words which are easy to recogize from the similar words in English.  If you like music you know or can easily see that we get the English words diva and maestro, piano and solo and sonata and soprano from Italian.

But you can also look at English words to find the Italian. If you want words in everyday language there are plenty more. I looked down the list in Wikipedia to select my favourites.

 Union Jack English flags in the UK. The English word coffee and the Italian word Gelato. 

English - Italian

balcony - il balcone

graffiti - writing - plural

Italian sounds smoothe and sonorous, a pleasing sound, even to speakers of Spanish, a language which is very similar. Italian, like Japanese, ends words with a vowel. The Japanese turn hotel into hoteru. The Italian for hotel is albergo. To remember the Italian I think of a lodging for the a followed by the l. But if you go to an Italian ski resort you just walk around and see the word Albergo everywhere on big buildings with balconies, so you quickly learn it.

The word graffiti is a reminder that the letter i is used to show the masculine plural. The names Maria and Mario are the singular masuline and singular plural.

I now have two common words acting as reminder for the masculine plural, spaghetti, and graffiti. 

English Intonation

English has German intonation, stamping loudly on the first syllable. Think of the word kindergarten, from kinder, child, and garten, garden. That is also a reminder of how the letters t and d occur in almost the same word in different languages. 

The English name Victoria sounds like VicTORia.

But Italian sounds the last vowel or the penultimate (last but one). We recognise this when we say Maria as MarIa. So the word Trattoria does not sound like Victoria but like Maria. 

Amy Winehouse and others on the 27 club graffiti in Israel

The club of 27 is those who died at the age of 27. This mural showing Amy Winehouse is in Tel Aviv.



https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graffiti_Tel_Aviv,_Khayim_Ben_Atar_St_-_front.jpg


Travel and Tourism Information
https://new.goisrael.com/

https://www.elal.com/magazine/en/portfolio-items/travel/jerusalem/jerusalem-attractions/

Author
Angela Lansbury
Please share links to your favourite posts.

Mexican Murals Cut Crime In Shanty Town - how and where to transform graffiti worldwide

Photo of Palmitas neighbourhood, town of Palchuca, Mexico. Photo from Wikiwand.

Problem
How do you transform the city's atmosphere, the ambiance? Two things I want to change everywhere.
1 Lack of colour
2 Untidy graffiti, when the same people could use their paint spray to create lovely colours, curves, patterns, pictures of people, rainbows and magnificent murals, turning their homes and home area into an inspiration and a tourist attraction.

Answer
Today I was delighted to hear about a project in Mexico, a government initiative, employing youths who were unemployed and/or gang members, to renovated a poor area, transform their own lives and actually cut crime. (I have the word actually, which is overused, but here it fits.) I looked up the place names Palmitas and Palchuca.

Palmitas
Palmitas is the Mexican neighbourhood (as Americans say - in the UK we would say urban area, local area). However,  my initial simple searches on Google and Wiki only found other places of the same name in the USA and Uruguay.

Palchuca
Palchuca is the town, about 55 miles from Mexico's capital, Mexico City.

If only we could copy them. Soon!

We have too much graffiti in London, as you see from the window of trains.

It is a worldwide problem. Earlier this year I was horrified by too much graffiti in Bucharest, capital of Romania, ruins the wonderful old buildings. (See pictures in my earlier post.)
Berlin has artists transforming

Brasov's landmark String Street ruined by graffiti. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.

 graffiti swastikas. Would somebody please start a campaign to clean up London and Bucharest. In fact, link up everybody, in the same way as international sports associations and Toastmasters International. Then people involved could take holidays in other cities to start movements doing the same there.

Pachuca - what else to see
I looked up Pachuca, Mexico, in Wikipedia. The BBC article featured the transformed shanty town. Pachuca itself is worth visiting because of its attractive architecture and several points of interest:
Firstly, the place was settled by Cornish miners.
See
1 The clock tower.
2 Football.
3 Eat the Mexican version of the Cornish pasty. I was most interested to see that the thick crust was to keep dirty hands away from the filling.

Clock Tower (or Reloj - Spanish for clock), Pachuca, Mexico, photo from Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pachuca
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-40959839# (Mexican murals cut crime.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_graffiti
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-40809266/berlin-street-artist-group-cleverly-undo-swastika-graffiti
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/entertainment-arts-39101558/could-banksy-s-city-rid-itself-of-graffiti
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newtown_area_graffiti_and_street_art (Graffiti in Sydney, Australia)

Author, Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. See my previous posts. Please follow me here or on Facebook and LinkedIn and share links to your favourite posts.

Philadelphia - American history and murals

Problem
How do you make a list of facts (about Philadelphia) interesting?

Answer
President and Food
Here's an article which does it well. The article starts with a President everybody knows, Obama, plus a local food, cheesesteak, which is foreign to readers elsewhere (eg us in the UK).

Murals and Grafitti
The article ends by describing not just the murals of Philadelphia, but the fact that they were installed to end graffiti (a problem I recently mentioned in a post on Romania. Hurray - here's the answer to Graffiti.

I loved the description of the mural which starts with the past at the bottom of the picture, with segregation, and moves on up.

Tips
https://www.ttgmedia.com/news/news/the-streets-of-philadelphia-discovering-the-usas-new-king-of-cool-10770?utm_source=newsletter

FLIGHTS
www.virginatlantic.com
I found their lounge at the airport in Philadelphia had wonderful food and service.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Straphangers, American Slang, French Graffiti, and Translating

George Bernard Shaw said that the British and Americans are two nations divided by a common language.

America has a host of words whch sound strange to English speakers, but you can find most of them listed in Wikipedia and Webster's American dictonary..

Problem
What are straphangers?

Answer
People on the New York underground train, hanging onto straps provided to stop them falling when the train lurches to a halt.

This question was asked by people in other parts of the USA, UK and Australia. I was surprised that other Americans, or overseas visitors living in America - one cannot be sure, did not know the term. I've been to New York several times and lived in Rockville, Maryland. I assumed the term was well known all over the English speaking world.

It was obvious to me. Was it common sense? What hangs from a strap? I immediately get a vision of people hanging on. I'm sure I've seen straps as well as vertical poles and horizontal poles on trains all over the world.

When faced with a foreign word, you can sometimes find the meaning by looking at the context and working out which of several possibilities it could be. Like the old quiz game, Animal. Vegetable, or Mineral? Human or object? For what purpose? For whose benefit. Where is it? What does it help or prevent. Visualise the scene. How are the people standing or the objects placed? Is the strap hanger a person or an object.

Stories
A French Language Story - Set in Paris
Similarly with identifying graffiti in a foreign language. I was disappointed in my inability to translate graffiti when I went to Paris after a gap of three or four years. I though I spoke French fluently but the signs on walls made no sense. It turned out that most of the signs were political statements. Down with - followed by somebody's names. Or supporting a person or political party.

I also needed to know the slang terms for police. I tend to avoid learning rude words and slang words. However, it helps to know if you are listening to a belligerent conversation. If you think you are fluent in a foreign language, you might like to check out the current graffiti and slang terms before travelling.

Conclusion
Nice to know that citizens of Boston will rush to help a stranger in times of trouble.
If you want a city where the trains have sliding doors on most underground stations, try Singapore. (But the DLT with its gaps is not for the nervous, although the areas between the gaps for doors are blocked, which is one stage better than no barriers.)

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4524328/Woman-faints-Boston-subway-tracks.html#reader-comments

https://www.boston.gov/visiting-boston

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. I have several other posts on American English and learning foreign languages. Please share your favourite posts.