A Patchwork of Languages: Italian British Migrant Writing 1938-2020

Manuela D’Amore
(Università degli Studi di Catania)
manuela.damore@unict.it

Abstract

Der in zwei Makroabschnitte gegliederte Beitrag zeigt, wie stark die britisch-italienische Literaturprosa von Mehrsprachigkeit geprägt ist. Sein Ziel ist es insbesondere, einen ersten synthetischen Überblick über den aktuellen Bestand der Herkunftssprachen zahlreicher Autor*innen sowie der Sprachen, mit denen sie während des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Kontakt kamen, zu bieten. 

Der Titel der beiden Hauptabschnitte lautet jeweils „Italienisch und dialektale Formen: Kristallisation der Vergangenheit“ und „Transnationale Identitäten in der Gegenwart: Deutsch und Französisch“. Der erste Teil zielt darauf ab, die Verwendung von Standard- und Dialektformen in der sprachlichen Struktur der Werke mit der ländlichen Kultur Italiens im späten 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert sowie mit bestimmten Speisen und katholischen Ritualen zu verbinden. Der zweite Teil ist hingegen in der tragischen Erfahrung des Krieges verwurzelt, der in diesem Fall jedoch als Gelegenheit zum Kontakt mit anderen Sprachen verstanden wird.

Dieser Beitrag, der die Leserschaft auf einer reichhaltigen intertextuellen Reise begleitet, wird schließlich mit den Erinnerungen der italienisch-schottischen Schriftstellerin Anne Pia abgeschlossen. Ihr Beitrag enthält sehr berührende Überlegungen über ihr Bedürfnis,  „ihre verlorene Identität” durch das Französische “wiederzufinden“, und stellt Paris als idealen Ort dar, um sich „dem Anderssein zu öffnen“.

Diviso in due macro sezioni, questo contributo mostra il tratto fortemente plurilingue della prosa letteraria italo-britannica. Il suo obiettivo, in particolare, è offrire un primo sintetico quadro di ciò che è rimasto delle lingue d’origine dei suoi numerosi autori e di quelle con cui sono venuti in contatto durante il Secondo conflitto mondiale. 

I titoli delle due sezioni principali sono rispettivamente “Italian and Dialectal Forms: Crystallising the Past” e “Transnational Identities in Contemporary Times: German and French”. La prima intende collegare l’uso delle forme standard e dialettali presenti nel tessuto linguistico delle loro opere alla cultura rurale dell’Italia di fine Ottocento-inizi Novecento, così come al cibo e ai riti cattolici. La seconda, invece, affonda le radici nella tragica esperienza bellica, che in questo caso, però, viene proposta come occasione di contatto con altre lingue.

Accompagnando il lettore in un ricco percorso intertestuale, questo contributo si concluderà infine con i ricordi della scrittrice italo-scozzese Anne Pia. La sua produzione include ricordi riflessioni molto toccanti sul suo bisogno di “recuperare” attraverso il francese “la sua identità perduta” e innalza Parigi come luogo ideale in cui “aprirsi all’alterità”.           

Divided into two main paragraphs, this paper explores the highly plurilingual trait of Italian British literary prose. After a brief overview of the history of Italian in English-speaking countries, it will show what has remained of their numerous authors’ native languages – particularly in England, Wales and Scotland – as well as of those that they learned during and after the Second World War. 

Respectively entitled “Italian and Dialectal Forms: Crystallising the Past” and “Transnational Identities in Contemporary Times: German and French”, the two main paragraphs will connect the uses of standard/dialect forms to rural culture, food and social religious rites, while discussing to what extent Italian British authors and their characters considered the war as an opportunity to learn new languages. 

Engaging the reader in a rich intertextual and plurilungual path, this paper will finish with the Italian Scot writer Anne Pia, who wanted to share experience with French since 1971. Her production includes her intimate reflections on her need to “recapture her lost identity” in Paris as the ideal place where to “welcome in otherness.”

1. Introduction

Traversing contemporary times and recounting the history of the migrant community between 1880 and 1980, Italian British literary narratives have taken diverse shapes and combined different languages.¹ Their prose clearly reflects the transcultural condition of their protagonists and their vision of themselves as world citizens. They began as men, women and children who initially stuck to their original traditions, but equally followed a long and difficult path towards integration. Their stories are surprisingly rich in details about their first encounters with the cultures and languages of England, Wales and Scotland.

Les Servini in A Boy from Bardi. My Life and Times (1994) recounts that “for the first few months” after he arrived in Wales he “had not a word of English” and that he “only ventured out when taken to Mass:”² considering that he was often a victim of prejudice and marginalisation because of his origins, he proudly defined his reputation as a language teacher as the greatest achievement of his life.³

At a time when more authors were writing about their migrant experiences, the Italian Scot Joe Pieri in Isle of the Displaced (1997) ideally continued this important discourse putting an emphasis on his “bilingual upbringing,” his good ear for languages and especially on his “ability to mix and merge with persons of different nationalities.”⁴ When he was interned on the Île St. Hélène in Canada, for instance, he served as a translator also from German, which made his experience at Camp S more endurable.⁵ In the following years, when he could spend his summer holidays in his hometown in northern Tuscany, he had the opportunity to improve his Italian and reinforce the relations between the members of the Bargan Scottish community.

Incorporating numerous positive linguistic experiences, Italian British narratives thus begin from their protagonists’ difficulties in adapting to English as a new a “sign-system.”⁶ The latest scholarly research has confirmed that in post-unification times – and until the First World War – Italian emigrants were generally uneducated⁷ and that they were not prepared to live outside national borders.⁸ For this reason, even when they began to learn English and its regional varieties,⁹ they continued to use their dialects to remain in contact with their relatives and feel part of their new communities.¹⁰ In a context, though, where far from their home country they could not improve their knowledge of standard Italian and did not have a clear vision of their linguistic “process of becoming,”¹¹ they realised that learning to write represented a possibility of social redemption. For this reason, at the end of the nineteenth century the Società Dante Alighieri and the Società di Mutuo Soccorso organised an increasing number of literacy courses, which became popular also in the major Italian communities in Britain.¹²

Focusing on this first complex period of adaptation and closely referring to the forms of métissage which resulted from the contact between Italian, regional dialects and English,¹³ Barbara Turchetta has explained that the younger generations of immigrants found themselves in a better position.¹⁴ They were part of a social system which was based on education¹⁵ and gave them not only the opportunity to learn the language at a formal level, but also brighter prospects of life. A “Welsh-Italian Englishman,”¹⁶ Hector Emanuelli could indeed leave the catering industry and became an employee at a multinational company; as concerns the award-winning author Anne Pia – who used the shield of silence to protect herself from her Scottish classmates¹⁷ – she retired as an HM inspector of Education in 2009 and dedicated herself completely to writing.

There is still a great interest in the phenomena connected to language contact,¹⁸ plurilingualism¹⁹ and in the Italian communities abroad.²⁰ From this point of view, this paper will focus in particular on how the new generations learned Italian, and especially what remains of that heritage today.

We will thus begin from Italian and the dialects that the new generations in particular spoke with their families. Their narratives are replete with italianismi, which show their command of the language, but also include Neapolitan, southern Laziale and Tuscan. Although their works also incorporate English and Cockney, as well as Welsh and Scottish, the concluding section will provide further evidence that their skills and flexibility helped them to survive during the Second World War: learning German made their internment experiences definitely easier; as regards French, it symbolically created new opportunities of personal growth and development.

Proposing contents from a markedly cultural perspective, this intertextual path will raise general questions regarding language acquisition in migrant contexts, but more importantly it will provide precious insights into Italian British authors’ complex identities.

 

2. Italian and Dialectal Forms: Crystallising the Past

We will thus commence from the numerous italianismi that they employed in their writings. According to the latest research, third-generation immigrants generally learn standard Italian outside the family contexts,²¹ which explains why the majority of the narratives in this textual corpus include greetings and goodbyes – Ciao, Buon giorno [sic], Buona sera [sic], Buona notte [sic] – basic expressions – Come stai?²² Non ti preoccupare,²³ C’è niente da fare [sic]”²⁴– as well as a few longer phrases or proverbs like “Zia Maria è innamorata di Alfonso! Bacio! Bacio!”²⁵ and “Moglie e buoi dai [sic] paesi tuoi.”²⁶ Emphasised and translated into English, they also mark the different historical and cultural phases that the immigrant community went through since the late nineteenth century.

Indeed, a significant linguistic area in this corpus is related to rural Italy: there are references to the mezzadri [“poor hard-working peasants”]²⁷ and to the practice of transumanza [transhumance],²⁸ but also to the colourful world of itinerant artisans, such as the arrotino [“the knife grinder”], the ombrellaio [“the umbrella mender”] and the seggiolaio [“the chair mender”].²⁹ Traditional figures since 1800,³⁰ they toured the whole area where they lived, thus giving the locals the opportunity to exchange information, establish new relations and comment on the latest news.³¹ In 1942 the young Bernard Moscardini was greatly fascinated by their technical skills and nomadic life. In this extract taken from chapter 8, for instance, his focus is on “the stagnino, literally tinsmith”:

Late summer was the time of the year when itinerant artisans would visit the village. Sometimes they might come every year; if not, every other year. Chief among these was the stagnino, literally tinsmith, but he was really the proverbial tinker. He would arrive, after a rather arduous climb up to the village, laden with various pots and pans. He would stay one, two or three days however long it took.

On arrival, he would go round the village ringing a hand bell and shout: “Stagnino, stagnino.” After ensuring that he had made his presence known to everyone, he would go and install himself in the piazza in the shade of one or two plane trees, ready for business. […]

He never hurried his work for he was a real old fashioned artisan. It was fascinating to watch him work. He was always very cheerful. Full of spirit, greeting everyone joyfully.³²

Providing a detailed description of the natural riches of the Barga area, as well as of farmers’ tools – “the metato, the chestnut-drying shed”³³ was only one of them – Moscardini uses Italian also to define his family’s staple diet. It “consisted mainly of polenta,” tasty salami and cheese,³⁴ but also of tagliarini [“fresh homemade tagliatelle-shaped pasta strips cooked in a soup of borlotti beans and diced potatoes”]³⁵ and traditional cakes. The necci, for instance, may also be filled with ricotta cheese,³⁶ whereas the castagnaccio³⁷ was flavoured with olive oil, pine nuts and rosemary.

Not all Italian British narratives, though, seem to connect the use of Italian to specific ingredients or regional dishes. Domenica de Rosa’s The Italian Quarter (2004) and Melanie Hughes’s War Changes Everything (2017), for instance, only mention popular types of pasta like spaghetti,³⁸ gnocchi and tagliatelle.³⁹ They were generally cooked “Al Dente” [sic]⁴⁰ and commonly topped with “beef sugo”: as the narrative voice of Mary Contini’s Dear Alfonso (2017) recounts, on special occasions Carlo Contini’s mamma added “garlic and parsley” and “cooked so slowly it melted in his mouth. […] His stomach cramped.”⁴¹

Investigating the latest forms of Italophonia, Raffaella Bombi and Vincenzo Orioles have recently recognised food as a new and growing area of scholarly interest. In the past it was closely connected to the early migration fluxes; more recently, especially after an important event such as Expo 2015, it has become a wider cultural phenomenon which has reinforced the international appeal of Italy. Interestingly, today even nouns such tiramisu, pesto and carpaccio have become so popular that they are respectively part of twenty-three, sixteen and thirteen foreign languages.⁴² It must be also for this reason that cook books like Dear Francesca, an Italian Journey of Recipes Recounted With Love (2002), Valvona and Crolla: A Year at an Italian Table (2009) and The Italian Sausage Bible (2012) are still at the heart of Contini’s editorial success in the UK.

Closely related to a type of society which took pride in its traditions and continued to preserve its beliefs and codes, malocchio or “the evil eye” is another Italian word which can be found in these narratives. Interestingly, the very title of Rafaella Cruciani’s memoir – An Owl in the Kitchen: The Discovery of My Italian Heritage (2016) – originally stemmed from “a discussion about Italian superstition”⁴³ and about “owls” as symbols of “bad luck.”⁴⁴ As regards the importance of rural rites in the centre-south of Italy, in Dear Olivia Alfonso Crolla and his friend Pietro used to protect their flocks “gathering the ashes from the previous night’s bonfires and spreading it in the area where the sheep would be milked in the spring.”⁴⁵ Evidence that the Italians continued to followed similar rites even after they emigrated to Britain can be found in Pia’s debut memoir, Language of My Choosing. The Candid Life-Memoir of an Italian Scot (2017): “in order to break the spell of ‘the evil eye,’” her grandmother, Marietta Rossi, “would put rice grains into a basin of water and determinedly ‘drown’ with her thumb, any grains floating on the surface.”⁴⁶

Incorporating three different forms of this Italian word – respectively malocchio, mal’occhio and the Viticusar ‘gle mal’oiche’ – none of these narratives refer to the numerous other expressions – occhio tristo [wicked eye] or occhio morto [eye of death] to name but a few – which are popular especially in southern Italy. As Eric Martone contends, also in Italian American communities “good luck symbols” were traditionally those which neutralised envy or jealousy.⁴⁷ Although there is no reference to any magical formulas or protective amulets in our literary corpus, the latest research has shown that the Italians on the other side of the Atlantic largely employed them for their healing powers.⁴⁸

Pia has shown the tight link between superstition and Catholicism in the culture of first-generation immigrants. We may thus understand why the linguistic texture of numerous works includes invocations of God – “Oh Dio! Madonna mia! Oh Dio, aiutaci! [“God help us!”]”⁴⁹ – of saints – “O Sant’Antonio. San Giuseppe”⁵⁰ – as well as short extracts from Catholic prayers such as “Santa Maria, Madre di Dio, prega per noi peccatori, adesso e nell’ora della nostra morte, Amen.”⁵¹ Associated to fear and situations of danger, they were mostly used on important social and religious occasions such as processions, First Communions, weddings and funerals.

The historian Terri Colpi in her seminal monograph The Italian Factor. The Italian Community in Great Britain has dedicated an entire section to the concept of “ethnic church,” discussing the role of priests and parishes in the preservation of Italian.⁵² More recently, though, Catholic rites have also been studied from the point of view of traditional mores. Translated by Pia as “how we present in the world,”⁵³ the notion of bella figura was – and continues to be – crucial also in the practical preparation of those celebrations and represents an integral part of Italian immigrants’ public behaviour.

Yet, this phrase can also express “the disjuncture between what appears to be the case and how things really are:”⁵⁴ centred on the Crolla brothers, the following extract is taken from chapter 7 of Mary Contini’s Dear Olivia. In May 1913 they are ready to embark on the ship heading to Dover, but Alfonso buys an expensive first-class ticket to make a good impression on the other passengers:

“Alfonso, why did you have to buy first-class tickets? For God’s sake, that’s nearly half our money.”

“Non ti preoccupare! Don’t worry, Emidio. You’ll see at the other end. We want to make sure we arrive in Britain with our best foot forward. La bella figura. Hai capito? Trust me. We need to pass the immigration officer in Dover with no questions asked. You don’t want to be sent back, do you?”

“No, of course not.”

“We need to start as we mean to go on. We’ll travel first class because we, my dear brother, are heading for the top.”⁵⁵

Gian Marco Farese confirms that bella figura is “a central metaphor of Italian life” and that it is untranslatable.⁵⁶ Once again, there are no traces of its numerous uses in our literary corpus, yet it is undeniable that most lavoratori all’estero⁵⁷ never forgot that “all their actions would be judged by the society.”⁵⁸

Interestingly, also the later stages of these migrant narratives are rich in italianismi. There are extracts from the protagonists’ short letters to their relatives⁵⁹ – which show their desire to keep in contact with their Italian families – but also from national hymns⁶⁰ and refrains of patriotic songs such as La campana di San Giusto (1915).⁶¹ On the eve of the First World War, the Italian community in Edinburgh significantly “toasted Garibaldi and the king, Vittorio Emanuele,” as well as “King George V”:⁶²

They sang the National Anthem and then substituted the words to include their new allies. Things became increasingly hilarious.

“Dall’gli Alpi a Sicilia!”

“Dall’ Fontitune a Dover!”

“Dall’John o’ Groats a Picinisco!”

Their allegiance to the Church and the family had expanded to take in an allegiance to their Motherland and their new adoptive country. They felt a purpose and a goal and were inspired with the idea of fighting. This was a chance to show their worth, a chance to prove themselves.

Their call-up papers arrived over the next two weeks.⁶³

There are further examples of the immigrants’ linguistic hybridity in Italian British narratives. Considering the 1920s and the 1930s, though, it is undeniable that the majority of Italian words and phrases are referred to Il Duce and the Fascist organisation. Bernard Moscardini in La Vacanza (2009), for instance, explains that “the terms figlio/figlia della Lupa (son/daughter of the she-wolf) referred to the famous legend of the orphaned twins Romulus and Remus, who, after being suckled by a she-wolf, grew up to found the city of Rome.”⁶⁴ As for “Balilla” – which was how Italian children from 8 to 12 were called at the time – he adds that he was a little boy from Genoa who in 1746 became “a national hero” for rebelling against the Habsburg Empire.⁶⁵ “This action proved to be a catalyst,” which” not only “galvanised the inhabitants into action,”⁶⁶ but also became a symbol of national pride for Mussolini and his followers.

Recalling the time when “all school textbooks were interspersed with paragraphs, verses and slogans praising the Fascist regime,”⁶⁷ Italian British war narratives in particular include Mussolini’s famous mottos – Credere, Obedire [sic] e Combattere! [“Believe, Obey and Fight!”],⁶⁸ Meglio vivere un giorno da leone che cent’anni da pecora [“Better to live one day as a lion, than a hundred years as a sheep”]⁶⁹ – and use Italian to increase the tension of some of the most iconic war scenes. Here, for instance, the Italian prisoners heading to Canada were terrified at the idea of crossing the ocean:

Vinden listened impassively as Bonorino ran off a long list of complaints in Italian, then answered roughly in the same language.

“Fatela finita con questi pianti. Non lo sapete che siamo in guerra? Voi italiani siete buoni soltanto per cantare e per chiavare”

[“Have done with these complaints, don’t you know that we are at war? You Italians are good only for singing and fucking”]

Even if this was an accurate statement, it hardly justified being kept in such appalling conditions.

He then turned brusquely and limped off.

Bonorino shrugged stoically.

“A quello qualche Italiano gli deve aver fatto le corna.”

[“Some Italian or other must have had it off with his wife”].⁷⁰

Vinden’s and Bonorino’s contemptuous comments in Italian provide evidence of Pieri’s solid linguistic skills. He used capital letters for Italian adjectives of nationality, which is clearly related to English, but the rest of the nouns and phrases are mostly correct both from an orthographic and pragmatic point of view. Considering that he only spoke Italian, it would be interesting to know how he learned to write and if he had any external support when he published his works.

Pieri died in 2012, so these questions will be left unanswered. As concerns the majority of Italian British authors, they seem to have a limited knowledge of written Italian, which explains why they cannot not always use apostrophes, diacritic marks and grammatical gender. If we consider how they incorporated standard and non-standard forms in the linguistic texture of their works, we may also infer that, for them, authenticity was – and continues to be – far more important than accuracy.

In a context where Italian is thus proposed as a key component of these authors’ multicultural background, we can also find a few traces of their original dialects. As Barbara Turchetta explains, second and third-generation immigrants are English mother tongues, who probably learned standard Italian outside their domestic contexts and who have a scant – crystallised – knowledge of their families’ original dialects.⁷¹ Once again, considering that there are no Lombard or Bardigiani expressions in Italian British narratives, we cannot but notice that this side of our linguistic corpus is strictly related to three important geographical areas: northern Tuscany, southern Lazio and the province of Naples in Campania.

Considering Pieri’s use of the noun loffari [“good-for-nothing”]⁷² and the equivalent of “idiot,” bischero,⁷³ in Robert Rossi’s Italian Blood British Heart (2019), we will soon realise that Tuscan as a dialect only plays a marginal role in Italian British narratives. As Anna De Fina contends, this traditionally represented the basis of standard Italian, which was spoken by 2,5% of the population.⁷⁴ Interestingly, in Domenica de Rosa’s The Italian Quarter the fictional character of Cesare di Napoli puts an emphasis on its cultural prestige of the language of his homeland,⁷⁵ thus also showing how his “posh” English had marked his social image.⁷⁶

Famous Italian Scots, who operate in different intellectual and professional fields, Ann Marie Di Mambro and Mary Contini were the first authors of Laziale extraction, who employed nouns such as tratturi [“tractor”]⁷⁷ and massari di pecori [“massari of the sheep”],⁷⁸ as well as phrases such as “Vieni ca! Vieni ca!” [“Come on!”],⁷⁹ Ma do sta? [But where is s/he, it?]⁸⁰ and A do vai? [“Where are you going?”].⁸¹ These few inserts cannot convey the complexity of the evolutionary phases of Laziale dialects and of their features in post-unification times, but it seems undeniable that they add a special flavour which appeals to English-speaking readers, while giving Italians the chance to easily identify themselves with these characters.

Thorough information about its romance origins, as well as about the role of Latin and Tuscan in its process of Italianisation can be found in Tullio De Mauro’s major studies.⁸² Putting a strong emphasis on its southern elements both from a cultural and linguistic point of view, Anne Pia has showed how Viticusar, the language that she spoke with her grandmother, marked the construction of her identity. Her narrative is replete with nouns and epithets – (’na) ciociar,⁸³ (ne) cornud [“a womaniser”],⁸⁴ (‘ne) fesse [“a stupid” man]⁸⁵ and ’na puttan [“a slut”]⁸⁶ – as well as phrases and sayings like Di’ lavor’ in n’or (Dio lavora in un ora) [“God works in an hour; an act of God”].⁸⁷ Collected in the section entitled “Viticusar. The Language of Viticuso and Thereabouts,” where they are generally translated both in Italian and English, they are also associated with a brief description of their gestures. An introduction to this Viticusar-Italian-English “glossary,” the following extract explains why Pia wanted to pay her tribute to the “loveable and eccentric”⁸⁸ language:⁸⁹

I have tried to give some sense of the distinct character of that dialect, the sound and music of it; its sayings, wisdoms and humour that is an essential element of it and of its people. I have listed here below, the words used in the book, as well as some of the sayings and other words or phrases that are so familiar to the people here in Scotland and also in Gl’ Vitratur (Viticuso) with whom I share the same origins. As far as I know, the language does not exist in written form and will probably, like my generation, in time become obsolete. I have wanted for many years to find a means of recording, setting down somewhere, this loveable, eccentric language. There is a kind of reluctance now to own and speak it and so I am taking this opportunity to give this aspect of our rich heritage a place and a voice.⁹⁰

Contini’s Dear Alfonso is in stark contrast with the dark shades of Pia’s Language of My Choosing. Starting from the popular Tu vuo’ fa’ L’Americano? [“You want to live in America!”]⁹¹ – which can be found in Dear Olivia and ideally represents a bridge uniting Picinisco to Pozzuoli – the latest volume of the family saga of Mary Contini includes Neapolitan words and expressions.

As Contini cannot speak this rich and traditional dialect, she could only employ nouns like scugnizzo [“a real lad of the streets”]⁹² and cascia ’e muorte [“coffins [sic]”],⁹³ as well as popular phrases like ngopp’ a terra [“the top of the land”].⁹⁴ Continuing to combine literary writing with Italian regional recipes, the narrative, as we have seen, mentions the iconic spaghettini scieuè scieuè [a “quick plate” of pasta for “anyone who [is] hungry”],⁹⁵ as well as friarielli⁹⁶ and rum babà.⁹⁷ Although they are given in Italian, zuppa alla marinara, frito [sic] di pesce, sfogliatelle and pastiera⁹⁸ represent the main dishes of the Campanian tradition, which are listed by Peppino Leoni in I Shall Die on the Carpet (1966).

Before, however, drawing the readers’ attention to the numerous traditional recipes in the appendix,⁹⁹ the narrative voice shows how Neapolitan as a dialect represents a fascinating mixture of exoticism, romanticism and melancholy. Interestingly, the following extract includes a quotation from Luigi Denza’s popular song, Funiculì, funiculà (1880):

A sailor was rowing his boat to shore, a straw hat pulled over his face to shelter him from the glare of the sun. His naked chest was swaying with the boat as he pulled himself across the water, leaving a wake of white foam rippling out into the distance. As he raised his head towards the shore his melancholic voice carried up towards her,

Quanne fa notte e ’o sole se ne scenne, me vene quase ’na malincunia

When night comes and the sun sets, a gentle sadness comes over me.

The sun was just turning to a glowing auburn, like a giant orange gleaming in the pale blue sky. “Surely heaven itself is no less beautiful,” she thought, as the church bell for evensong rang out across the Rione Terra.¹⁰⁰

Thus giving shape to a fascinating blend of sounds, flavours and images, the italianismi and the dialectal forms in these under-researched literary narratives also provide insights into their protagonists’ original culture and traditions. It is through, for instance, the numerous textual references to other popular songs like Santa Lucia¹⁰¹ that we understand that although they now resided in Britain, they never forgot their roots and continued to remain in contact with their families.

Yet, there are of course other important linguistic components in their narratives, which are related to their experiences of learning acquisition, and more importantly, to their desire to pay tribute to the country where they could have a better life. The first Italian emigrant who wrote a literary memoir in English, Eugenio D’Agostino in Wandering Minstrel (1938), for instance, contends that it took him a whole year to begin to speak the language.¹⁰² From this point of view, the narrator of Dear Olivia is more precise about the Crolla brothers’ learning process: when they arrived in Dover in May 1913 Alfonso and Emidio did not know “what they would do next” as “the signs were all in English” and “they understood only a smattering of words between them.”¹⁰³ It was after they reached Edinburgh that they realised that it was necessary to learn the language to “help the Italians” and begin their new life.¹⁰⁴

The plurilingual trait of the Italian British literary production shows that most of the characters were immediately exposed to the main regional dialects of English. Centred on “Big Emma,” one of the strongest characters in Isle of the Displaced and Tales of the Savoy (2012),¹⁰⁵ the following extract, for instance, shows how Scottish was associated with violence. It seems undeniable, though, that the Tuscan woman’s exchange with the hooligans who wanted to destroy her little fish and chip shop in the Cowcaddens in Glasgow on 10^th June 1940 is not only iconic, but surprisingly has a happy ending:

“Mussolini, Mussolini, there’s a Tally shop, do it in.”

She stretched to her full height and raised the chip basket, shook it at the crowd and roared in a thick Scots-Italian accent.

“Fuck Mussolini. Fuck Hitler. Fuck you all. Don’t you touch anything, you bastards, You would all eat shite if I fried it!”

This magnificent non sequitur stopped the crowd dead in its tracks. A hush descended and a laugh at Emma’s words rippled through the mob. A shout rang out.

“Come on, we’ll find some place else to do in. Ye canny touch her, she’s a wumman.”

And the mob drifted off in search of another Tally target. For the rest of the war Emma kept her shop open and was never bothered or insulted again by her rough neighbours and customers because of her nationality. She did a record trade despite the lack of raw materials.¹⁰⁶⁰

 

3. Transnational Identities in Contemporary Times: German and French

Italian British narratives of the Second World War are rich in testimonies of the courage and strength of the Italians. Big Emma was certainly a heroine in those bleak times, but Dennis Donnini, the dedicatee of Rossi’s Italian Blood British Heart (2019), was “a mountain man” and “the youngest soldier in the Second World War to be awarded the Victoria Cross.”¹⁰⁷ Luckily, after 1945 Britain gave more than one recognition to the members of the migrant community, which – as Pieri recounts in the closing chapter of Isle of the Displaced – was decisive for its members to complete their process of integration.

Encountering linguistic otherness at different stages of this process, they faced countless difficulties, but became increasingly strong. It was in claustrophobic spaces such as Prisoner of War camps that they had the opportunity to learn from their German and Austrian fellow prisoners.

Starting from the “blast of a sound that erupted into the bus” when he and the other internees arrived in Camp S on the Île Saint’Hélène – “Heraus, Heraus! Schnell! Out!”¹⁰⁸ – Pieri incorporates two more German phrases which express at the same time his fear and sense of accomplishment:

“Bitte, sprechen Sie langsam… please speak slowly, I am an Italian internee and I have never heard German spoken. Please, speak slowly and clearly.”

The astonished captain looked at me with an open mouth, and with relief I understood my first spoken German words.

“Mein Gott, Er spricht wie ein Buch”

[“My God, he speaks like a book!”]

In a very short time, by dint of spending as much time as possible with the German PoWs, and a continuing intensive study of the language, I became as fluent in German as I had originally claimed to be, and I eagerly awaited every new German arrival so as to put my newly-acquired skill to use.¹⁰⁹

Turning his internment in Camp S into a fruitful experience even from a personal point of view, Pieri was not the only Italian British author who used German in his debut work. Writing twenty years later, Robert Rossi in Italian Blood British Heart, for instance, included the Nazi salute Heil Hitler,¹¹⁰ the threatening mantra “Kaput London, kaput Glasgow, kaput Liverpool, kaput Churchill,”¹¹¹ as well as commands such as “British Soldiers, kommen sie, bitte, kommen sie bitte.”¹¹² The following extract may be considered symbolic of the tension that “Fusilier Dino Baldini” – the fictional name of the hero Dennis Donnini – must have felt “at the German headquarters in Navirk”:¹¹³

“I will tell Mr Churchill your war is over,” said the German with a sarcastic laugh. Alfred had sensed fear in the sentry guards when they gave their “Heil Hitler” salutes. “This guy really is the boss.”

“Norway now belongs to the German Reich and soon your friends in your little navy will leave. They will not return for you.”¹¹⁴

Interestingly, the second part of the chapter entitled Dino’s Story contains more Italian and German, as well as some French. Once again, we can find short statements – “Niemand, nobody, Herr Colonel” – and heartfelt cries: “Colonel, kommen zie, kommen zie, wir haben die menshen gefunden, come, we have found some people.”¹¹⁵ In a context where hope seemed to be lost, the appeal “Fraternite [sic], brotherhood, we’re in this together”¹¹⁶ is related to the Anglo-French alliance and has clearly a positive connotation.

Evidence of the strong human and military ties with the French in wartime can be found in Alfred’s exchanges with Josep. Short phrases like “Bien sur, [sic] of course”¹¹⁷ and “Non, Ce n’est pas possible”¹¹⁸ serve to clarify the narrator’s intent to reinforce the realistic trait of this part of the narration. It is in Pia’s Language of My Choosing and Keeping Away the Spiders. Essays on Breaching Barriers (2020), though, that French is given a more profound significance. Starting from the delicacies that she appreciated during her study year in 1971, in 2020 she confessed that the reason she keeps on returning to France is that she “wants to recapture” her “lost identity,” “something that [she] once had and that over the years has been eroded.”¹¹⁹ Interestingly, her solitary rediscovery of French plays a key role in such an intimate and internal process:

Suddenly I thought “I’m thinking in French” and it was almost as if there had been so much packed in there during the previous days, and evidently so little space for any more, the words poured out, an eruption, slowly at first and then in a starbust… and like a mad thing, I began to speak the words in my words out loud, like an actor rehearsing lines, saying them over and over as I wondered around my little atelier, my work space: […] the French for light switch, bathroom pipe, laundry, clothes hanger, light bulb and then all the adverbs with which people seem to start their sentences: assurément, évidemment, justement, précisement. […] They just presented themselves, one by one, as if to say, we are here if you need us and there’s more there if you want.¹²⁰

An “Italian Scot” who also used her knowledge in the field of Language Acquisition to explore her inner self, Pia has thus realised that her ability to “welcome in” “otherness”¹²¹ has been crucial in her this important experience. On the one hand, the fact that Italian and French are both neo-Latin languages greatly facilitated the process; on the other hand, her experience in France metaphorically freed her from the restricted boundaries of her immigrant community. At the end of her “pilgrimage” she could finally treasure all the different components of her background, while showing all her pride to live in a culturally lively and inclusive region.

 

4. Conclusions

Published between 1938 and 2020, Italian British literary prose is rich in stories of personal growth and success. Its plurilingual texture testifies not only to their origins, but also to their paths towards integration. However, although they should be considered symbols of their transnational condition, they also provide useful insights into their background.

Italian and especially its main dialects represents their bond with their original homeland even today. They gradually lost their competence, but wanted to associate them with their families’ rural culture, as well as their traditional values and conviction: for them, authenticity was far more important than accuracy.

Educated and fully integrated in the main cities of England, Wales and Scotland, these members of the Italian migrant community generally decided to share their experiences at a late stage of their lives. Their use of English, Welsh and Scottish ideally recounts how they and their families learned to speak those new languages: beginning from real forms of métissage – which also included their original dialects – they gradually acquired a higher communicative competence, which gave them the opportunity to develop “a good ear” for languages. The final section of this paper is clear on how they benefited from this quality both during and after the Second World War.

Giving voice to their authors’ transnational identities, Italian British narratives are hybrid even at a linguistic level and deserve scholarly attention. In the future, it will be important to see what has remained of Italian and its cultural traditions in this under-researched migrant context.

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