Italy Struggles to Keep the Mother Tongue Pure

The International Herald Tribune reports that "the guardians of the language of Dante and Pirandello worry that English is encroaching on Italian and making it increasingly incomprehensible to their countrymen. The mangled language is called Italiese." And according to a new book, the contamination of Italian by English is more widespread than experts admit.

The article also points out that Italian is now the fifth most taught second language in the world (after English, French, Spanish, and German).