Mark Twain To Reform the Language of Italy
Mark Twain, the American author and humorist, was best known for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Those unfamiliar with his work might not know though that, during his stay in Italy during the turn of the last century, he decided that the Italian language was in need of vast improvement and wanted to provide the government with a standard grammar!
In an interview in The New York Times in 1904 titled Mark Twain To Reform the Language of Italy, Twain, in his inimitable way, complained that "they [Italians] had for verbs too many ways of expressing themselves...why should there by fify-seven ways of conjugating the verb "to love," and none of them convincing?" The interview also has several hilarious examples of Twain attempting to converse in Italia, in which he was been misled about the translation of several phrases. During his Italian soggiorno, Twain wrote a couple of essays about his encounters with the language, including: Italian with Grammar and Italian without a Master.
Comments
I would have told him, in a VERY convincing Italian, to go drive off a cliff.
Since I don’t know the Italian for “hysterical”, I’d say, Molto divertente! Too bad sicialanotoronto (are you a Sicialian now living in Toronto?) doesn’t “get it” about Mark Twain and his humor. This comment from Twain might help: “Let’s assume I was an idiot. Let’s further assume I worked in Congress. But then, I repeat myself. The guy was a hoot!
Hey!…even my Italian profesorressa admits to
occasionally being stumped on the context usage of certain conjugations!
gianni, it’s spelled profeSSoRessa