Valeria Iseppi, Italy
I am Valerie Iseppi, 37 and I work as a Careers and Employability officer at the University for the Creative Arts. I am originally from Italy but reside in Farham, Surrey, UK now. I speak both Italian and the Veneto dialect. I think my mother tongue is dialect really and it reminds me of my upbringing and of course my family, meaning also my extended family with relatives on both sides and friends I’ve been studying with, teachers and all the people who’ve been influential in my life and lead me to be the person I am now at nearly 40. Yeah some time people think it’s cool when I say I’m Italian. There are definitely benefits and challenges that I face with my mother tongue. When I don’t know a word, generally verbs or medical/scientific words I wing it: if you twick a bit most Italian work with English suffixes you’ll get a very posh and most of the time right-in-English word as they mostly come from Latin or via French 😉