8, 10, 22, 24 :D
hi hi!
8. do you get confused with other nationalities? if so, which ones and by whom?
mostly spanish, even while i was in spain people would approach me thinking i was from there (you can tell the difference when they realize you’re not and switch to talking in a simpler way). but i guess that’s a pretty common misjudgement, to confuse italians and spaniards.
10. most enjoyable swear word in your native language?
neapolitan swears are pretty colorful and give you that sense of satisfaction, conveying the perfect vibe and the right /weight/ to the phrase. among the best there is ‘a fa’ ‘mmoc’ which is said like one word ‘afammoc and i suppose it stands for “go do a bj” and it’s used to express resignation when something doesn’t work as it’s supposed to or lets you down. it’s rarely direct at someone, more like at the circumstances. also on the flip side it’s used as an exclamation when something /does/ work out after many tries and bad luck. Most swears aren’t related at all to the literal meaning.
22. what makes you proud about your country? what makes you ashamed?
ok this is a tough one. mh. it’s hard to find things that are to be proud of about the country as a whole, because things a very nuanced obviously. I mean I’m proud of our artistic and cultural heritage, but I’m not proud of how we seem to forget and neglect most of it. I’m proud of the fact that most people dream to visit my country, but I’m not proud of how we handle and manage the tourism. I’m ashamed of the mentality that seems predominant here of “I’m gonna take as much as i can from this and fuck it if it’s ruined or it’s at someone else’s expenses”, there isn’t a sense of making and keeping things better for the community, even tho there are singular cases of associations and organizations who try to improve things, if people won’t get rid of that mentality things are never gonna change as a whole. I think these are still remains from the war, where people had to do whatever it took for them to survive in the moment without much of a care for a long term plan or benefit to the rest of society. speaking of: i’m ashamed of the resurgence of neo-fascism and how people seem to forget that the apology of fascism is a crime [there’s a declared neo-fascist party running for next month elections????????] and the rampant racism and intolerance that allowed it, starting with the treatment of migrants and ngo that work to save those trying to cross the mediterranean. apparently people here forgot that italians are migrants too. oh and if we get into the politics, i’m ashamed that this isn’t just a thing of the right parties, there’s a state of fear/anger/dissatisfaction everywhere and very little confidence put into more positive forces that are instead seen as empty promises or naivety, when it’s what we would really need at the moment, because nothing good comes from those negative emotions when instrumentalized in the political field, and we should know that first hand.
24. what other nation is joked about most often in your country?
i don’t really know? most jokes are self-deprecating. we all mock our own country because nothing works here. Some “jokes” are based on racism and ignorance so i wouldn’t consider them jokes. Maybe england because of the food? nothing comes to mind xD