I learned a new Italian word the other day: oltralpe, meaning "on the other side of the Alps" and, in the article that I was reading, referring to France.
In France, a similar expression used to refer to Britain is "outre - Manche" or "on the other side of the channel". An English equivalent might be "on the continent" but, while the English expression generally refers to a glamorous place where the people have exotic quirks like drinking tea with lemon and driving on the wrong side of the road, I have long harboured the suspicion that "outre - Manche" implies something more along the lines of "beyond the pale", with the only worse geographical slur being "outre Atlantique", but this might just be down to the contexts I've encountered the expression in. Any Francophones care to comment?
Anyway, as well as taking delight in my own cleverness at figuring out the meaning of oltralpe, the cynical, twisted part of me was quite pleased to discover that maybe, just maybe, the Italians harbour a similar "us and them" attitude towards the French.
More on this later, if my dear readers on the other side of the mountains will promise not to be offended...
1 commento:
I'll try to explain how I feel about these phrases... quickly (!)
"Outre-Manche" and "Outre-Atlantique" are still in use, chiefly in the media, to designate Britain or North America. No such thing, in 2008 anyway, as "beyond the pale", especially in mass media. No we don't have an equivalent over the ÜBER-anti-French "The Sun" in here. Or at least, not as widely printed or read.
We also use the adjective "transalpin(e)" for anything Italian. Or "outre-Quiévrain" to refer to Belgium, and they use it for France, too (Quiévrain is a village in Wallonie).
As for the "Us and Them" attitude towards the French, that doesn't surprise me much. We are different people, with different cultures anyway. I might be biased as I am from the far North of France and the cultural gap between North and South in France is probably bigger than between Southern France and Northen Italy !
PS: We drive on the right side of the road. There's no question about it :-)
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