A linguistic protest or, for my fellow Italians, a wish: augurandomi di ritrovare la nostra bella lingua.

The London-born author considers, with a critical eye, certain national traits and customs, at times with humour and always with affection; he also makes provocative suggestions as to why we behave as we do. More particularly he asks, and tries to answer, certain questions, such as: What is the English attitude to food? What do they think of feminism? Have they any view on whether the Empire was a good thing or not? Are the English eccentric? Are they racist? Are they hypocrites? Where is the country going? He also reviews the sexual and social consequences for the country of the so-called...

This pamphlet is dedicated to those English-speaking lovers of Italian who believe that the integrity of the most beautiful language in the world should not be surrendered to the vagaries of Anglo-American jargon. It is almost impossible to calculate how many words there are in any language. The only practical way is to try to identify those words that are considered fundamental and of these, those that are more commonly used. It has been calculated that the Italian language has about 260,000 fundamental words. Of these, 10,000 are generally known but only 2,000 are used on a daily basis. The...