word usage - The "Italian sounding" issue


The expression "Italian sounding" is a recent expression used with the following meaning:





  • According to Confagricoltura, “Made in Italy” is now recording a turnover loss of €6 million every hour. These numbers are shocking to say the least, all caused by what is referred to as “Italian sounding”.




  • Italian sounding phenomenon refers to creating images, colors and names of products very similar to their Italian equivalent. This is despite the fact that these imitations have no connection to the Italian originals they have been made to look and sound like. They don’t have the same “Made in Italy” excellence and they have no link to Italy’s traditions and culture, yet they are raking in millions every hour using the Made in Italy imitation.






  • Probably the most famous instance of an "Italian sounding" product is the Parmesan cheese whose pronunciation reminds the original Parmigiano.


Question:


Is 'Italian sounding', with the above connotation, an expression used in English speaking countries or is it just another English expression invented by some xenophilous Italian bureaucrat?


If not, what is this phenomenon usually referred to in the U.S or in the U.K. For instance?


N.B. This is not a question about marketing, but on the use of an English expression.



Answer



Answer


An Italian-sounding product is one whose name suggests it was made in Italy. The words in the name when read, sound like Italian words or names to an English speaker even if they aren't genuine Italian words or names.


Nuance


For a native English speaker, there is no judgement implicit in the phrase. The expression "X-sounding" where X is the name of a language is just normal English, e.g.


"What is the name of your new girlfriend?"
"Valentina."
"That's a very Spanish-sounding name. Is she Spanish?"
"Yes, she's from Madrid."


The term is completely neutral.


Generalising




  1. We don't have to specify the nationality, e.g.
    Did she leave a name?, asked Pereira. It was a foreign-sounding name, replied Celeste, but it's slipped my mind. Pereira Declares: A Testimony By Antonio Tabucchi.




  2. We don't have to talk about a nationality. Here are some examples with 'name', Google ngram: a * sounding name




  3. In the expression, "X-sounding Y" the X does not have to be a language and the Y doesn't have to be a name. We could talk about 'a raucous-sounding orchestra'.




Usage in marketing


In terms of marketing, this refers to a very common phenomenon. For example, in the UK we see many power tools that have 'German-sounding' names. This is because (leaving to one side the Volkswagen debacle) Germany has a reputation for producing high-quality, reliable machinery. The tools themselves might be made in Korea or China.


Example


In Britain, it is common knowledge that Bosch tools are made by a German manufacturer. To a Briton, the name Bosch is very German-sounding: It is about the most German-sounding name you can imagine (for historical reasons concerning WW 1). Britons also think of German tools as being very reliable. A Chinese firm might start selling, Gosch tools. Many English people would see this as German-sounding and so be more likely to buy than if they were called, e.g. Wong tools.


Discussion


If you are manufacturing food, then your product benefits from having an Italian-sounding name.


If you are manufacturing machinery, then your product benefits from having a German-sounding name.


If you are manufacturing fashion accessories, then your product benefits from having a French-sounding name.


If you are manufacturing electronics, then your product benefits from having a Japanese-sounding name.


There is a whole chapter on the importance of brand names having the right sound in terms of nationality in this book, Great Brand Name By Jacky Tai


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

verbs - "Baby is creeping" vs. "baby is crawling" in AmE

Years and years ago, I remember reading in a book on AmE usage that the phrasal turn a baby creeps before it walks was to some extent more common to AmE than to BrE, which preferred exclusively the "crawl" version. And so, I just recently checked on the accuracy of that information on NGram Viewer , and it actually was fact... more than a century ago! What I would like you to tell is if it would sound sort of weird to hear someone say today in the US that a child "creeps" before walking and running (see Synonyms ) rather than it crawls. Also, what's the story to those terms? How did "to crawl" come to prevail and supersede "to creep" to describe the way a baby moves around? As with a plant, so with a child. His mind grows by natural stages. A child creeps before he walks , sits before he stands, cries before he laughs, babbles before he talks, draws a circle before he draws a square, lies before he tells the truth, and is selfish before he
Read more

commas - Does this sentence have too many subjunctives?

Does this sentence have too many subjunctives? If it please the king, let it be decreed that they be destroyed, and I will pay 10,000 talents of silver into the hands of those who have charge of the king's business, that they may put it into the king's treasuries. I am stumped by this sentence construction. First, there is "Let it be," which is a common English idiomatic phrase, but then it follows another subjunctive. Is that to say you can actually have a subjunctive followed by another subjunctive? Also, why does the sentence use "please"? If that's the subjunctive tense there, then why is it followed by another subjunctive instead of a conditional, or maybe "Let it be" is the conditional? Lastly, I wish to know how the that is used in the sentence. Perhaps, the simplified sentence can be restated like so: Let it be decreed that they be destroyed and that they may put it into the king's treasuries. If not, maybe the simplified sent
Read more

time - English notation for hour, minutes and seconds

I often see English notation about time using the " and ' symbols. I have always mistaken about the two, and even their meaning. I'm more used to "01:05:56", for example. How do you represent the hour, minutes, and seconds using the apostrophe and quotes punctuations? Which is for the hour, which is for minutes, and which is for seconds? Is it the common way to write duration of time elapsed? Do they have a special pronunciation? Answer It's not particularly common for expressions of time. It's similar to degrees-minutes-seconds: instead of decimal degrees (38.897212°,-77.036519°) you write (38° 53′ 49.9632″, -77° 2′ 11.4678″). Both are derived from a sexagesimal counting system such as that devised in Ancient Babylon: the single prime represents the first sexagesimal division and the second the next, and so on. 17th-century astronomers used a third division of 1/60th of a second. The advantage of using minute and second symbols for time is that it o
Read more

grammatical number - Use of lone apostrophe for plural?

I've been reading William Manchester's book "American Caesar", which is about Douglas MacArthur, and I found that he uses a strange convention for pluralizing the family name. When talking about the MacArthurs as a whole, he writes MacArthur' with an apostrophe, as in "After the war, the MacArthur' lived in Tokyo while the general was proconsul" (yes, he uses that term to describe him). I have never seen or heard of a rule that would prescribe this. Manchester is a bit old-timey in his style: for example, he also writes "in behalf of" instead of "on behalf of", which is the only one I have ever seen. So perhaps this is similar. Where does he get this apostrophe from? Edit: There seems to be some difficulty finding examples, which is odd. Here is a direct link to a page from Google Books that shows the apostrophe.
Read more

etymology - Origin of "s--t eating grin"

What is the origin of the phrase shit eating grin ? How did it come to mean showing smugness or self-satisfaction of an individual's actions? Answer From the Urban Dictionary: ...these uses are documented in the Oxford English Dictionary no earlier than 1957 There have been similar expressions used quite far back: In Book XXI of his History of Rome, Livy describes a Carthaginian sect of coprophages, the risus faecivorus, or shit-eating grin, being commonly displayed by its adherents. Although, its origin is undetermined, they may have been incidents which caused the invention of this phrase. Below is an excerpt: "1944 Jrnl. Nerv. & Mental Dis. XCIX. 959 Among demented patients in advanced stages of their illness,..it is not rare to see some of them grasp their own feces, chew them and eat them often with great pleasure and satisfaction (coprophagia).
Read more

etymology - Where does the phrase "doctored" originate?

This is a phrase I’m particularly confused about, because it’s used often when something is manipulated or changed. For example, sometimes images surface online that are clearly Photoshopped, but people refer to them as “doctored” images. Why use the word “doctored” here? Answer The earliest Google Books match for an instance of doctored in a transitional (or perhaps post-transitional) sense between "amended" and "adulterated" appears in William Marshall, The Rural Economy of Glocestershire; Including Its Dairy: Together with the Dairy Management of North Wiltshire, and the Management of Orchards and Fruit Liquor, in Herefordshire , volume 2 (1789): Men in general, however, whose palates are set to rough cider, consider the common sweet sort as an effeminate beverage; and rough cider, properly manufactured, is probably the most generous liquor; being deemed more wholesome, to habits in general, than sweet cider:—even when genuine. That which is drank, in the kingd
Read more

word choice - Which is the correct spelling: “fairy” or “faerie”?

Fairy vs. faerie — which is the correct spelling? Answer As others have noted, fairy is the standard modern spelling, and faerie is a pseudo-archaism. However, in some contexts there is now a semantic distinction between the two spellings! In particular, fairy tales and the associated idea of fairies typically refer to the genre of folk stories printed by the Brothers Grimm, then sweetened and popularized for modern audiences by Disney et al. Faerie stories , on the other hand, are stories about the fae : otherworldly, unpredictable, and dangerous creatures who appear in the folk-tales and myths of England and Ireland. In origin, of course, the fairies and the fae are one and the same, but the connotations and usage of the words today are headed in opposite directions. A Google image search for fairy vs. faerie shows a lot of overlap, but some very significant differences in tone and content between the two terms. Note that the search for "fairy" turns up a number
Read more