People buy people, we always say. Unlike magnets, in our business like poles attract. Shared values, same views, similar likes and dislikes and social norms…it all helps create that essential feeling of comfortable ‘common ground’ between individuals.
Or chemistry as we like to call it, here.
Better business relationships and deals for mono-glottal Brits abroad, for example, are often said to result from those few Brits capable of speaking just a few words in the foreign host’s own language and knowing just a little bit about their cultural values. Like not blowing your nose on a hanky and putting it in your pocket, in Japan. Or HSBC’s airport and TV ads which used to proclaim their knowledge of how to do business successfully worldwide as a result of knowing the similarities and differences that united or divided countries.
So it is that of all the attributes which contribute to a positive exchange of communications, it’s our language that shapes our thinking and ultimately defines us: culturally, socially, demographically…even economically. And for certain Latin countries – such as Italians – ‘language’ is just as much actions and gestures and body language as it is the spoken word.
Perhaps, therefore, the much-maligned (current) England captain ought to have a few words of Italian to help him make his case when he meets the Great Man today. After all, most foreign footie players speak better English than some of their indigenous team mates, so why not JT engaging in a bit of lingua franca, Italian style, for his showdown with Johnny Foreigner, I mean Fabio Capello, today. Here’s some suggestions, starting in Italian if you really want to impress Signor Capello:
Things to say
*Hello Mr Capello, How are you today sir?
Proprio come il nostro 300 plus parlamentari che rappresentano il nostro paese, ma sono stati trovati colpevoli di armeggiare loro EXE, ma non andare in prigione, mi dispiace davvero. OK?
(Just like those 300 plus MPs who properly represent our country but have been found guilty of fiddling their exes but aren’t going to prison, I’m really sorry. OK?)
Unlike Sir Fred Goodwin, who represented a major bank and was responsible for many thousands of employees losing their jobs while he managed to extract a major personal exit deal of several million pounds as a lump sum and some hundreds of thousands of pounds a year in pension payments after having broken a major bank and almost sunk the British economy, I’m not that bad and I’m also really, really sorry.
Further, I do not mind that your wonderful religious leader, Pope Benedict XVI, is asking the British government to change its own laws on equality and equal rights and gay marriages. The fact that we broke from Rome under the reign of Henry VIII in the sixteenth century so that we could run our country in the way that we thought it best for us, is of no consequence to me, 470 years on and I do not think it is a backward step.
Things definitely to say
Forza Italia!
Sono stato a Hull e ritorno, la scorsa settimana.
I’ve been to Hull and back, last week.
Uno mia auto di altre Fiat.
My other car’s a Fiat.
Things not to say
Fabs, mate…I can’t believe you went to Switzerland for a knee op! A new cuckoo-clock, a fondue, sure, or a private chat with an investment banker (know what I mean) or maybe even an assisted suicide…defo. Private healthcare thanks to the FA is all very well but what’s so wrong with our own wonderful NHS that you have to go to sodding Switzerland of all places?
Isn’t that where the tax-dodger but still-hero Lewis Hamilton lives, also?
I really don’t give a tinker’s cuss about religion, being a family man or setting a good example. Who cares? Toni and I are cool. Honest. Look I’m a footballer, quite a good one. Certainly not a role model. The only reason footballers have become role models is because the whole game has been elevated to a position of ridiculous and unwarranted importance. You will know from the corruption scandals in Italy that everything bad in football is forgotten as soon as there is success on the pitch. And no one is more likely to bring success on the pitch in June this year than me. Rio who…? Get real!
I was following the example of your own country’s wonderful leader and football team owner and one of the richest businessmen in the world, Silvio Berlusconi. Even though he also owns Italy’s most successful football club, AC Milan, admits he has had cosmetic surgery, has fought off repeated corruption allegations, and has been dogged by a sex scandal involving young and glamorous women one-third his age, denied paying for prostitutes to attend parties at his official residence and is now being sued by his second wife for divorce, like him, I was just being one of the lads. A leader and an example, actually.
Bring back Sven. He was a lot like Silvio, only Scandinavian like.
Things definitely not to say
Io odio la pizza.
(I hate pizza.)
Come te, compagno: io sono solo per i soldi.
Like you, mate: I’m only in it for the money.
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Zing! Interesting read Neil. Have to say I agree with you regarding the status some footballers are given in this country, and how they are thrust into being role models, despite their rather insalubrious antics. It’s ridiculous – but unless there is a radical change in how the media portray these people – it’s unlikely to change.