Help us to know Italians! :^)
 

Hi, we are travelling with my husband in Italy this summer (we are from Paris) and we have some questions about the young and the Italian culture (especially family importance).

Can you compare the social mores between French and Italian people? (importance of friends, way of meeting people…)?
Nowadays, at what age do Italians leave the parents’ house?
Do you think that Italian people in general are more friendly than French people?
At the nightclub do you think Italians are more likely to socialize and talk to new people, or do they stick with their group of friends?

Excuse my bad English ^^ thank you so much for your help !

A herd of red driver ants are more friendly than the French.

For the most part, the Italians are a fun and gracious people.

There is a word in Italian for men who still live with their mothers-mammoni.
http://www.nydailynews.com/life-styl...icle-1.1519879

Harsh, but fair.

French bashing again ?
French are nice people, just don't rub them in the wrong way.
And don't try it with Italians either.

French and Italians are quite alike : same latin origin, same kind of language, same way of behaving.

Now, there are several zones in Italy, as there are several zones in France...
Northern Italy is where the bulk of industry (and money) is
South of Italy (including Rome according to some)
Sicilia
Sardegna Then inside it we can subdivise.
Some (Italians) say that Rome and the South are already in Northern Africa, as some (French) will say Marseille is the first African city on the path of the old Paris-Dakar.

So if you want to generalize, have a field day, there will be somebody coming explaining that Texans are this and not at all like people from Minessotta or Florida or Southc California.

This thread has all that needs to turn interesting (translate Snarky or nasty).

People who talk about the French have never travelled : people in the North or the South are absolutely not the same for example.
But are Welsh the same as Scottish ?

Say, are we helping you write an essay by any chance?

>>Say, are we helping you write an essay by any chance?<<

That's what I thought too >)

My favourite Italians:

Prada
Gucci
Ferragamo
Etro
Missoni
Brioni

The nicest Italians you'd ever want to rub up against!

Thin

How dare you try to compare French with Italians! Shame on you!!

THIN HAS THE BEST RESPONSE OF ALL to this posters question!!!!!!


TrendGirl2

Like all legal questions, I answered them honestly and tersely.

A sizeable number of Italians, and not just men, don't leave the parental home until they get married, and even then they often don't move very far. This is less true in big cities.

Part of the difference in the figures for men (52%) and women (35%) in the Daily News article is surely because women marry younger. Another reason could be that young Italian men often are totally incapable of taking care of themselves, and pass from mother to wife without ever learning.

I don't want to contribute to stereotypes but once was involved with an Italian-American (he was born in US but parents in Italy) man child (28) who moved out of his parents house to live with me (big mistake). And he expected me to do HIS laundry since he had never operated a washer/drier.

Came to me once complaining he had no clean socks - this is my problem???? So I investigated and found all the dirty ones were on the floor of his closet, covered in other dirty clothes.

He fairly quickly started taking his laundry over to his mother to do. And I shortly afterward sent him back to them.

(He was very good looking, very charming and totally clueless.)

I knew a young woman, still living at home, who used to call her mother when she was leaving work to tell her to make some tea for her, so it would be ready when she got home. On winter mornings, one of her parents started her car up for her so it would be toasty warm for her, and they also went to a nearby bar to buy her a fresh croissant for her morning breakfast, so she wouldn't have to stop at the bar herself on the way to work. With service like that, who would want to move out? Not to mention all the washing and ironing, for both male and female children.

On the other hand, even if they move out, the service doesn't necessarily end. A lot of women prepare meals for their adult children, married and unmarried, who are living on their own, either going to the child's house to cook, or making up ready meals to freeze. There's a woman in my neighborhood, married, in her 40s, whose mother does all her washing and ironing, going to the daughter's house to pick up the dirty laundry and dropping it off a few days later, clean and pressed.

And, did you know that Italians iron even their socks and underwear? Younger people are getting away from that, at least if Mom's not doing it for them.

A good french movie about parents who try to get rid of their child. The name stuck : a 'Tanguy' in France is a biy who won't leave his parents' nest.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanguy_(film)

YES.....VERY TRUE. The Italian Mama or Italian housekeeper always iron the mens underwear (and fold it afterwards)

Love it!!!!


TrendGirl2

I do not know if the stereotype of men not lifting a finger around the house is valid or not but once I had a hotel room that faced the top of the Taormina train station- on the roof was a house with a large patio - the whole roof. And severaltimes I gazed out to see the man - a man hanging clothes on the line-I thought that rather weird from what I'd heard but at least men do at times pitch in - at least in Sicily.

I was in Napoli with my brother Reda this summer ! The Italians are fun and very nice !

A lot of Italian men do housework. I know a number of men who do all the grocery shopping, and more than a few families where the woman brings home the bacon and the husband fries it up. I even know a man who does all the ironing. I don't know if he irons the underwear, though.

Women's underwear gets ironed,too. It's true that ironed and folded underwear and socks take up less space in the drawer, and storage space is often a bit scarse in Italian bedrooms.

I don't iron anything, and if our housekeeper wants to iron my socks, I say, God bless her. When she's on vacation, they don't geet ironed.

"At the nightclub do you think Italians are more likely to socialize and talk to new people, or do they stick with their group of friends?"


Rewritten:

At the nightclub do you think FRENCH are more likely to socialize and talk to new people, or do they stick with their group of friends?

Probably the same anwer, either way.

>>> Can you compare the social mores between French and Italian people? (importance of friends, way of meeting people…)? <<<

If in an Italian bar a cellphone rings, two dozen men would take their phones and say "pronto" - because every Italian man has zillions of friends and always has important things to manage.

>>> Nowadays, at what age do Italians leave the parents’ house? <<<

When the parents are dead.

>>> Do you think that Italian people in general are more friendly than French people? <<<

The Italians are generally less reserved, less formal and less polite than the French (I compare averages).

>>> At the nightclub do you think Italians are more likely to socialize and talk to new people, or do they stick with their group of friends? <<<

It depends on your looks.