Pick up any fashion or gossip magazine in Italy and you'll notice almost every page has been liberally sprinkled with English words. But it doesn't stop there.
Just as certain English speakers believe that dining al fresco sounds fancier than eating outdoors (we don't recommend using this phrase in front of Italians, by the way), some Italians also seem to believe using an English word here and there will make them appear more sophisticated.
The weirdest is when Italians take English words but then use them for something else entirely. One Italian couldn't believe that we didn't call channel surfing 'zapping' in England
— Alex Sakalis (@alexsakalis) November 7, 2019
Baby – Not used to describe an infant, or bebè, but curiously deployed by the Italian press as an adjective, meaning “teenage” or “youth”. For example, groups of teen troublemakers are often described as a “baby gang” while 16-year-old Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg is a “baby attivista”.
Job – We're not sure how this one came about, or why it's preferable to lavoro, but you will hear younger Italians say things like “sto cercando un job.”
Pronto
I don’t know if it is national. but here in Piemonte gomma da masticare is called “cichles”. A version of “Chiclets” apparently brought here by post war U.S soldiers. Same with fazzoletti di carta “cleness”…or Kleenex. My personal worst is “baby parking”, a sort of childminding service. T.H
“Monster” as in “She’s a monster.” This is a complement referring to a person’s almost supernatural capacity to achieve or perform.