Being a native English speaker working in Italy for many years and specialising in healthcare communications, I have become sensitive to language and how new words are created and adopted into doctors’ and patients’ active and passive vocabularies. In medicine, technology changes rapidly, and language needs to evolve to keep up. One of the most obvious ways in which Italian medical jargon changes is in the adoption of English.
Itangliano
English has flooded into the everyday language of healthcare professionals in three ways. Firstly, there is the direct loanword. These are straight adoptions of the English word, generally with their English pronunciation (though occasionally the stress on the word may change, as in the case of còmpliance).
A great many English loanwords are used in Italian, both in medical literature and in everyday clinical language. Just a few examples are: breakthrough, compliance, forgiveness, shunt, bypass, follow-up, stent, clearance, caregiver, target therapy. Often these are words with old English or Germanic roots and often the words have a concrete, everyday meaning in English and are used as metaphors (as in the case of shunt and bypass). It may also be no coincidence that two of the examples I have given relate to surgery, which is by definition a hands-on activity.
Secondly, there is the Italianisation of English words. A good example of this is the ugly-sounding verb switchare meaning to change to a different drug.
Thirdly, there are acronyms. The subject of medical acronyms is a surprisingly complex one and will be dealt with in a separate article.
Latinglish
Linguistic pollination is never one-way and, although Italian loanwords in English medical language appear to be limited to some terms for communicable diseases (influenza, malaria and quarantine), the influence of Latin in medical jargon in immense. It is estimated that in modern Italian about 75% of words are derived from Latin, compared to less than 30% in general English. However, in medical English, words of Latin and Greek origin dominate.
A patient I interviewed once in a Milanese viewing facility said, “and then the doctor decided it was time to intervene with pharmacological treatment and initiated product X.” The client, listening through the English translation, asked if she (the patient) had a medical background because of the language she used. “An English patient would never have said that,” he (the client) said.
This is true. An English patient would have said: “and then the doctor decided it was time to step in with drug treatment and started me off on product X.” The translation was not wrong, though. It was perfectly correct. The Italian words which have the same linguistic roots as the English words intervene, pharmacological and initiate are all common words and would be used by patient and doctor alike in any part of Italy. In translating the words into English with their Latin-rooted equivalents (rather than the Germanic-rooted step, start and drug), the interpreter was merely highlighting the proximity of everyday Italian to medical English.
Contamination and cross pollination are strengths in a language. They give it robustness and vibrancy, and this is true of medical jargon, both in English and Italian, or, if you like, Itangliano and Latinglish
Email [email protected] or use our contact us form below for bids, questions or further information.
