Eliza Robertson was our leader today, and we focused on voice as ‘an intersection of character and place’. We tried bringing out our own local, personal varieties of English, by adapting a pssage from Irvine Welsh’s Trainspotting. I failed, it became Tuscan very quickly.

1. Maledetti imbecilli in un paese d’imbecilli – diahane. E unn’é miha colpa loro se ci siam fatti invadere dagl’inglesi. Miha li odio, io. Son imbecili, poracci. Noi e un siam nemmanco capaci di piglianne una a modino di gente pe faccelo tirá nicculo. Sie – governati da buhaioli. E noi icch’é si diviene? Merde. Merde zozze, schifose – merdacce proprio – nemmanco merde di hane, iobono. Miha li odio gl’inglesi io. C’hanno le su cose anche loro. A me stanno su icculo I toscani.

Someone close to that speaker decided to mediate the response:
2. What I believe he’s trying to say, really, is that sometimes we feel like – and this is just sometimes of course – like there could be more cooperation between you and us. I mean, we can be difficult to deal with, sometimes, of course, no point in denying that *nervous laughter*
…but maybe a hand in more urgent matters could improve morale? Only if it’s not a burden…

And it continued.

3. ‘OH! A chi, difficult? Noi? Difficult? Mavvacahare vai, te e i’ tu’ nglese perbenino e cicici e risolini e leccaculi.. gnamo su.’
‘Well. I’m sorry, I just think we could be a little less harsh about some of the complaints. We–‘
‘Ma ndoe harsh?! Io le ho dette come lle stanno le hose, diocristo, se un sapehe icche farci son cazzacci vostri.’