Italian Lessons in Nottingham

Cappello is a hat. Capello is a single hair. The whole difference is one consonant held a beat longer, and English mouths skate across it. English writes its double letters but rarely sounds them, so there is nothing to borrow from. Most learners hear the difference long before they can make it. That is ordinary, and it matters far less than people fear: say it short in a shop in Catania and the assistant still reaches for the hat, because context carries most of the weight. Twenty years of teaching has shown me which errors block meaning and which ones simply mark you as English. This one is the second kind.

Lessons run over Microsoft Teams, so Nottingham and a lane outside Dursley are the same room. One-to-one is £30 an hour and gets built round what you actually need — a trip, an exam with a date on it, a grandmother’s language you half remember. There are also online groups for beginners, kept small so everyone gets to speak — get in touch to join the next one. I am from Catania, hold QTS, a PGCE and a Cambridge CELTA, and have taught the International Baccalaureate. Ring 07786 107293 if you would sooner talk it through than read about it.

Why Italian, and why here

Nottingham learners reach me through a few recurring doors. A student at one of the universities with a semester in Bologna ahead of them. A couple who have signed for a house near Lecce and would like to be able to argue with the plumber. Someone whose partner’s family switch into Italian over Christmas dinner and talk clean over the top of them. It is a city people arrive in from elsewhere, and languages tend to arrive with them. Since we meet online, the whole journey is from your kitchen to your laptop, which has its advantages on a wet evening in November.

“Laura is a great teacher — warm, friendly, knowledgeable and encouraging. I really like the style of the lessons with a combination of conversation and worked exercises.”
— Jess  Read all my Google reviews →

Mundella, Camp 166, and the ones who meant to go home

Nottingham never had a Little Italy the way Manchester’s Ancoats or London’s Clerkenwell did. Its Italian history runs through the city in single threads instead.

The clearest belongs to Anthony John Mundella. His father, Antonio Mondelli, was a refugee from Lombardy scraping a living as a poorly paid trimmer in the hosiery trade. In 1848 the son took a partnership in the old Nottingham firm of Hine and Co, which became Hine and Mundella, and by 1851 he had built the first steam-powered hosiery factory in the town. He went on to Parliament, and as Vice-President of the Council on Education from 1880 he was the man behind the Elementary Education Act that made school attendance compulsory. Mundella Grammar School in the Meadows carried his name until it closed in 1985.

A second thread runs through Wollaton Park. In 1945 the park held Camp 166, with something like four thousand German and Italian prisoners of war. A stone in a copse of trees near the lake still marks that they were there.

The third is the quietest. Deianira Ganga’s 2006 study of Nottingham’s older Italians followed people who arrived after the war fully meaning to go back, and who found decades later that family had settled the question for them. Some of their grandchildren are the people who write to me now. So are people who grew up on Romano’s ice cream, sold from a van around Nottingham by Pietro and Nunzia Romano from 1969.

Common questions

What actually happens in a first lesson?

We spend the first few minutes working out what you want Italian for, what you have met before, and how much time you honestly have in a week. Then we use some. Greetings, your name, where you are from, ordering something you would genuinely order. I will hear where your mouth is comfortable within a couple of sentences and start steering from there. You go away with two or three things you can say out loud and one small thing to practise. For most people the first lesson is the only nervous one.

You’re Sicilian — will I end up with an accent that sounds odd in the rest of Italy?

I teach standard Italian: the Italian of the news, the classroom and every train station between Bolzano and Palermo. My own voice is Sicilian underneath with twenty years of England on top, and that works in your favour. An ear trained on a real southern voice makes the rest of the country easier to follow, not harder. Sicilian is a separate language rather than sloppy Italian, so it stays out of your way unless you have family reasons to want it. Learners raised on one polished newsreader tend to struggle the moment they land.

Would I be better off in the group course or on my own?

A small group suits you if Italian is entirely new, you like the company of people making the same mistakes on the same evening, and your diary can hold a regular slot. One-to-one at £30 an hour suits you if there is a deadline, a specific target, or a diary that refuses to behave. Plenty of people do the course first and then take a few private hours before a trip. If you cannot decide, ring me and describe your situation. It is usually clear within two minutes which one you want.

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