Un straniero crudo

Dan Brown has written a book called "Angels and Demons". It is mostly set in a city called "Rome" in a country he cleverly calls "Italy", just like the real country occupying the Apennine peninsula. It is a very entertaining book, at least as long as you remember that Brown does not have any clue about the real Rome, Italy or the Italian language or anything at all, apparently. Unfortunately, it is possible that your mind slips during the reading, and you briefly think he tries to come with facts or realistic descriptions, and then your adrenaline shoots up so your head is about to explode. He for example claims that the Christian Eucharist was inspired by the Aztec and he places Argentina on the Eastern side of the Atlantic.

And then there is the linguistic aspect. After languages like Esperanto, Volapük, Lojban and Klingon, the world now has a new artificial constructed language: Dan Brown Italian, (DBI). DBI vaguely resembles real Italian, but it is largely unintelligible by any Italian. A phrase like "we're fungito" does not mean anything in Italian. A "straniero crudo" means "an uncooked foreigner", whatever that is supposed to be. And when a DBI speaker says "È chiusa temprano" to express that something is temporarily closed, an Italian speaker's natural reply would be "do you speak English, by any chance?"

In spite of the large number of factual errors, the book remains entertaining. Dan Brown did the right thing to publish it. And all his readers do the right thing in making fun of him for it.