Francesco Micielli

The report on the conference mentioned in earlier posts refers to Francesco Micieli, "who as a member of an Albanian minority in Italy spoke Italo-Albanian until the age of five, ... had to speak Italian in kindergarten, and after emigrating to German-speaking Switzerland had to learn Swiss-German and German, ... chose ... German [as] his 'literary language', and in this language he noticed a hidden multilingualism 'which starts something new, but in the end articulates itself in German'." If something can articulate itself only in German, then that something cannot be articulated in Italian or English. That means that English is not as powerful a language as its adherents claim it to be. There are clearly certain things that writers want to express that cannot be expressed in English, but in German or some other language.