Šukaju kopiju, fisu, lungorario’. Language mixing, contact and interference in the Ukrainian market at Ponte Mammolo in Rome

Until quite recently, the chief type of linguistic contact in Italy was between dialects and standard Italian. But the rise of immigration, which in fifteen years has brought the percentage of foreign workers in Italy up to the European average, has created ideal conditions for widespread interchange and contamination between the linguistic codes of the immigrant communities and Italian, the dominant language of the new society into which the migrants move. The main Italian cities, where large numbers of people with different linguistic codes and daily communication needs mingle, offer an excellent vantage point from which to study these new phenomena of linguistic contact. This work examines language mixing, contact and interference in the language used by Ukrainian immigrants in Rome. The source material is the body of notices posted at the market2 they hold every Sunday at Ponte Mammolo, a location on the outskirts of Rome close to the underground station bearing the same name.