Camorra

[dee20002]

Can anyone tell me what this means? It's in the context of Naples, and a lot of murders, it seems. They say the camorra is increasing. The word is not in the dictionary.

Grazie,
Dee

P.S. I am sure I am learning a skewed set of vocabulary words from reading the paper -- scontro, strage, etc.

 

[Rob625]

The camorra is the neapolitan (= of Naples) Mafia.

 

[walnut]

I am sure I am learning a skewed set of vocabulary words from reading the paper

It's quite a hard training (I do the same to practise ) but in my opinion if you can read italian newspapers then you can read almost anything. They're often very close to spoken language without sounding rough/advertising like as italian spoken on TV does. Camorra, strage, scontro are *real* italian... bravo dee, continua con i giornali perché è un'ottimo metodo, i foreros italiani sono pronti a soccorrerti! Ciao, Walnut

 

[Silvia]

I wouldn't like it to sound too tragic though, in Italy the violent crime rates are lower than the ones of other European countries (-27,9% compared to UK, -30,1% compared to Germany, -51,7% compared to France). Now if you consider that European rates are lower than the US ones...

Also, sometimes journalists make up new words, called neologisms, which cannot be found in everyday language, and many Italians wouldn't even know what those words mean, even if they keep hearing them over and over again.