Italian Language Archives - Page 3 of 5

Spring ahead. Thinking Italy, Cortona & Umbria

Looking at the deep snow parked outside our windows here in Maine. Hoping it keeps melting. It has about three feet left to go. I know, “piano, piano” this too will pass. Our neighbors in Panicale, Umbria don’t see snow on a regular basis so it has a certain novelty to them. And after a snow fall, you can depend on someone to be grumping about it and you can also depend on someone else to say brightly “ricordi, sotto le neve c’e pane.” The corollary and only sometimes used as the rhyming finale is the less romantic, darker “sotto l’aqua c’e fame.” Snow does melt and feeds the crops which feeds everyone and of course it is better than too much water. So. Snow, good thing. In moderation.

Snow has melted enough here in Maine, that even though it is still deep – so deep you can’t slog thru it with boots – you still can’t snow shoe on it. Funny time. Time for it to go. And speaking of going. . . we are. To Italy next Saturday. March 19th. We’ll be in Panicale, Cortona, Siena for a couple weeks. Yay! Non vedo l’ora!
araucanaEggsCortona2
Every where I look we see things that point us to Italy. At lunch at my sister Gin’s next door today, we saw her Araucana chicken eggs in ceramic egg cartons we brought her from Cortona one time. Love the soft cream color that seems to be The Color of Cortona in the ceramic dept. And aren’t the eggs great? Not dyed. Just how they are. Almost too pretty to poach. Yes, we are ready for Italy and even Easter it appears from these eggs.

OK, See you in Italy! And soon!

Stew Vreeland

Italy vs Spain? In BA, the Spanish sounds very Italian. Can we call it Italianish?

In Buenos Aires, Italian is better than no Spanish at all. Thank you Years of Italian Lessons, thank you. Oh my. Italian as a portable skill? Who would have thought?

winepastaba2

We had a trip that carried us from Miami to Buenos Aires and Uruguay. What an amazing adventure that was. Did you know it is full blown summer down there in the middle of “our” winter? Something about being South of the equator. So, we were glad to be chasing that kind of weather. On the other hand we were mildly nervous about our lack of language skills there. But, you know what? Italian is better than no Spanish at all. Seriously, I know nadda in Spanish. Or so I thought. But I found myself asking where the eggs were at the buffet in the hotel (the waitress said “Sto preparando”), ordering coffee with sugar, asking our waiter for a new white wine from the Salta region, translating things people handed us on the streets. A lot of things were so close to Italian, so in the right context and so blatantly obvious that we learned them on first exposure. (felt like we did!) Whatever we were doing, it was working! It was a total lark. Thank you Years of Italian Lessons, thank you. Oh my. Italian as a portable skill? Who would have thought? Spanish is so omnipresent in the world, and Italian is so Italo-centric. Is that a word? Chi lo sai.

Now, I can be on record as knowing nothing about nothing. Especially, all things linguistic. And maybe because BA has a huge percentage of people of Italian origin, maybe because of that their inflections are Italian. Every Argentinian we met had AT LEAST one grandparent directly from Italy. Che sorpresa. And just maybe I’d be at a total loss in downtown Madrid. But, on the other hand, Italian was as helpful in Miami’s Little Havana as it was in BA. BTW, having hot hot espresso leaning on the outdoor counter with the cool, cool Cubanos at Cafe Versailles? Worth the trip. That is a serious cup o Jose. Doing this back and forth language dance was fun, like a 24 hour word game. And as eye-opening as that Cuban coffee. Could not have been more pleased that our Italian at least cracked open the door to the Spanish-speaking world. In ways I would never have imagined.

Spanish/Italian points of similarity right off the top of my head:
Nadda / niente, Permesso /Permesso, puerto / porto, la cuenta, il conto, agua minerale / acqua minerale, con gas / con gas, sin gas / senza gas, azucar / zucchero, bueno / buono, oltre / altre. Should I go on? Everyone says ciao and ok, ok?

Next month we’re off to where they really speak Italian: Umbria!

See you in Italy!

Stew Vreeland

thinking italian, speaking spanish. trying in Argentina PS: But seriously folks, where has the blog been? What can I say? Wandered off muttering to myself? Instead of putting my mutterings on electronic paper? I wasn’t sure if anyone was out there listening or if I was actually talking to myself. A lady from England wrote this morning and said she hadn’t seen any blogs lately and asked if I was OK. Sort of made me put my feet back on the road. We’ll see where it goes. Good intentions and all that. We’ll be in Italy in a few weeks so that will be a good test.

THE FERARRI OF ITALIAN LESSONS

Red Ferarri teaches me a thing or two about Italian.

UMBRIA, Italy–In the right circumstances any one can learn anything. Expensive math software and games to make math “fun” for kids? Be serious. Get the a deck of cards and teach them to play Blackjack. As a kid growing up in the heart of the Bible Belt we daily rode the big yellow buses down country roads, hogs lots and amber waves of grain as far as you could see any direction. And we never looked up. We were slapping cards on those hard green seats as fast as we could. What did you think was going on in those buses? No, we were not studying or reading back issues of Amish Living.

Every year, it would surprise and amaze me to watch the tiny innocent kendy-garters timidly mount those steps to Vegas on Wheels. Clueless Day One. Cold-eyed and world-wise Day Two. Knowing their numbers and doing addition and subtraction at warp speed so they could Get in The Game. Sad, really looking back on it.
Ferraris and school buses
And yet, I’m like that with studying and/or learning Italian. If the subject, noun, predicate, has a car or food-like connotation attached to it, I will go to any length to understand it. Case in point is a note I just found scribbled to myself on my computer sticky notes. About the red Ferarri in the previous blog. We’ve got one very spiffy friend who lives in a boffo, art-filled penthouse and dresses better when he’s slumming than I do when I’m say getting married. He’s funny as a crutch and yet his Italian is so hyper educated, eloquent and refined. I always feel I understand every word his says. So, I was thrown when he bopped out of a car as I was gawking at the Ferarri and without slowing down, pointed at it and said “una figata, pure” – wagging his eyebrows like Grocho as he delivered his line.

Well, I thought. And thought about it some more. And when I got done looking through my limited mental banks and dictionaries I wrote our friend Steve. He knows everything. And for a guy of non-italian persuasion he’s an aberrant freak of nature. He claims he’s from California – but I’ve had Italians tell me HIS Italian is so good they assume he is a native born Italian. And then they give me The Look. (Implying of course, “If HE can speak Italian without murdering it, what IS wrong with you, Stew?”) Steve could care less about cars but he hadn’t heard this particular word used this way. But he dug in. And here, courtesy of Steve, is your mini Italian language lesson for the day.

Hey Styoo

So, figo/figa is slang for “cool” – so una figata is a cool thing. Attenzione, pero, because figa is ALSO SLANG FOR A FEMALE PART!! The opposite, sfigato is also a useful word, meaning pathetic, loser-ly. Che sfiga, means what bad luck or how pathetic. Quello sfigato di tuo fratello = that loser brother of yours.

Don’t quote me on this, (oops, sorry Steve, too late) but I think the original word was fico – same as the word for a fig tree, and the slang word meaning cool grew out of the southern pronunciation of fico – you know how they “vocalize” consonants, like p turns to b, c turns to g, etc.

Just looked up “figata” online, and it turns out, per several sites, that it also means “it’s a deal.”
That must have been what our friend meant by “è una figata pure.” “And it was a great deal, too.” Meaning he got the Ferarri cheap?

Ciao, ragazzi,

Steve

Thanks, Steve. So, the next time you hear someone say figata it could be they are talking about something cool or a cool deal.

OK, there’s the bell. That’s all for today. Class dismissed

See you in Italy,

Stew Vreeland

High on Siena

Looking over the menu there in Siena I saw something that stopped me for a moment. Flash back. Ever notice that “l’etto” notation on the menu when you are in Italy? In the price column?

siena from the duomo to the tower in the Campo
SIENA, Tuscany, Italy–Always something new to discover. Even in a place like Siena where we’ve been a hundred times. How do I miss these things that are so in my face when I finally notice them? Point in case, the bird’s-eye view available to you right at the cathedral in Siena. The piazza-size, open-air section of the cathedral? What was their lame excuse for leaving this unfinished for the last 800 years? Something about the Black Plague? Walls are there, but they forgot the roof. Coming from il Campo (home of the famous Palio, that wild annual barebacked horse race) you walk right through this part to get to the Duomo. This time, Midge noticed a perfectly obvious door over to the side, posters and signs all around it. Step inside and there is a museum of marble sculptures taken from the exterior of the church and then, for another fee you can take stairs up and up and up until you are almost looking down on the bell tower in the center of il Campo. I never knew this kind of panorama was available without being up in a plane. Look up, Stew!
still high in siena, getting there is half the fun
Back on the ground, we hung out, we shopped, we soaked up the spring sun and people-watched all the other Happy Campers in the Campo. And then ducked into a trattoria for some lunchtime treats.

Which reminds me . . .

TO EAT vs ETTO

Looking over the menu there in Siena I saw something that stopped me for a moment. Flash back. Ever notice that “l’etto” notation on the menu when you are in Italy? In the price column? Or subtly just before the price? I skim menus like I skim most things, but should I? Signs point to “no”. Is it obvious what “l’etto” means to everyone else? Well, it wasn’t to me the first time I saw it many years ago. I can remember it like it was yesterday. I was in Florence and having a fine weekend on no money per day, I was in the Navy at that time and no money a day was exactly what they paid me. So I was going thru the menu looking for the dead cheapest thing and there was Bistecca Fiorentina. Waaay cheaper than anything else on there. Why not try that? I only spoke a couple words of Italian at the time and bistecca fiorentina was not one of them.
eating with l'etto on the menu
Yes, even I could figure out the “bistecca/beef steak” part of that. But “fiorentina?” that could mean ground chuck for all I knew at the time. As it turned out my “florentine steak” was a massive steak that tasted great and had to be the deal of the century. Until the bill came. And it was ten or fifteen times what I expected. What the heck?! Slowly, ever so slowly, that little, back-of-the-frig sized light bulb came on in the back of my head and I mouthed the words “Ohhh, I get it”. L’etto must mean so much an ounce or a tiny metric version of same. What is wrong with grams. Not metric enough? Sigh. So, fellow travelers, learn from my mistake and know that the smallest number on your menu’s price list doesn’t always equate to the smallest number on your bill.

ROSES IN OUR ROOM

One of the reasons we were spending the day in Siena was because Midge is on the board of the nearby Spannocchia foundation (that is the grand agricultural estate and) and their three day meeting was starting at nine the next morning. And going straight through till evening with breaks for lunch and hikes. There was even a pre-breakfast hike penciled in for the die-hards but she passed on that, wise girl. With a Sunday schedule this full, we decided I should drop her off Saturday evening and see if I could wrangle spending the night in one of Spannocchia’s many lovely accommodations. What a welcome. The white, “Lady Banks” climbing roses covering the villa had even started to spill into our room. I don’t know about you but I wish I could figure out how Italians in this area get away without having screens. It just puts you so in the moment inside or out, not having every view strained through a wire mesh. Be that as it may, the villa is so elegant anyway and then when you frame the window with white flowers, it made us feel like we were spending the night in a Renaissance Painting.
italian roses covering a tuscan villa outside siena
And, it just got better. After a stellar dinner with Randall and Francesca and the other guests, we’d said our goodnights, and sogni d’oro’s and gone back to our room. At some point, the room seemed hot and I got up to open the solid wooden shutters. And the moon just bowled us over as if someone had thrown a switch on a spotlight right outside our rose-covered window. We could see details of the landscape, out to infinity. Miles of moonlit vistas. It seemed like a black and white photo of what we had seen during the day. Truly tried and truly failed to get those late night photos. We could see so well but the poor little camera could not. Probably operator trouble. Next time!

Much more to come. Stay tuned to this channel, where it is all Italy all the time.

See you in Italy,

Stew Vreeland

SOMETHING FISHY

Honestly, I’ve never seen this done in Italy but twice we’ve had students from different parts of Italy living with us on April first and they swear its funny to stick a cut out paper fish on someone’s back on April first. They say they do the same in France as well. And that makes it right, because any country that thinks Jerry Lewis is a comedy god . . .

something fishy in italy on april first ITALY– What do you know? April did finally arrive. That is the month that our plane tickets have printed on them. Oh joy. We are so done with waist deep Maine snow and we are so very ready to Alitalia our way back to sunny places with soft vowel endings like Italia, Umbria, Toscana. Non vedo l’ora. And plus we have two count them two Italian weddings to look forward to. Watch this space for in depth reports from your continental wedding reporter. But lets talk about April first. April Fools Day. Italians, in my experience aren’t so much about straight-faced telling gotcha lies as they are about putting a fish on your back. And laughing behind it. OK, I’ll bite. Why would they do that? Here’s all I can figure: you know that slapstick kind of juvenile routine where you curl your pinkie finger and use it to pull out a corner of your lip? Like when someone has been a real sucker, a chump. Oh, you don’t do that? Well, anyway, I think it is THAT kind of fish. A Pesce di Aprile kind of fish.

Anyway, remember if you are getting lots of attaboys and pats on the back on an April first, you may want to take glance at your reflection to see if one of your wild and crazy friends has stuck a fish on you.

Happy April Fishes Day, Happy Spring!

See you in Italy,

Stew Vreeland