Posts from February 2010

‘Che t’aggia dì’

Posted by Serena 10 Comments
Feb 28 2010

In my imagination, all of you who read my last blog ‘Gesture of the Day’ have been spending hours in front of the mirror practicing and perfecting your moves. Now I won’t pretend that learning body language will improve your grammar, but it will perhaps help you to speak Italian in a more convincing way, that is to ‘feel’ the language rather than just recite it. This is, of course, quite advanced stuff, especially if you come from a culture that doesn’t use a great deal of expressive body language.

As I said in my previous blog, physical gestures are not easy to translate into words ….. so in order to give you a vivid depiction of the gesture ‘che cavolo dici’ (what the ‘cabbage’ are you talking about) here is a link to a great video in which, if you watch carefully you will see this gesture used several times. Watch and learn from the masters!: YouTube Preview Image

The video accompanies a song entitled ‘Che t’aggia dì’, a canzone Napoletana (Neapolitan song) from 1952 which was recorded again in 1998 by Adriano Celentano and Mina. Now don’t worry if you don’t understand ‘un cavolo di niente’ because although neither Adriano Celentano nor Mina are Napoletani they perform the song in dialetto Napoletano (Neapolitan dialect).

Here is an extract from the song and my translation:

‘Che t’aggia dì’

‘What do I have to say’

LUI: che t’aggia fà, che t’aggia dì, tu si bella si bella si bella, ma me deceste prima de spusarme ca tu cucinave bene e invece nu caz hai fatt quanno ce simmo spusate

Him: what do I have to do, what do I have to say, you are beautiful, are beautiful, are beautiful, but before marrying me you said that you cooked well and instead you’ve done ‘cabbage all’ since we got married

LEI: teh … mo’ quanno parli te metti pure a fischià

Her: Huh … now when you speak you even start whistling

LUI: quale fischio? chi ha fischiato?

Him: what whistle? who’s whistled?

LEI: ho sentito un fischio

Her: I heard a whistle

LUI: che t’aggia fà, che t’aggia dì, che t’aggia fà, che t’aggia dì

Him: what do I have to do, what do I have to say, what do I have to do, what do I have to say

LEI: Madonna mia, che vuoi fà…

Her: Madonna mia, what do you want to do…

LUI: tu si bella, tu si bella, ma te l’aggia fà

Him: you are beautiful, you are beautiful, but I have to do it to you

LEI: che cosa??

Her: what??

LUI: te lo devo fare

Him: I have to do it to you

LEI: che cosa??

Her: what??

LUI: ti devo fare un bel paliatone grosso, un paliatone che neanche quando te l’ha fatto tuo padre te lo puoi ricordare

Him: I have to give you a good beating, a beating worse than any that you can remember your father giving you

LEI: teh.. e a chi vuoi fa lu paliatone? Io prima de spusarme ero accussì cuntenta de spusarme cu te, che dicevo, penzavo: chissà quante bella notte d’amore che passava con lui, e invece nu caz hai fat, è inutile che fischi

Her: huh … and who do you want to give the beating to? I, before getting married, was so content to get married to you, I said to myself: who knows how many wonderful nights of love I will pass with him, and instead you haven’t done ‘cabbage’ anything, it’s no good whistling

LUI: chi ha fischiato?

Him: who’s whistled?

LEI: tu non sapive fa l’amore e io me so scucciata
che t’aggia dì, che t’aggia fà, che t’aggia dì, che t’aggia f�
tu nun zai fà l’amore e io nun saccio cucenà

Her: you don’t know how to make love and I am fed up, what do I have to do, what do I have to say, what do I have to do, what do I have to say, you don’t know how to make love and I don’t know how to cook ……  ecc.

N.B. For an explanation of the euphemism ‘cavolo’ (cabbage) see my previous blog: ‘Gesture of the Day’.

Grazie a Vince per avermi accennato del video.

Gesture of the Day

Posted by Serena 9 Comments
Feb 25 2010

In my blog ‘La Dolce Lingua part 2′, I wrote “when we Italians speak we like to use our whole body, not just our mouths!”

This, in fact, is an aspect of our language, indeed our culture, that is very hard to transmit in writing. However, I like a challenge, so I will now attempt the impossible by trying to teach you a few essential gesti (gestures) which, if you spend a bit of time here in Italy you will see used frequently.

Firstly though, as I always try to keep my blogs polite I will need to explain a common euphemism: ‘cavolo!’ (cabbage).

Cavolo is used in such expressions as ‘io non so un cavolo di niente’ (I don’t know cabbage nothing), ‘che cavolo dici?’ (what the cabbage are you talking about?), or ‘che cavolo vuoi?’ (what the cabbage do you want?). Here cavolo is a euphemism for an extremely common parolaccia (swear word) which also begins with ‘ca’ and ends with ‘o’ but has a couple of z’s in the middle. I’m sure a quick search on the internet will give you this wonderfully expressive word!

Allora!, here is today’s gesture: Using only one hand put all of the fingertips and thumb together so that your hand makes a kind of conical shape. Hold the conical hand in front of your body with the palm facing you and with the elbow and wrist bent to form an arc shape. Make sure you have the closed fingertips pointing towards you. Now move the the point of the ‘cone’ towards and away from your body using mainly the wrist but also a bit of arm movement. It may help if you imagine that your hand is a swan’s head with its pointed beak, and your arm is its neck, then imagine that the swan is pecking at but not touching your body. This gesture is the non verbal way of expressing ‘che cavolo vuoi?’ or ‘che cavalo dici?’, and depending on the seriousness of the situation the hand will be higher or lower, and the movement stronger or softer.

For example: Imagine that my friend Michele is telling me that a new and rather senseless regulation has just been passed (of course it would never really happen in Italy!) which will mean that he, as a negoziante (shopkeeper) will be out of pocket. When Michele explains to me the stupidity of this new regulation he uses the gesture described above but with his hand held just below his chest making a relatively gentle movement. In this case the gesture is fairly impersonal, it’s not directed at me but expresses his annoyance with the situation and the stupidity of the people who have devised the new regulation.

If on the other hand I was the bureaucrat who had devised this insidious new rule to rob Michele of his hard earned soldi (money), and I had come into his shop to ‘rompergli le scatole’ (break his ‘boxes’ – yet another euphemism) he may raise his hand up to face level and make a very emphatic gesture with wrist and arm in order to express ‘ma che cavolo vuoi’ in no uncertain terms!

Ciao Michele, grazie per il tuo aiuto con questo blog.

The Priest Stranglers

Posted by Serena 3 Comments
Feb 22 2010

Gli Strozzapreti (The Priest Stranglers): the latest blockbuster thriller produced by the infamous trio Tizio, Caio, and Sempronio? No, but it is a very nice type of gnocchi made with spinach and ricotta cheese. A couple of days ago we went to my parents for lunch and my mother cooked us gli strozzapreti, don’t ask me the origins of this strange name, I only know that they taste delicious and are well worth the effort to make.

Ingredienti

500 gr di spinaci (500 grams of spinach)

200 gr di ricotta (200 grams of ricotta cheese)

30 gr di Parmigiano grattugiato (30 grams of grated Parmesan cheese)

70 gr di farina setacciata (70 grams of plain flour, sifted)

1 uovo (1 egg)

1 cucchiaio di erbe aromatiche fresche tritate come maggiorana, timo, dragoncello (1 tablespoon of fresh herbs finely chopped, e.g. marjoram, thyme, tarragon depending on availability)

Sale e pepe (salt and pepper)

20 gr di burro (20 grams of butter)

Per il condimento: salsa di pomodoro e Parmigiano grattugiato (For the dressing: tomato sauce and grated Parmesan cheese).

Preparazione:

Clean and wash the spinach carefully, and cook it for 4-5 minutes in a saucepan. Drain and squeeze out as much liquid as possible, and chop it very finely. Put the spinach in a frying pan with the butter on a high heat, and let all remaining humidity evaporate whilst stirring it with a wooden spoon. If you are using frozen spinach, thaw it first and then put it straight in the frying pan with the butter.

Put the prepared spinach in a mixing bowl, add the ricotta cheese, chopped herbs, flour, grated Parmesan cheese, the egg, and the salt and pepper. Mix all the ingredients thoroughly, and let the mixture cool down completely. Bring a large pan of lightly salted water to the boil (about 2.5 liters).

With your hands lightly dusted with flour shape the spinach and ricotta mixture into small walnut sized balls, and place them on a plate dusted with flour. Cook the gnocchi in small batches by lowering them into the gently simmering water, return to a simmer and cook for 3 minutes or until the gnocchi float to the surface. Remove the gnocchi from the pan with a slotted spoon and drain them, then transfer them into a Pyrex dish. Cover them with the tomato sauce and the grated Parmesan cheese, and put them in a preheated oven (200C degrees, 400F, Gas Mark 6) for about 20 minutes.

N.B. If you are not used to using metric measurements you could always visit a conversion website such as this one: www.unitconversion.org, or do a search for ‘convert grams to ounces’.

Buon Appetito!

La Dolce Lingua – part 2

Posted by Serena 7 Comments
Feb 19 2010

In my blog ‘La Dolce Lingua’ I wrote: “Now I don’t wish to start a controversy about the expressive merits of one language over another”, ecco, come diciamo in Italiano ‘ultime parole famose’ (as we say in Italian ‘famous last words’).

Well, I had a feeling that this might be a controversial topic for the very reason that language is such a personal matter, it’s so much a part of who we are. There have been some very interesting and enlightening comments added to the first part of this blog, and there is certainly a lot of food for thought. We are in the realms of linguistics, philosophy and aesthetics, aiuto, non sono altro che un umile blogger!

Aesthetics is perhaps one of the most controversial areas of thought, after all ‘beauty is in the eye of the beholder’, a beautiful English expression for which I can’t think of a good equivalent in Italian! My main theme in part one of this blog was the inherent ‘musicality’ of the Italian language, and I chose the Jovanotti lyrics because a. I wanted to use an example from contemporary culture rather than a famous lyric from la musica lirica (opera), and b. these lyrics clearly illustrate one of the important ‘technical’ reasons for the inherent musicality of the Italian language, i.e. the preponderance of words ending in vowels. I am aware, of course, that song lyrics, poetry, and literature are always better in their original language. For example, the famous lyrics ‘Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away’ by Paul McCartney when translated literally into Italian would be ‘Ieri, tutti i miei guai sembravano così lontani’. Try putting the Italian words to the rhythm of the original song and you’ll end up giving yourself a hernia!

However, to quote once again from my first blog “you have to take into account the tonality of spoken Italian, and who can say how much of this is part of the language itself and how much is simply inherent in our cultural temperament.”

For me this is probably one of the keys to the subject. What my friend Vilma was saying is hard to express in a blog for the simple fact that you would have to physically see her explaining her point of view, you would have to see how she uses her body when she speaks. What Vilma meant is not to do with the actual sound of the words piacere and pleasure, but how they are expressed. For Vilma, piacere is something she expresses not just with her heart but with her face and body. N.B. we are not discussing the verb piacere as in ‘mi piace la lingua Italiana’, but piacere as in pure and simple pleasure, i.e. che piacere! (what a pleasure!).

Yes, as you may have noticed, when we Italians speak we like to use our whole body, not just our mouths! In fact, my husband Geoff always maintains that he first really fell for me when he saw me say the word parmigiano, because of the incredibly sexy way that I moved my body when I said it. He believes that if you wanted to devise a terribly cruel torture for an Italian it would be to put them in a straight jacket and make them talk about food!

Speaking of talking, so to speak, we have a love hate relationship with our telefonino (cell phone): we love to use it as often as possible, but we hate to only have one free hand to speak with. This obviously leads to some very dodgy driving when using one’s mobile phone because it necessitates steering with one’s knees.

In the summer when there are more tourists about, one of Geoff’s famous tricks is that of spotting his fellow (English) countrymen and women from a distance, before he has heard them speak. Friends of ours have been incredibly impressed by his rate of accuracy, how does he do it, is there some secret Masonic code? “No”, he says, “I just look out for the total lack of body language, we English try so hard not to stand out from the crowd that we end up standing out from the crowd”.

Stay tuned for part three in which I try to teach you a bit of non-verbal Italian!

La Dolce Lingua

Posted by Serena 24 Comments
Feb 16 2010

Learners of Italian often ask me if my native language sounds as beautiful and musical to me as it does to them. In a recent comment for example, Vince wrote “when I read “Sotto casa nostra” it sounds beautiful to me but it just means, “Below our house” which sounds totally mundane in English”.

This it is always a difficult question to answer. Personally, I find Italian to be a much more lively and expressive language than English, but Italian is my mother tongue and I believe that it’s difficult to really express yourself, and your culture in another language. Language and cultural concepts, it seems, are inextricably bound together.

Geoff (my English husband), who is also a fairly accomplished musician, feels that Italian definitely is more musical and expressive. The other day for example we were listening to “Fango” (Mud), a Jovanotti song which has the refrain:

Io lo so che non sono solo
anche quando sono solo
io lo so che non sono solo
io lo so che non sono solo
anche quando sono solo

Translating this into English it completely looses it musicality, that is, it’s essential rhythm:

I know that I’m not alone
even when I am alone
I know that I’m not alone
I know that I’m not alone
even when I am alone

Now I don’t wish to start a controversy about the expressive merits of one language over another, I really enjoy English literature, poetry, and music, and I know that, in the right hands, it can be a beautiful emotive language. However there is an interesting technical explanation for the inherent musical quality of the Italian language, and it can be easily illustrated by examining that simple refrain by Jovanotti: the Italian version only contains one word, ‘non’, that doesn’t end in a vowel, whilst the English translation only contains one word, ‘alone’, that does end in a vowel, and that vowel, ‘e’,  is not pronounced. It is this preponderance of words ending in vowels that causes ‘La Dolce Lingua’ (‘The Sweet Language’ – my pun on ‘La Dolce Vita’) to lend itself so well to poetry and music. It also lends itself, to the constant dismay of students of Italian, to being spoken rapidly. In addition to this you have to take into account the tonality of spoken Italian, and who can say how much of this is part of the language itself and how much is simply inherent in our cultural temperament.

I’ll leave the final word to my friend, and student of English, Vilma, who, when I asked her the famous question that prompted this blog, replied: “Certo, la lingua Italiana è molto dolce ed espressiva. Per esempio, quando dico la parola ‘piacere’ la sento nel cuore, nel viso, ecco mi viene un sorriso e gli occhi mi brillano. Mentre se dico ‘pleasure’ non sento niente, mi sembra una parola fredda che non esprime niente.”

“To be sure, the Italian language is very expressive. For example, when I say the word ‘piacere’ (pleasure) I feel it in my heart, in my face, I mean I have to smile and my eyes shine. But when I say the word ‘pleasure’ I don’t feel anything, it seems to me a cold unexpressive word.”

Opinions please!

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