Posts from April 2010

Mattina o Mattino?

Posted by Serena 11 Comments
Apr 29 2010

A couple of weeks ago I was asked to explain the difference between the words mattina  and mattino, which both mean "morning" in English. The two words are often interchangeable, although mattino (masculine singular) is less common than mattina (feminine singular). Here are a few examples in which either word may be used:

era una mattina chiara e luminosa or era un mattino chiaro e luminoso (it was a clear bright morning);

alle dieci della mattina or alle dieci del mattino (at ten o’clock in the morning);

la mattina presto or il mattino presto (early morning).

However, there are some idiomatic expression and proverbs in which one form is used in preference to the other. Let’s have a look at them:

Mattina:

When we are talking about a specific date we use the feminine form, e.g.: ieri mattina (yesterday morning); questa mattina abbreviated to stamattina (this morning); domani mattina abbreviated to domattina (tomorrow morning); giovedì mattina (Thursday morning), etc.

We also prefer the feminine form when talking about a routine, e.g.: tutte le mattine (every morning); in genere la mattina studio (I usually study in the morning); è difficile trovarmi in casa la mattina  (I’m not often at home in the morning).

There are also a couple of idiomatic expressions that always use mattina. One is ‘dalla sera alla mattina’ (from the evening to the morning) meaning "fairly rapidly", or "overnight", e.g. Giorgio cambia opinione dalla sera alla mattina (Giorgio changes his mind overnight). The second is ‘da mattina a sera’ (from morning till evening) meaning "all day long" e.g. ha piovuto da mattina a sera senza un attimo d’interruzione (it rained all day long without interruption).

Mattino:

The masculine form, mattino, is used in several idiomatic expressions. Here are some of the most common ones:

sul far del mattino (at daybreak); di buon mattino (early in the morning); le ore del mattino (the morning hours); augurare il buon mattino (to wish a good morning); il giornale del mattino (morning newspaper); Venere è la stella del mattino (Venus is the morning star); durare lo spazio di un mattino (to last the length of a morning), meaning "to last a very short time"; il mattino della vita (the morning of life), signifying la fanciullezza (childhood).

There are also two popular proverbs in which the masculine form is used:

il buon giorno si vede dal mattino (lit. one can see the good day from the morning) meaning that from the early signs one can guess the development of events, either good or bad, e.g. ‘one can imagine from the behavior of a child what kind of adult they will become’. This proverb is often used in the following way "se il buon giorno si vede dal mattino…" to mean "judging by how things are going so far…" So you might use this proverb, for example, if your car breaks down as you are setting off on holiday, then it starts raining, etc. etc. which doesn’t bode well for the rest of your break!

il mattino ha l’oro in bocca (lit. the morning has got gold in its mouth) meaning that the most productive time for studying or working are the morning hours (definitely not true in my case!)

Finally, when recounting an event that happened  ‘all’improvviso’ (suddenly) we normally start with: un bel mattino, e.g. erano anni che non vedevo Lucia, ma un bel mattino è squillato il telefono … (I had not seen Lucia for years, but suddenly one morning the phone rang …)

Now, if all of this seems a bit confusing, don’t worry, just stick with mattina and you won’t go wrong!

Santa Zita da Lucca

Posted by Serena 3 Comments
Apr 26 2010

Every year on the 27th of April Lucca celebrates the life of its most beloved patron saint, Santa Zita, with a spectacular floral tribute. For the occasion, Piazza dell’Anfiteatro (an oval shaped medieval piazza built over the remains of the Roman amphitheatre) hosts a flower market, where azaleas and rhododendrons, with their incredible shades of pinks, reds and oranges, are the queens and kings of the day. A second display takes place in Piazza San Frediano which the gardeners from Lucca’s Botanical Garden transform into a fantastic garden, choosing a different theme each year. After many years one of these gardens still stands out in my mind as the most magical of all. It took the form of an incredible display of orchids from all over the world. That April must have been warmer than it is this year!

La storia di Santa Zita

Santa Zita was born in 1218 in Monsagrati, and at the age of 12 she became a servant in the house of the noble Fatinelli family in the nearby town of Lucca. Her employment allowed her to help the poor and hungry by taking them bread and leftover food from the well-supplied kitchen of the Fatinelli house. Legend has it that one day her master, having had his suspicions raised by another servant, stopped Zita in the street and asked her what she was carrying in her bulging apron. "Fiori e fronde" (flowers and foliage) she replied, and when she opened her apron the bread that she was taking to the poor had miraculously transformed into flowers.

Zita died on the 27th of April 1278. Dearly loved by her fellow citizens, and in particular by the Fatinelli family, she was laid to rest in the Fatinelli chapel inside the beautiful Basilica di San Frediano, where her mummified body is still preserved and visible inside a glass coffin. By the late thirteen / early fourteen century Zita was already venerated as a saint, and her name had become synonymous with the town of Lucca. In fact to describe a magistrato Lucchese (magistrate from Lucca) who he met in hell, Dante wrote: "un de li anzian di Santa Zita" (one of the Elders of Saint Zita – Inferno, canto XXI). Zita was officially pronounced a saint in 1696, being declared the patron saint of housemaids and housewives. She is also the patron saint of Lucca, a role that she shares with San Paolino.

Ce La Fai?

Posted by Serena 5 Comments
Apr 23 2010

Farcela is a very commonly used idiomatic expression which means ‘to manage’ [to do something], or ‘to succeed’. It is composed of the verb fare (to make/to do) and the pronouns ‘ce’ and ‘la’. It can be used on its own, e.g. ce la fai? (can you manage?), or it can be followed by the preposition ‘a’ and an infinitive, e.g. ce la fai a passarmi quella scatola lassù? (can you manage to pass me that box up there?).

Here are some more examples of how to use it, firstly in the present tense:

ce la fate ad essere pronti per le otto? (can you [plural] manage to be ready by eight o’ clock?)

questo quadro è molto pesante, non so se ce la faccio a portarlo da solo (this picture is very heavy, I don’t know if I can manage to carry it on my own)

se ce la facciamo, passiamo a salutarvi prima di partire (if we can manage it, we’ll come by to say goodbye before we leave)

…now in the future tense:

non so se ce la faremo a venire al cinema stasera (I don’t know if we’ll be able to come to the cinema this evening) 

ce la faranno i nostri eroi a ……? (will our heroes manage to ….?) this was the classic dramatic ending in many of the fumetti (comics) that I read as a child.

ce la farà Giovanni a prendere l’aereo? (will Giovanni manage to catch the plane?)

…and in the past tense (passato prossimo – present perfect):

anche se il treno era in ritardo, ce l’abbiamo fatta ad arrivare in tempo (even though the train was late, we managed to arrive on time)

Cecilia non ce l’ha fatta a superare l’esame di Latino (Cecilia didn’t manage to pass the Latin exam)

è stata dura ma ce l’ho fatta! (it was hard but I managed it!)

N.B. as you can see in the examples given above, the pronoun ‘la’ changes the past participle ‘fatto‘ to ‘fatta‘.

There are a couple of other idiomatic expressions which share the same construction as farcela, and therefore follow the same rules. The first is avercela, which means ‘to be upset with’ or ‘annoyed with’ someone, e.g.:

Perché ce l’hai con Mario, che cosa ti ha fatto? (why are you annoyed with Mario, what has he done?)

The second is mettercela tutta (to do one’s best or to put everything into an enterprise), e.g:

non so come è andato l’esame, ma ce l’ho messa tutta! (I don’t know how the exam went but I did my best!)

Spero che ce l’abbiate fatta a capire tutto. 

Polvere Vulcanica

Posted by Serena 2 Comments
Apr 20 2010

There’s something missing in the clear blue skies above our house today, what could it be? Sì, le scie degli aerei! (Yes, aircraft vapor trails!)

Thanks to la polvere vulcanica (volcanic dust), and what now seems to have been an over reaction on behalf of the aviation authorities, we are temporarily able to enjoy i cieli italiani (the Italian skies) as mother nature intended.

Today’s headlines in the Italian newspaper ‘Il Corriere della Sera’ (Monday 19th April):

Compagnie all’attacco. Test fai-da-te nella nube per smentire le autorità. “L’economia bloccata inutilmente”

Companies on the attack. ‘Do it yourself’ tests in the cloud to prove the authorities wrong. “Economy blocked for nothing” read .

‘Lufthansa e Air Berlin, i due maggiori vettori tedeschi, hanno accusato le autorità di controllo di avere chiuso gli spazi aerei sulla base di un pericolo presunto, senza informazioni reali se non quelle venute da una sola fonte computerizzata. E di avere provocato perdite di centinaia di milioni per le compagnie aeree e di miliardi per le economie europee, letteralmente messe a terra’.

Lufthansa and Air Berlin, the two major German carriers, have accused the authorities of having closed the air space on the basis of a presumed danger, without any real information apart from that derived from a single computerized source. They also accuse them of having caused the aviation companies the loss of hundreds of millions (of Euros), and billions (of Euros) for the European economy, which has been literally grounded” (‘messo a terra’ is an expression which, apart from its literal translation of ‘grounded’, also means ‘to go broke’, or ‘bust’).

LA BREVE RIAPERTURA (THE BRIEF RE-OPENING) Here in Italy hope for the thousands of stranded travelers was raised by the brief re-opening of several national airports, the newspaper continues:

- In mattinata, è stato un aereo della compagnia Air One diretto a Catania il primo volo a partire dopo due giorni di stop, alle 7.10, dall’aeroporto di Milano Malpensa. Alla stessa ora un volo Alitalia sempre per il capoluogo etneo è partito dallo scalo di Linate.

- This morning at 7.10 an Air One plane heading for Catania was the first flight to depart after two days of closure, from Milano Malpensa airport. At the same time an Alitalia flight, also bound for Catania (the  main town of the Etna region) departed from the airport of Linate.

However, weary travelers soon had their hopes cruelly crushed by a renewal of the flight ban:

Nel momento dell’annuncio del nuovo stop ai voli l’aeroporto di Malpensa era affollato da migliaia di passeggeri convinti di poter partire in giornata. Code ci sono soprattutto nell’area delle biglietterie del terminal. Riaperti e poi nuovamente chiusi anche gli aeroporti toscani di Pisa e Firenze. Cancellazioni e lunghe file anche a Fiumicino. Nello scalo romano, rabbia e delusione sono gli stati d’animo più diffusi. Alla luce del nuovo stop, un volo è stato bloccato mentre già attendeva l’ok in pista per iniziare la fase di rullaggio.

At the moment when the new ban was announced, Malpensa airport was crowded with thousands of passengers convinced that they would be able to fly today. There are long queues, particularly at the ticket desks. Pisa and Florence airports were also briefly re-opened and then closed again. Cancelations and long queues at Fiumicino (Rome’s main airport). At the Roman airport, anger and disappointment are the most common sentiments. When the new ban took place an aircraft was halted whilst it was already on the runway awaiting the o.k. to take off.

My brother, who lives in Germany, should be flying down from Berlin to Pisa today. At the moments it doesn’t seem very likely that he will arrive! Have any of you experienced disruption due to the flight bans? Do we have any readers in Iceland who could tell us something about the situation there?

La Pubblicità

Posted by Serena 1 Comment
Apr 17 2010

A few days ago we went to visit a friend who lives in the little hilltop town of Vezzano Ligure. Wandering down the main street, we noticed a hand written sign that someone had put next to their cassetta della posta (mail box). It read:

"Siete liberi di lasciare la pubblicità consapevoli

che verrà usata per accendere il caminetto"

"You are free to leave ‘junk mail’ in the awareness

that it will be used to light the stove"

La pubblicità means ‘publicity’ or ‘advertising’, but in reality it nearly always turns out to be that universal unsolicited nuisance commonly known in English as ‘junk mail’, or, in its electronic form, ‘spam’.

Even here in our little village in the mountains we are not spared la pubblicità which generally arrives in two genres: 1. advertising broadsheets from the big supermarkets who want to remind us of our responsibilities as good consumers, and 2. leaflets that arrive around election time from politicians who suddenly remember that we exist and might be disposed to put an X in the box next to their name.

The supermarket ads always avail themselves of the magic word CONVENIENZA (convenience), which for me immediately conjures up a huge hanger like building, echoing with repetitive electronic pop tunes, stacked with low grade goods, and staffed by indifferent employees who seem a bit put out when they have to serve you, although to be honest it must be a pretty tedious and soul destroying job.

The political leaflets, on the other hand, never fail to use tried and tested terms like rilancio economico (economy boost), sicurezza (security), disgravi fiscali (tax cuts).

Put these two together and you have paradiso consumistico (consumer paradise).

In practice, we’ve found that the former make much better fire lighters than the latter which tend to be printed on that thick, shiny, more important looking paper that doesn’t burn very well. 

I imagine that the big supermarkets employ teams of catch phrase writers whose brief is to come up with snappy seasonally related phrases which must always contain the word CONVENIENZA. Here for example is the latest slogan from the front page of a well know Italian supermarket magazine:

"CONVENIENZA a ruota libera"  ("Free wheel convenience")

Yes folks, it’s primavera (spring), time to buy that bicicletta (bicycle) which, let’s be honest now, after you’ve ridden it a couple of times and reminded yourself why you stopped using your old bike, "ma la CONVENIENZA non c’entra per niente, mi fa proprio male al sedere!" ("but convenience hasn’t got anything to do with it, it really hurts my backside!") , will probably end up gracefully rusting away next to its predecessor in the garden shed.

Yet it seems such a bargain:

CICLO 26" OLANDA 26 inch Holland Cycle. (yes, although we are metric we use pollici [inches] for many standardized products, even if we don’t know exactly what an inch is.)
Note that, in order to convince us that this bike is the genuine article they have named it OLANDA (Holland), because we all know that Dutch people, apart from wearing clogs, living in windmills, and growing tulips, all ride bicycles. Of course the publicity doesn’t tell us that the bike was made in Romania with parts imported from Thailand, ma pazienza!
telaio in acciaio steel frame, oh well, at least it isn’t made of ghisa (cast iron).
freni V-brake ‘V-brake brakes’. The English word ‘V-brake‘ is there to reassure you that this is really a quality product. These are high grade techno-brakes that should function for at least a couple of weeks, if not more.
81,90 Euro Aha…now here is where LA COVENIENZA comes in, costa poco (it’s cheap)
15% per i soci If your are a member of the supermarket, i.e. you have given them all your personal details including your star sign and hat size, and signed the form with the microscopic clause that entitles them and their sister companies to send you at least three hundredweight of junk mail a year, you will be able to buy this genuine ‘Dutch style’ bike for only 69,90 Euros!
*CESTINO ESCLUSO However, be aware that the cestino (basket) is NOT included in the price. That particular item, which cannot be detached from the bike, is hand made from Titanium alloy, and costs another 286,50 Euros.

 

Back to the Top