Comments on: Esprimiti! part 3

By: Serena

Serena — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 08:29:21 +0000

Ciao Vince!

“Sa di noioso” definitely means “feels boring”. Adriano Celentano is a great artist, but his texts have always been a bit …. strange. His Italian language is very particular, imaginative, but not always grammatically correct.

Auguri!

By: Vince Mooney

Vince Mooney — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 16:30:59 +0000

Salve Serena:

I’m relieved that the line “solo un momento che sa di noioso” did not mean anything to you either. Maybe it’s not just me.

The line comes from the last stanza of Adriano Celentano’s: “C’è sempre un motivo”.

I think Adriano is fantastic and I have followed his career ever since 1964 when I lived in Italy. I always try to figure out what his songs mean. However, knowing what each word means often provides no help at all in knowing what the sentence means.

I hope ‘fair use’ will let me quote 4 lines from the song below.

“Se penso e mi sento un pò più nervoso
è solo un momento che sa di noioso
poi passa poi torna non so come dire
c’è sempre un motivo…per tornare a capire”

Does it make any sense now?

Thanks,

By: Serena

Serena — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 10:08:21 +0000

Ciao Cinzia, Yes noioso can also mean bothersome, tedious etc. so in that sense it is quite like fastidioso. Per esempio, ‘smettila di fare il noioso’ or ‘non essere noioso’ can mean ‘stop being boring, tedious, or annoying’. Seccante is another way of saying ‘annoying’ e.g. per me la musica elettronica e’ un rumore molto seccante’ (I find the sound of electronic music very annoying / tedious).

A presto, Serena

By: Serena

Serena — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 09:53:36 +0000

Ciao Vince, “solo un momento che sa di noioso” doesn’t mean anything to me I’m afraid, where did you hear it? However ‘sa di’ could also mean’ feels like’, ‘tastes of’, or ‘smells of, yet another bit of confusion I’m afraid because we use ‘sapere di’ to mean all of these things but the meaning comes from the context, e.g. questo te’ sa di menta (this tea tastes of mint), l’aria sa di fiori (the air smells of flowers).
I find English to be a very idiomatic language, but maybe because Italian grammar is much more complicated and we use it in often ‘irregular’ ways it seems particularly idiomatic. This is why it is particulary important to try and follow the advice I gave before about conversing with native speakers, and reading topical magazine articles etc.

A presto, Serena

By: cinzia

cinzia — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 22:45:16 +0000

Doesn’t “noioso” also mean “annoying” similar to “fastidioso”? Do you (personally) only use it to express “boring”? I know gli italiani usano anche la parola “seccante” per “annoying”. Che confusione tutte queste scelte di parole! C.