One of the things that attracts a lot of people to the Italian language is its musicality. This is probably largely due to our rather ‘generous’ usage of vowels which enable scorrevolezza (fluency), well at least for us ‘natives’, students of Italian may disagree! Try this little scioglilingua (tongue twister) for example:

Sopra la panca la capra campa, sotto la panca la capra crepa

(Above the bench the goat lives, below the bench the goat dies)

Too easy? Try this one then.

Trentatre’ Trentini entrarono dentro Trento tutti e trentatre’ trotterellando

(Thirty three people from Trento entered into Trento all thirty three trotting along)

Hmmm, o.k. you’d better get yourself a refreshing glass of water, perhaps even have a lie down. Now if you’re feeling refreshed, and you’ve realigned your tongue are you ready for another challenge? Dai, proviamoci! (Come on, let’s try!)

Due to our ‘superfluity’ of vowels, the Italian language contains a number of ‘parole curiose’ (curious words). So here is your challenge in the form of a little quiz:

1. Which is the shortest word in the Italian language that contains all five vowels (aeiou)? You will find a clue at the end of my blog Un po’ di giardinaggio

2. Which Italian word has six i’s and no other vowels? (clue: prime numbers have this quality)

3. Which Italian word has the most o’s? (clue: politicians are very good at doing this whenever a proposal is made)

4. Name at least two Italian words that have five a’s. (clue: one of these is potentially explosive, another may require an exorcist, yet another will be useful if you’ve lost a dog)

5. Which word is considered to be the longest in Italian? (clue: it has 26 letters and it happens very quickly!)

6. Which is the longest Italian word with no repeating letters? (clue: you can find them at the circus, they have very good balance)

Click on Post a Comment below to post your answers, buona fortuna