Language Geeks Unite!

Can you have a crush on a language? I think so. Here are a few of my fave things about la bella lingua italiana.

Cari amici,

I haven’t written about languages or language learning lately, but both are constantly on my mind. So here, without further ado, are some aspects of l’italiano that set my heart a-flutter, chosen more or less at random (meaning they bubbled up first).

1. That hard-working S

I find it super cool that adding an s to some words basically undoes them, or negates them, or makes them negative. Let me explain. There was an event last weekend that featured flag throwers—you know, men in tights and tunics swirling and twirling—and, yes, throwing—colorful flags, usually to the rhythms of a troupe of drummers who seem to have latent aggressive tendencies. (Kidding. But they do pound those drums.) In Italian, those flag throwers are sbandieratori (a fabulous, satisfying-to-say word if ever there was one).

Okay, let’s break it down. The Italian word for flag is bandiera. The suffix -tore (the plural is -tori) means someone who does something; for example, a writer is a scrittore (we’ll ignore the feminine scrittrice for the moment), and an actor is an attore (yeah, yeah, the archaic term actress survives here as attrice). You get the idea. So if you add tore to bandiera, you get bandieratore, a word that doesn’t exist. But plop that s in front of it and voila! I mean ecco! You have someone who literally undoes or removes or negates the flags. Thus, a flag thrower.

Other words that function like this include svantaggio, or disadvantage (the opposite of vantaggio, or advantage); scaricare, meaning to unload, discharge, or download (the opposite of caricare, meaning to load or to charge); sfortuna, or misfortune (the opposite of fortuna, or fortune); sbloccare (to unblock, the opposite of bloccare), and sganciare, meaning to unhook (from gancio, or hook).

There are, of course, some s + consonant words that have no negative connotation, like svolta (a turn) and sguardo (a gaze). And there are more connotations I won’t get into because they don’t express undoing and thus aren’t on my list. The point is, don’t assume you can add an s to any word and create its opposite.

2. Terms of endearment

I love the expressive and inventive nature of spoken Italian. Terms of endearment go way beyond bello/a, tesoro, and carissimo/a. The first time I heard a vet tech call my cat her little patatina, I nearly laughed out loud. I mean, what’s cuter than calling a furball a little potato, i.e., French fry or potato chip? Ciccio/a, which means dude, buddy (and yeah, sometimes fatty), is often used among friends (or, if you’re my friend Hana, to sweet-talk dogs). This is not to be confused with chicco (meaning grain), an endearment for a child. Speaking of children, a little girl can be a farfallina (little butterfly), a fragolina (little strawberry), or a bambolina (little doll), and a boy might be a passerotto (sparrow) or pesciolino (little fish).

3. The handy-dandy intensifier -one

This suffix makes things bigger or worse. For example, the fountains you see around Rome that have a long spout are called nasoni (singular: nasone) because the spout looks like a honkin’ big nose. A glutton is a mangione, and a grown-up mama’s boy is a mammone. And a ciccio can be a ciccione (and still be used affectionately).

4. Idioms

Casual conversation is a great way to pick up idiomatic expressions; there are also plenty of online videos and podcasts that cover idioms in depth. Here are some of my favorites, thrown together in a silly story:

• A woman and her little girl are at a park, and the girl says to her mother, talking about a man nearby, “Lui sa di banana.” Sa di/sanno di (from the verb sapere, to know), means to seem like something, have a hint of something, as in a taste or smell. The man was vaping a banana-scented whatever-it-is-you-vape, so he smelled banana-ish.

• Now let’s say the little girl’s mother becomes enraged that the man was vaping near her daughter. In that case, she would andare in bestia (beast).

• And if that man thinks the mother is strange or a bit unhinged for yelling at him, he might say she’s fuori come un balcone (literally, outside like a balcony).

• Now let’s say the mom doesn’t want her figlia to tell Papà she lost her temper with that man. So she says, “Acqua in bocca,” (meaning the girl should keep it a secret—because it’s impossible to speak with water in your mouth).

• On their way home, they stop at the post office and discover, miracle of miracles, that there’s no line. That evening the woman tells her husband this, saying “c’erano quattro gatti” (literally, “there were four cats,” which means there were few people).

• Then she decides she should tell him what happened at the park after all, but she wants to do it privately. So she says to him, “Vieni amore, parliamo a quattr’occhi.” Four eyes, two people, right? Thus a one-on-one chat.

• Unfortunately, her husband is distracted, and instead of paying attention he keeps checking his phone. It’s like she’s speaking into a void! Frustrated, she mutters, “Sto parlando al vento” (I’m talking to the wind) and leaves the room. He apologizes and whispers sweet nothings in her ear, and in no time at all they’re calling each other amore again.

5. Language mixing, aka code switching

I’ve noticed that when I message friends who speak both English and Italian, when using primarily English I tend to throw in some Italian. I don’t mean words like ciao and buongiorno and grazie, which of course we do often use. I mean the somewhat random substitution of Italian for English. For some reason, certain words and phrases come to mind more naturally or sound better in Italian than in English. One is comunque, which I prefer to anyway; same goes for purtroppo (which means unfortunately). Another is vabbè (meaning all right, okay, oh well, or whatever). If my dog needs an ecocardiogramma, I don’t translate it to echocardiogram, and I tend to say secondo me more than “in my opinion.” And I’m much more likely to say idraulico than plumber (probably because I like how it sounds, much prettier than the English equivalent).

Which words or phrases I use isn’t important; I’m just fascinated by the process. I think my brain is choosing which language to use based on accuracy of the term (some words are hard to translate), or sound, or as I just said, simply because I like the word. For children who grow up bilingual, language mixing is normal. According to this site, language mixing (which, according to the same site, psycholinguists are still studying) happens more when the languages are related—“with Spanish and Italian, for example, English and German, or Polish and Russian, because they belong to the same families – Latin, Balto-Slavic, and West Germanic, respectively.”  

Vabbè. The bottom line, for me, is that code switching is fun. I like watching my brain change gears, making choices between meanings and nuances.

Basta per ora (a phrase that comes much more readily to mind than “that’s all for now”). What do you like most about the language/s you’re learning, or your native tongue? Tell me in the comments—non vedo l’ora! (I can’t wait!)

Alla prossima,

Cheryl

© 2023 Cheryl A. Ossola

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Books of the week:

• La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language by Dianne Hales (yes, I’ve posted this one before)

• Cassell’s Colloquial Italian: A Handbook of Idiomatic Usage. I have this one, from 1980, but you should probably go for the revised edition, called Cassell Colloquial Handbooks: Italian: A Colourful Guide to Idiomatic Usage.

P.S. My book! Which you can buy here or on the usual sites. Another fab option is to ask your local library to stock it.

If you read it and like it, please tell your friends and/or leave a few lines of praise on any bookish site. You’ll make me over-the-moon happy. Baci!