Small But Mighty, or, What’s in a Letter?
Get out your magnifying glasses, because it’s time to look at some cool (and crazy-making) bits of l’italiano
Cari amici,
Little things mean a lot in the Italian language. Even a single letter can change a noun’s gender and/or number and, in some cases, the meaning of a word. For principanti (beginners), this is just one more headache; for more proficient speakers of Italian, it’s . . . okay, it’s a headache. But some of this stuff is actually fun! And when you start to look at usage and patterns and origins and so on, learning a language teaches you about culture too. Languages change over time, sometimes over eons and sometimes quickly, and how they change depends, for the most part, on common usage—the informal, everyday, slang-y sorts of speech, which tell us something about the people who use them. And sometimes languages are the way they are because a predecessor (hello, Latin!) gave birth to them. And, probably, for other reasons about which I know niente.
So much for scientific thought and reasoning. Let’s look at some of the ways small differences are mighty powerful.
1. The two-letter pronouns in pronominal verbs
Stop it! Yes, you! I see you blanching at the terrifyingly grammatical term “pronominal verbs,” but if you can deep-breathe and get past it, you’ll discover that pronominals make for some of the coolest Italian lingo out there. What are these scary verbs? They’re verb-pronoun/s combos that must be considered a single unit, meaning that if you look only at the root verb to decipher the meaning, you’ll be very, very wrong. They’re not standard Italian, but they’re used in casual conversation all the time. (To spare you some possible confusion: the first pronoun—me, te, se, ce, ve, se—changes with the subject. If you don’t want to think about that, just pretend not to notice.)
Take, for example, andarsene. The root verb is andare (to go), but andarsene carries a different connotation—to get out of there—and it’s all because of those two little pronouns, se and ne. Let’s give the phrase some context. If I’m out with friends and decide to head home by myself, I might say “Me ne vado” (meaning, loosely, “I’m outta here”); if instead I’m leaving a group with a few of my friends, I’d say “Andiamocene”(let’s get out of here). And if I want to tell the cat who’s peeing on my petunias to scram, I’d yell “Vattene!” (Yes, the t got doubled, but don’t worry about it.)
Another pronominal verb you’ll hear a lot is avercela (con), which means to be angry with someone. “But,” you sputter, ‘avere’ means ‘to have,’ so what’s that got to do with getting mad?” No idea. But it does. So if you think your friend is mad at you, ask him/her: “Ce l’hai con me?”
But what if you’re mad at yourself? Use the pronominal verb prendersela, which can also mean to blame. (The root verb here is prendere, which means to take—that’s close enough to “take issue with” to make sense.) So if you’re mad at yourself (i.e., blame yourself) for not studying enough and thus flunking a test, you’d say “Me la prendo per non aver studiato abbastanza.” And if you want to tell a friend not to be mad at himself, you’d say “Dai, non prendertela.” (Come on, don’t get mad!)
Let’s say you just cannot manage to do something and want to express your frustration. There’s a pronominal verb for that—farcela, which means to manage to do something. (Fare means to make or to do.) In standard Italian you’d use the verb riuscire, but sometimes you want something a little more colorful. And of course, in this case you’ll want the negative, because you are absolutely NOT managing. So go ahead, throw up your hands in despair/resignation/disgust and shout, “Non ce la faccio!”
2. One consonant or two in a row? Does it matter? Yes, it does!
You might remember me saying that you should be very careful to bounce those double ns in nouns like anno and penne, because if you don’t you’ll find yourself talking about certain rather personal body parts when you didn’t intend to. Unless, of course, you did, in which case, go right ahead. Luckily, there are less-worrisome nouns in the “changes meaning because of one measly little consonant” category. Though getting the pronunciation wrong might cause confusion, you won’t end up searching desperately for a bag to throw over your head. Here are a few:
copia/coppia (copy vs couple)
nono/nonno (ninth vs grandpa)
pala/palla (shovel vs ball)
papa/pappa (pope vs baby food)
rosso(a)/rosa (red vs pink; also a rose)
mola/molla (grindstone vs spring, i.e. water source)
poro/porro (pore vs leek)
capello/cappello (a hair vs a hat)
3. Gender: it’s all about one little vowel
Yes, all Italian nouns have gender, and yes, we native English speakers hate it, especially for its apparent randomness. Those four little letters—o and i, the masculine singular and plural; and a and e, their feminine counterparts—can do us in. I mean, seriously, why is meat (la carne) feminine when pork (il maile), beef (il manzo), veal (il vitello), lamb (l’agnello), and chicken (il pollo) are masculine? Why is a tablecloth (la tovalia) feminine but a napkin (il tovagliolo) is masculine? Why is the sun (il sole) masculine but the moon (la luna) is feminine?
These seemingly nonsensical gender attributions do make sense if you look at their Latin roots (and probably other linguistic-y things I haven’t bothered to research), but that doesn’t mean you can’t hate the whole stupid thing.
Here’s what the Encyclopedia Britannica says:
Latin originally had a five-case declensional system to classify nouns, but all modern Romance languages have replaced those endings with a two-gender system in which the masculine stems from Latin’s second (-us) declension endings and the feminine from first (-a) declension endings.
Enough of that highbrow stuff. The point is that that one stinkin’ vowel can make or break you. Here are some “fun” gender pairings that can cause confusion when that final vowel is muddied, usually by we Americans who, unfortunately, tend to swallow our vowels. (I’ll spare you a discussion of closed vs open vowels.) Voice those vowels up front, Americans!
Fortunately, context usually comes to the rescue. Per esempio:
porto/porta (port vs door)
costo/costa (price vs coastline)
pasto/pasta (meal vs pasta)
mento/menta (chin vs mint)
testo/testa (text vs head)
foglio/foglia (page or sheet of paper vs leaf)
banco/banca (bench or counter vs bank)
Il muro/le mura (a wall vs a town’s protective walls)
bilancio/bilancia (financial statement vs a scale or balance)
masso/massa (a boulder vs the mass of something)
4. Two tiny letters make reflexive verbs get all self-absorbed
“Reflexive” means that the action of a verb is reflected on the subject, which is a confusing way to say the action is “to oneself.” With reflexive verbs like arrabbiarsi, the pronoun si changes the verb’s meaning (arrabbiare = angry; arrabbiarsi = to become angry). Sometimes the meaning changes more drastically, as with aspettare, which means to wait, and aspettarsi (literally, to wait oneself), which means to expect. For example, if you tell someone you’re waiting for your brother at the station, it’s “Aspetto mio fratello alla stazione”; however, if he showed up at your house instead, you might say “Non mi aspettavo di trovarti qui” (I didn’t expect to find you here).
Another example is alzare/alzarsi, meaning to lift and to get up, respectively—in effect, you lift yourself out of bed.
Now let’s toss in the perhaps unwelcome fact that non-reflexive verbs can, in everyday-speak, be used pseudo-reflexively to emphasize what you did, and/or that you were really into it. Let’s look at some examples.
Normally, to announce that you’re eating or going to eat a pizza this evening, you’d say just that: Stasera mangio una pizza. But if you’re really hungry and/or the pizza will be especially delish, you might add the reflexive pronoun mi: “Stasera mi mangio una bella pizza.” (Often bel, bello, or bella is added to increase the lovability of whatever it is.) Similarly, “Leggo un libro” is standard Italian for “I’m reading a book,” but if you’re feeling accomplished or you think it’s a terrific book, you might say “Mi leggo un bel libro.”
5. Put pesky pronouns in their place!
With object pronouns, placement affects their spelling and thus their pronunciation. They don’t change in meaning, only in emphasis, but it’s important to make that one-letter distinction. Using mi/a me as an example, you could say “Mi piace quel libro” (I like that book; literally, that book is pleasing to me); or for more emphasis, or to distinguish the fact that you (unlike, say, your sister) liked the book, you could say “A me piace quel libro” (to ME, that book is pleasing).
Let’s leave it at that, shall we? If you liked this letter, then I’m afraid you’re as language lovesick as I am, god help you. Whether you’re fascinated or bored, tell me in the comments!
Alla prossima,
Cheryl
© 2023 Cheryl A. Ossola
Poem of the week:
“A Language” by Susan Stewart
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!
I had an Italian lesson yesterday and it so made me want to go back to Italy. We have many friends, you included, that are overdue for a bicchere di vino
La mia testa è piena 😀