Tag: italian language

langsandlit:

biscotto – biscuit, cookie
brioche (f.) – brioche
burro – butter
caffè – coffee
caffè decaffeinato – decaffeinated coffee
caffellatte – milky coffee
cereali – cereals
colazione (f.) – breakfast
colazione continentale – continental breakfast
colazione all’inglese (OR all’americana) – english/american breakfast 
cornetto – croissant
fetta biscottata – rusk
frutta – fruit
frutta secca – dried fruit
giornale (m.) – newspaper
latte (m.) – milk
latte al cioccolato – chocolate milk
latte caldo – hot milk
latte di avena – oat milk 
latte di soia – soy milk
latte parzialmente scremato – semi-skimmed milk
latte scremato – skimmed milk
marmellata – jam 
marmellata di… – … jam
miele (m.) – honey
müsli/muesli (m. pl.) – müsli/muesli
pancarré (m.) – sandwiches bread 
pancetta – bacon
prosciutto – ham
salsiccia – sausage
succo – juice 
succo di frutta – fruit juice
succo di… – … juice
tazza – mug
tazzina – coffee cup
tè (m) – tea
teiera – teapot
toast (m.) / pane tostato – toast
tostapane – toaster
uovo (m.), uova (f.) – egg, eggs
yogurt (m.) – yogurt
zucchero – sugar

fare colazione – to have breakfast

Ways to say “yes” in Italian

langsandlit:

colloquial, informal
ah sì? – oh yeah? (genuine, sarcastic)
ah sì/già – oh, yeah, I remember
effettivamente / in effetti – you’re right / that’s true (agreeing; resigned if used with suspension points)
eh/eh.. – yeah (annoyed; sad or worried if used with suspension points)
eh sì – guess so (resigned)
e vabbè.. – alright then.. (resigned if used with the suspesion points)
già – yah (not very enthusiastic), yeah (when you want to express approval or agreement to what someone else said, as in già, hai ragione “yeah, you’re right”, but it can also be used to reinforce what you’ve just said, as in già, avrei dovuto dire qualcosa “yeah, I should’ve said something”). Careful: English “so yeah” doesn’t translate to *perciò già or something like that with già.
ma certo! – of course!
ma sì! – of course!
proprio così – that’s right
sì – yes
sì, sì (also written sisì, sisi) – yes, of course (less formal than what it might be in English)
sicuro! – sure!
vabbè (also spelt: va be’ and va beh) – alright (extremely annoyed or sad depending on the intonation/context)

agreeing
d’accordo – all right, it’s a deal
ok – okay
va bene – okay, all right
già – yeah (see above)

formal
assolutamente (sì) – absolutely
certamente – certainly
senz’altro – certainly, definitely
volentieri – with pleasure

inspired by @language2go​‘s post

starry-ni-te:

Untranslatable Italian words about summer 🌞

Canicola the hottest period of the year, when the Sun just trespassed the constellations of Canis major and Canis minor (circa July-August)

Solleone designs the sun specifically during summer; compound words of sole (sun) and leone (Leo) because the sun is in that sign

Afa the feeling of higher temperature caused by a high tax of humidity; stifling, oppressive air

Meriggiare from Latin meridies “evening”, to rest in the shadow in the outdoors during the hot hours of the evening

lingasms:

feyna-v:

In Italian, when somebody lends you something he will often say “Si chiama Pietro.” (Its name is Pietro) because it rhymes with “Torna indietro.” (It comes back, with the meaning of ‘I want it back’).

I was wondering, does something similar happen in English too? Like, “It’s called Jack” or something?

I’ve been using my ‘home-made’ translation of it as “It’s called Jack and it’s coming back” for years now! Always delivered with a smile, since a lot of Italian idioms are a little confrontational when translated outside of their cultural context: ”Patti chiari, amicizia lunga” comes to mind.

Linguistics question for you: Italian doesn’t have neutral pronouns or endings, but are there any workarounds that the nb/lgbt community use? Like in most Spanish spaces I’ve been in we use e endings instead of a/o where we can (ex: Latina/ Latino/ Latine, el/ella/elle, elle es une estudiante fantástique vs el es un estudiante fantástico) or if we’re just writing using x or @ ( Latinx, Latin@)

langsandlit:

Italian has various workarounds if you wish to avoid using an undesired pronoun. In instances where the pronoun is a non-subject (i.e. direct or indirect object), we could use:

  • (una, questa, quella…) persona “(a, this, that…) person”, “someone”;
  • Qualcuno “someone”;
  • Name of the person in question (easiest choice).

1a. Ho incontrato una persona molto gentile per strada. Mi ha chiesto di andare a prenderci un caffè = I meet someone in the street and they were very nice. They asked me to go take a coffee together (non gender specific).

1b. Ho incontrato un/una ragazzo/ragazza molto gentile per strada. Mi ha chiesto [..] = I met a boy/girl in street and he/she was really nice. He/she asked [..] (gender-specific)

2a. Ho finalmente incontrato qualcuno che mi ha reso felice = I’ve finally met someone that has made me happy (non gender-specific)

2b. Ho finalmente incontrato un/una uomo/donna che mi ha reso felice = I’ve finally met a man/woman that made me happy (gender-specific)

3a. Ho inviato un libro a Lucia/Fabrizio = I sent Lucia/Fabrizio a book (non gender-specific)

3b. Le/gli ho inviato un libro = I sent her/him a book (gender-specific)

In cases where the pronoun would act as the subject of a sentence, it would be more natural to drop or omit the subject altogether and leave the conjugated verb (1a). Alternatively, we could use verbs conjugated in the 3rd person plural to talk, generically, about people of unspecified gender, even if the subject is singular.

pongodoodle:

We are currently without a neutral form of pronouns and stuff like that. We do use the * at the end of a word (ragazzo/ragazza/ragazz*) but it’s not something “useful” when you’re actually talking. Long story short, we’re still working on it.

In italian, the neutral is expressed by the “inclusive masculine” which is actually sexist if you think about it. Like, a group of people is addressed with a “male” noun, even if in the group there’s a majority of females. Siblings are called “fratelli”(brothers) even if there’s only one brother and four sisters. Just to make an example. 

We have different “alternatives”, like the pronoun “essi” which is basically the english “they”, but italian is an inflectional language so if you use “essi”, which is plural, you only create a whole bunch of confusion with verb conjugations. 

But language can change and evolve, so maybe in the future we will have a neutral form for non-binary people. If our country changes as well, but I’m not that optimistic since the last elections. 

– Mi hanno detto (lit. “they told me”) domani che la scuola è chiusa.
– Chi te l’ha detto?
– Un insegnante prima che finisse la lezione.

– They told me school is closed tomorrow.
– Who told you?
– A teacher before the class ended [told me].

Other strategies are more context-specific and would consist in using either gender-neutral or apparently masculine nouns and adjectives, e.g. l’insegnante instead of il professore or la professoressa “teacher”; collega “colleague” (gender non-specific) or colleghi “colleagues” instead of gender-specific feminine plural colleghe “[female] colleagues”.

Evident disadvantages are represented by adjetives and past participles of intransitive verbs (verbs that have essere as the auxiliary). These will have to agree in number and grammatical gender with the nouns or names they’re modifying, e.g. è stanco “he’s tired”, è stanca “she’s tired” (cf. siamo stanchi “we’re tired” both all-inclusive and gender-specific).

(Side note: When talking about large groups, masculine plural morphology is more likely to be used as all-inclusive than gender-specific, which means that masculine plural nouns referring to people are more likely to lose their gender-specificity in favour of inclusiveness. On the other hand, feminine morphology is never all-inclusive and always gender-specific.)