Becoming Italian Word by Word

10 Reasons to Fall in Love with Italian -- and Italy (Part 2)

 
 

innamorarsi 

 to fall in love

Italian embodies its native speakers’ greatest genius: the ability to transform anything—from marble to melody, from the humble noodle to life itself—into a joyous art While other tongues do little more than speak, Italian thrills the ear, beguiles the mind, captivates the heart, and enraptures the soul. 

Here are five more reasons to fall in love with Italian. 

6. You can immerse yourself in an Italian masterpiece. You can’t sculpt like Michelangelo, paint like Leonardo or design like Armani. But you can read and speak the language that 14th century poets—Dante first and foremost—crafted from the effervescent Tuscan vernacular. Handpicked by writers and scholars in the first official Vocabolario in any Western tongue, Italian words represent “i più bei fiori” (the most beautiful flowers) in the language.

 7. Speaking Italian may be the closest many of us get to singing. What makes Italian so musical are its vigorous vocali (vowels): An Italian “a” slides up from the throat into an ecstatic “aaaah.” Its “e” (pronounced like a hard English “a”) cheers like the hearty “ay” at the end of hip-hip-hooray. The “i” (which sounds like an English “e”) glides with the glee of the double e in bee. The “o” (an English “o” on steroids) is as perfectly round as the red circle Giotto painted in a single stroke for a pope demanding a sample of his work. The macho “u” (deeper, stronger and longer than its English counterpart) lunges into the air like a penalty kick from Italy’s world-champion soccer team, the Azzurri (Blues). 

8. Italian may be our universal mother tongue. Dating back almost three millennia, its primal sounds—virtually identical to those that roared through Roman amphitheaters thousands of years ago—strike a chord in our universal linguistic DNA. According to some scholars, Italian may come closer than any other idiom to expressing what it means to be human. 

9. You’re never too young—or too old—to learn Italian. As brain scans have shown, groping for even the simplest words in a different language sparks new clusters of neurons and synapses. Within weeks in an all-Italian class, preschoolers understand everything happening around them. It takes longer as we get older, but learning a second language later in life provides a different advantage: It helps stave off dementia. 

10. Italians. The more you know of their language, the more you’ll realize how right the British author E.M. Forster was when he urged visitors to drop “that awful tourist idea that Italy’s only a museum of antiquities and art.” His advice: “Love and understand the Italians for the people are more marvelous than the land.” Indeed they are. And if you’re of Italian descent, cherish Italy’s language as a marvelous part of your heritage. 

This may be your last chance to enter our "Fall in Love with Italy" contest, which runs through Monday, February 28, until midnight Pacific time.  Click below to hear me talk about how I fell in love with this luscious language.

10 Reasons to Fall in Love with the Italian Language (Part 1)

 
   

L'Italiano

Italian won me over at first "Ciao!" Over the last quarter-century, I have devoted countless hours and effort—enough, if applied to more practical pursuits, for the down payment on a villa in Umbria—to the wiliest of Western tongues. I have studied Italian in every way I could find—from Berlitz to books, with CDs and computer drills, in private tutorials and conversation groups, and in what some might deem unconscionable amounts of time in Italy.  

Such passion is nothing new.  “In our present times,” observed the Florentine playwright Giovan Battista Gelli in 1551, “many diverse people of intelligence and refinement, outside Italy no less than within Italy, devote much effort and study to learning and speaking our language for no reason but love.” 

Why fall in love with this luscious language? Here are the first five of my top ten reasons: 

1. Italian is “beautiful, fun and sexy.” That’s how people perceive Italy and its language, Stephen Brockman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, observes in an essay called “In Defense of European Languages.” “Why not?” he adds. “I can’t see anything wrong with that.” Neither can I. 

2. No other language is more romantic. All the Romance languages evolved from the volgare (vernacular) of ancient Rome Yet none may have so many seductive ways of expressing amore: Ti amo, mio tesoro (I love you, my darling) for l’amore della tua vita (the love of your life). Ti voglio bene (for all others). Voglio soltante te (I want only you). Vieni qui e baciami (Come here and kiss me.) Ti adoro (I adore you). 

3. Everything sounds better in Italian. An ordinary towel becomes an asciugamano; a handkerchief, a fazzoletto; a dog leash, a guinzaglio. Garbage isn’t mere trash. In Italian, it’s spazzatura. Italian’s linguistic pantry is stuffed with words delicious enough to eat, such as cappellacci di zucca (pumpkin-stuffed pasta shaped like caps), ciambellone (ring cake), sospiri di monaca (a nun’s sigh), tiramisù (pick-me-up) and lacrime d’amore (tears of love), candy sugar pearls filled with sweet syrup. 

4. You can use your hands—a lot! In Italian speaking without gestures is like writing without punctuation. Hands become commas, exclamation points and question marks. Who even needs words when a tug at a bottom eyelid translates into "Attenzione!" ("Watch out! Pay attention!"), a straight line drawn in the air as “Perfetto!” and fingers flicking upward from the neck past the tip of the chin as "Che me ne frega" ("I don't give a *&#@!").  

5. Italian has become the new French. With only an estimated 60 to 63 million native speakers (compared to a whopping 1.8 blilion who claim at least a little English), Italian barely eclipses Urdu, Pakistan’s official language, for nineteenth place as a spoken tongue. Yet Italian ranks fourth among the most studied languages—after English, Spanish, and French, which Italian now rivals as a language of culture and refinement. 

Dianne Hales is the author of La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World’s Most Enchanting Language. To enter our Fall in Love with Italy contest, click here. The contest closes February 28.

 Italian may be the only language that has inspired una canzone d’amore (a love song). Click below to hear this lyrical tribute:

Falling in Love with Italian Gelato

Only Italian has a word for a lust for food that goes beyond mere craving: goloso. In this guest blog,  Mark Leslie,  author of the website/blog Beyond the Pasta and of the book, Beyond the Pasta: Recipes, Language & Life with an Italian Family, describes his passion for one of Italy's most loved treats.

Confessions of a Gelato Goloso

by Mark Leslie

From the very first moment I walked into a gelateria during my first vacation in Italy in September, 2001, to experience the double-scoop flavor combination of cioccolato (chocolate) and bacio (chocolate with hazelnuts), I have been in love with this very Italian treat.

Most Americans think of gelato as ice cream. However, it is not really “ice cream,” since it is made from milk and not cream like its American cousin. Using milk gives gelato a smoother and subtler texture than the frozen ice cream we scoop from containers bought at our local supermarket. In Italy, gelato is almost always purchased at una gelateria (think ice cream shop), and there is a long cultural tradition of going out to eat gelato.

During the month I lived in Italy with an Italian family and studied cooking from the grandmother and language from her daughter, I think I ate my weight in gelato--yet never gained a pound. Trust me, it isn’t that gelato has some miracle diet ingredient hidden in it or that I ate fat-free gelato. (Mamma mia, I don’t even think they make such a thing! )

On that trip, I learned a couple of “rules of the gelato road":

1. When ordering gelato you must always chose two different flavors –- due gusti (two tastes) if not more, regardless of whether your cup or cone is small or large. Order only one flavor, and watch the counter person look at you as if you arrived from Mars. I always go for a chocolate/chocolate combination, such as mandorla (chocolate with almonds) and stracciatella (the Italian version of vanilla with chocolate chip).

Lillo, the father of the family I lived with, thought I was missing the point of two gelato flavors. He was always insisting that I use his gelato philosophy: a scoop of fruit flavor (raspberry, strawberry, lemon, blackberry, cantaloupe, pear, or apple) paired with a scoop of vanilla, yogurt, cream, or fior di latte (flower of milk–-a subtle cream-flavored gelato). My favorite combination using his advice is cannella (cinnamon) paired with fico (fig).

2. Whenever I would start to complain to Lillo about how I was going to get fat (grasso) from eating so much gelato, he would remind me not to worry because “Gelato e’ liquido.” (Gelato is liquid.) According to this theory, water is a liquid. Water isn’t fattening. So liquid isn’t fattening. Therefore, gelato isn’t fattening, because once you eat it, it just melts and becomes a liquid.

I trusted his theory, ate gelato at every opportunity, and returned home a month later eight pounds lighter. This really had more to do with a diet higher in fresh fruit, less processed food, and a lot of walking –- everywhere. But if his theory keeps me eating gelato “guilt-free,” I am all for Lillo, the gelato philosopher and scientist!

My most recent trip to Italy found me in a little gelateria, tucked back off a narrow Roman street, eating a scoop of garden sage with strawberry paired with a scoop of fennel, caramel, and almond. Wow! Of course, hours later I was there having my next combination –- lavender with peach paired opposite tartufo –- dark, rich, and decadent chocolate. I think Lillo would have cringed.

For a chance to win a copy of Mark's book and other fun prizes, click here to enter our “Fall in Love with Italy” contest.

Why Women Fall in Love with Italy

My friend Susan van Allen provides 100 reasons in her book 100 Places In Italy Every Woman Should Go. 

 

to fall in love

essere inamorata di

by Susan Van Allen

It's not surprising that so many women travelers fall in love with Italy--it overflows with art that glorifies the female form and spirit.

In Florence, the Botticelli Rooms in the Uffizi are an overwhelming example of this glorification, Renaissance style. The most famous of the beauties in this room is "The Birth of Venus" (1484). Here's a story behnd that painting: 

Describing a woman as a Botticelli automatically brings up this famous image of a naked, curvy Venus stepping off a seashell to the shore. But Botticelli actually translates to “little barrel.” A better description of a beautiful woman would be to call her a Simonetta Vespucci , the name of the model for this painting.

Simonetta was Botticelli’s muse, the most adored woman in Florence, and his neighbor’s wife. She came to Florence from Genoa as the fifteen-year-old bride of Marco Vespucci, whose cousin was the famous Italian explorer Amerigo. Her fans called her La Bella Simonetta and liked to say she was born in the Ligurian coastal town of Portovenere, where the Romans believed Venus arose from the sea.

Though these days she’d be ordered to do Pilates to tighten her abs, in 1469 Simonetta’s pear shape was ideal. Only poor starving gals were skinny back then, and Renaissance guys adored chicks with childbearing hips.

In Florence, artists clamored to have Simonetta pose for them, writers sent her love poems, and she was showered with gifts from admirers. Botticelli, an artist on the rise, introduced Simonetta to the men who ran Florence, the brothers Lorenzo and Giuliano de Medici.

Lorenzo was involved with being Magnificent and his banking and philosophy biz, but smitten with Simonetta, ordered a painting of her for his bed chamber, which some say became Botticelli’s Venus. Giuliano, a sporty type, called for a jousting tournament to be held in honor of the glamour-puss who had quickly become the Marilyn Monroe of Florence.

Botticelli painted Giuliano’s joust banner with the words “The Unparalleled One” under Simonetta’s image. Giuliano won and Simonetta was declared “Queen of Beauty.” Since she was married, there’s no record of nooky between Simonetta and Giuliano, though the locals imagined their steamy affair as fervently as the Brangelina romance of our times.

A year after the joust, twenty-two-year-old Simonetta died of consumption. Her funeral was an Italian day of mourning. Thousands came to Florence to join in her casket procession, weeping and tossing flowers.

Botticelli had started painting The Birth of Venus before Simonetta died. It took him nine years to finish it, perhaps because the thought of his nude muse being gone from him was too tragic to bear.

As you look around the room, you’ll see how Botticelli used Simonetta’s inspiration again and again—from Primavera to The Annunciation. He never married, in fact said the idea of marriage was a nightmare.

When he died, thirty-four years after La Bella Simonetta, Botticelli asked to be buried at her feet. In the Church of Ognissanti, which was Simonetta’s family parish, you can see his wish was granted.

Excerpted from 100 Places In Italy Every Woman Should Go, by Susan Van Allen.  

Click here to win a $500 gift certificate for a tour of Italy and other fun prizes in our "Fall in Love with Italy" contest.

Ten of the Most Romantic Sayings in the Italian Language

frasi d'amore

 phrases of love

Despite their romantic reputation, Italians reserve “ti amo” (I love you) only for the loves of their lives. English-speakers love everyone and everything with the same wanton word—a lack of precision (and imagination) that confused a friend when she moved here from Italy. “People were always telling me they loved my hair, my eyes, my spaghetti alla carbonara,” she explains. “How could it feel special when a man said he loved me?”

Italian parents and children as well as boyfriends and girlfriends express affection with “Ti voglio bene,” which translates literally into “I want you well,” but conveys an entire universe of best wishes: “I want the best for you.” “I want all good things for you.” “I want what you want because I care so much for you.” This phrase echoes in the lyrics of hundreds of love songs. Smitten teenagers end their text messages with TVTB for “ti voglio tanto bene” (I love you so much). I found the phrase embroidered on a heart-shaped pillow (above) in a store in Rome last February.

This Valentine's Day--or  any time you are invaghito di qualcuno (infatuated with someone), looking for un amore appassionato (a passionate love), or innamorato (head over heels in love)-- nothing is more romantic than an Italian dichiarazione d’amore (declaration of love). Here are some of the most irresistible frasi romantiche (romantic phrases):

1. Sei la mia anima gemella -- You are my soulmate.

2. Ti penso ogni giorno -- I think of you every day

3. Senza di te la mia vita non ha senso -- Without you my life makes no sense.

4. Vieni qui e baciami -- Come here and kiss me.

5. Sei tutto per me. Sei il mio universo -- You are everything for me. You are my universe.

6. Non posso vivere senza te -- I can’t live without you.

7. Non pensavo di poter provare un sentimento così profondo prima di incontrarti –- Before meeting you, I didn’t think I could experience such a profound feeling.

8. Non potrò mai smettere d’amarti -- I could never stop loving you.

9. Voglio passare il resto della mia vita con te –- I want to spend the rest of my life with you.

10. Siamo angeli con un'ala sola, solo restando abbracciati possiamo volare -- We are angels with only one wing; only embracing each other are we able to fly (from writer-director Luciano De Crescenzo).

I hope your storia d’amore (love story) ends the same way that Italian fairy tale romances do: with the phrase “e vissero felici e contenti” (and they lived happily thereafter).

For the sheer fun of un gioco d'amore (a love game), click here to enter our "Fall in Love with Italy" contest. For more phrases and a lovely song about le più belle frasi d'amore, click below:

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language. 

 

Celebrating Lovers in the Italian Language

La festa degli innamorati 

The Feast of the Enamored  

On every February 15, the ancient Romans would celebrate a fertility festival called the Lupercalia with the sacrifice of a goat in the sacred cave dedicated to Romulus and Remus, the city’s legendary founders. Priests sliced the goat’s hide into strips and dipped them in the sacrificial blood. Boys would run through the streets, gently slapping women with the goatskin strips to enhance their fertility in the coming year.

Later in the day, all the young unmarried women in the city would place their names in a large urn. Rome’s bachelors each selected a name and became that woman’s sexual partner for the year in a sort of trial union that often led to marriage. 

As it grew in power in the centuries following the birth of Christ, the Catholic Church abolished this pagan practice. In its stead it created the most romantic of saints’ days on February 14 to honor a martyred Roman priest named Valentino. 

Although historical accounts differ, Valentino seems to have served in Rome in the third century A.D., when the Emperor Claudius II outlawed marriage for young men because he believed that bachelors made better soldiers. Valentino, sympathetic to young lovers, defied the decree and continued to perform weddings. 

Arrested and tortured, the tender-hearted priest developed a friendship with a young girl — perhaps his jailor’s daughter—who came to visit him. Some say they fell in love; others claim that he cured her blindness. Before being beheaded, the priest sent her a note that he signed, “il tuo Valentino.” 

Lovers around the world have been using the same phrase ever since on the holiday Italians call la festa degli innamorati. The town of Vico del Gargano in Puglia celebrates Valentino, its patron saint, by inviting people in love to drink the juice of the local oranges, considered an elixir for love and happiness. Young couples make their way through the famous “Vicolo del bacio,” (the alleyway of the kiss), a tiny pathway only nineteen inches wide, where they exchange kisses and sweet nothings. 

Throughout Italy, which has not commercialized Valentine’s Day as much as in the United States, couples celebrate with una cenetta intima (a romantic or intimate dinner), flowers, or the famous Baci Perugina, small, chocolate-covered hazelnut “kisses” wrapped with a poetic quote in four languages. Some examples:  Un cuore che ama è sempre giovane -- A heart that loves is always young. L’amore è come la luna: se non cresce, cala -- Love is like the moon. If it doesn’t get bigger, it wanes. 

As Susan van Allen recounts in  100 Places in Italy Every Woman Should Go, the candies were invented by the wife of the famous Perugia chocolatier, who fell for a much younger worker and wrapped the chocolates sent to him for inspection in love notes.

You can win some "Baci" chocolates, along with other fun prizes, by entering our February "Fall in Love with Italy" contest here. 

 Sweet Sayings for Your Valentine: 

Mi sto innamorando di te -- I’m falling in love with you 

Ti amo tanto, tesoro mio -- I love you so much, my darling 

Sei l'amore della mia vita -- You are the love of my life 

Ti amo da impazzire/morire/alla follia -- I love you to go crazy, to die, to madness 

Sono pazzo di te -- I’m crazy about you 

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language. 

Click below to hear a popular contemporary love song: "Ho voglio di te" (I want you):

Three Reasons to Fall in Love with Sicily

La Sicilia

I have yet to visit Sicily, although I hope to soon. In the meantime, I asked the folks at Go Ahead Tours what they love most about the Mediterranean's largest island., Here are their top three favorites Sicilian destinations -- all part of Go Ahead's Best of Sicily tour. (Click here to enter our "Fall in Love with Italy" contest and the chance to win a $500 gift certificate for this or any of Go Ahead Tour's other Italian trips.)

1. Mt. Etna

Europe's largest active volcano, Mt. Etna has regularly shown off its temper since antiquity. (In Greek mythology, Zeus imprisons Typhon, "the father of all monsters," beneath Mt. Etna.)  Etna's frequent eruptions have raised its peak high above the surrounding plain. Etna shoots up from flat ground to nearly 11,000 feet in the air with no foothills in sight.

Four separate calderas can be seen at the mountain's peak, while more than 300 smaller vents on Etna's flanks help prevent a catastrophic eruption like the one that destroyed Mt. St. Helens. While Etna's eruptions often produce clouds of ash and the "globes of fire" Virgil describes in the Aeneid, Sicily's most famous mountain has also been observed emitting smoke rings, an extremely rare occurrence in volcanology.

2. Syracuse

Though it's now part of Italy, Syracuse is a decidedly Greek town. Located on the southeast corner of the island, Syracuse was once a great Mediterranean power thanks to its strategic situation athwart vital sea lanes. After forming an alliance with Sparta's Peloponnesian League, Syracuse witnessed the foundering of the Athenian navy on its shores, an event that would precipitate the conclusion of the Peloponnesian War... and serve as an eternal warning for overly ambitious empires.

The city was also home to the famous polymath Archimedes, one of the great engineers of the ancient world. Legend has it that Archimedes devised ingenious, almost magical devices to defend his hometown during the Athenian invasion, including mirrors that reflected the sun to set fire to Athenian ships and an enormous claw designed to pluck boats from the water.

3. Taormina

Just a few short miles from Mt. Etna, you'll find Taormina, Sicily's favorite resort town since ancient times and home to perhaps the most dramatically situated theater in the world. The Greek Theatre (known locally as the Teatro Greco) appears at first blush to be a carbon copy of the amphitheater in Syracuse. But when you take a seat where the ancient Greeks would have sat, you face southwest, which makes the snowy slopes of Mt. Etna and the gorgeous Sicilian coastline the backdrop for every scene.

The city's architecture reflects Sicily's unique blend of cultures from around Europe and Africa, from the Normans to the Greeks to the Arabs. Nature lovers should take time to explore Isola Bella, a teardrop-shaped island in the heart of Taormina's tranquil cove. You won't need a boat to get there, since a rocky sandbar connects Isola Bella to the mainland.  

Words and Expressions in Sicilian

Bon giornu, bona sira, bona notti -- Good morning, good evening, good night

Piaciri di canuscirvi -- Pleased to meet you.

Comu si senti? -- How are you?

Bonu, grazii, e Lei? -- Fine, thank you, and you?

Addiu -- Good-bye.

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language. 

Falling in Love in the Italian Language

amore

love

Love truly is lovelier in Italy. “Anywhere else,” the nineteenth-century French writer known as Stendhal observed, “it is only a bad copy.”

Only in Italy can love’s colpo di fulmine (lightning bolt) set off spasimi (spasms) of infatuation of such Richter-scale force that they transform love-struck suitors into spasimanti, corteggiatori, innamorati, pretendenti, or, if almost fatally stricken, cascamorti. In English a heart breaks just like a dish, but a lovesick Italian soul claims a word of its own — spezzare — when it shatters into bits.  

Almost all classic Italian music and writing seems to be about love. Why? I asked an Italian composer and Petrarchian scholar. His reply: “What else is there?” I cannot imagine a citizen of any other nation—certainly no buttoned-down Brit or ambitious American, not even a flirtatious Frenchman or seductive Spaniard—making this statement.

How is that love, or maybe just the love of love, has embedded itself so deeply in the Italian psyche that the entire nation is crazy for love? Solo chi ama conosce, says an Italian proverb. Only those who love understand.

All this month I will be featuring posts on why people love Italy. And as part of a month-long campaign to get everyone to fall in love with Italy,  we are offering a giveaway we think you'll fall head over heels for. Click here to enter for your chance to win one of these five fabulous prizes:

*A $500 gift certificate for one of the 27 tours sponsored by Go Ahead Tours, including a 15-day Grand Tour of Italy, the Best of Sicily, Food and Wine tours of Tuscany and more.

*A LA BELLA LINGUA goodie bag, complete with a copy of my book, an official LA BELLA LINGUA tote bag and tee shirt, a Mona Lisa mousepad, and other treats  

*Lidia Cooks from the Heart of Italy, the best-selling collection of 175 regional recipes by the iconic Italian chef Lidia Bastianich

*Under the Tuscan Sun 2011 Engagement Calendar, an entire year of excerpts and recipes from Frances Mayes’s much-loved books, with stunning photographs by Steven Rothenfield

*Beyond the Pasta, Mark Leslie’s adventures in cooking with an Italian family.

We'll be accepting entries all month long and announcing winners in early March. The give-away is limited to residents of the United States and Canada. In bocca al lupo! (Good luck!)

Words and Expressions

essere innamorato di -- to be in love with

essere perdutamente innamorato –- to be hopelessly in love

amante della lirica, amante degli animali, etc -- an opera lover, animal lover, etc.

amore a prima vista -- love at first sight