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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

12 signs you’ve cracked the Italian language

Many learners struggle with the peculiarities of Italian. The good news is that if you relate to most of the items on this list, you're not far off fluency.

Published: 29 January 2020 09:05 CET
12 signs you’ve cracked the Italian language
Do you know your 'penne' from your 'pene'? Photo: Marnee Wohlfert/Unsplash

You can express any emotion in a single syllable

They say a picture paints a thousand words, but a combination of a drawn-out ‘boh’ (a way of expressing 'what do I know?') or ‘dai’ ('come on!' or 'stop it!') and the perfect facial expression surely convey even more. If you’ve mastered this, you’re not far off bilingualism.

WORD OF THE DAY: Find the complete archive here


Photo: DepositPhotos

Whether it’s to refer to a party, a car or an attractive man, this slang term for ‘cool!’ – literally translating as ‘what a fig!’ – is thrown about with reckless abandon by many young Italians, so if you've started using it, you could be turning into one of them.

The uninitiated should be warned that swapping the final ‘o’ with an ‘a’ turns the phrase into a more vulgar term…

You realize that every word needs a suffix

To the true Italian speaker, ‘bello’ is rarely enough – everything must be ‘bellissimo’! This applies to adjectives, adverbs, nouns – no word is safe.

For example, adding the suffix ‘one’ (meaning ‘big’) to the verb ‘sbrodolare’ (to dribble or spill) creates the word ‘sbrodolone’, meaning ‘big spiller’ or ‘messy eater’. Bonus points if you accompany your superlatives with an extravagant hand gesture.

READ ALSO: How to talk about love, sex, and dating in Italian


Photo: DepositPhotos

Dating a local is one of the best ways to pick up a language, and a sure sign that it’s working is if you’ve picked up the Italian tendency for soppy pet names. Yes, ‘patatina’ (‘little potato’) is actually used as a term of affection in Italy.

You can guess someone’s hometown based on whether they say ‘adesso’, ‘ora’ or ‘mo’

When Italy was officially unified in 1861, less than ten percent of the population spoke standard Italian, so it’s no surprise to learn that Italian dialects are still widely used. Even in the standard language, significant variations in usage remain.

When you can tell a Tuscan from a Roman based on their vocabulary choices or pronunciation of ‘che cosa’, you’re doing well.

READ ALSO: Twelve dialect words to help you survive in Rome


Photo: Marnee Wohlfert/Unsplash

Italian pronunciation is largely straightforward for English speakers, but a common problem is the use of tricky double consonants.

Failure to distinguish between single and double consonants can lead to confusion between ‘capello’ (hair) and ‘cappello’ (hat) – harmless enough, but you wouldn't want to mix up ‘penne’ (a kind of pasta) and ‘pene’ (penis)…

The following sentence makes perfect sense to you: ‘It was raining sinks and it was dog cold so I had to dress like an onion’

Italian is full of strange idioms and phrases which can be difficult for new arrivals to comprehend. If they’ve become second nature to you, you’re well on your way.

READ ALSO: How and why learning a new language messes with your old one

Couldn’t figure it out?

Piove catinelle = it’s raining cats and dogs (it’s raining sinks)
Fa un freddo cane = it’s really cold (it’s dog cold)
Vestirsi a cipolla = to wear layers (to dress like an onion)

When something bothers you, you don’t hesitate to exclaim ‘che schifo’ or ‘mi fa cagare’

Not only is this a sign of embracing the Italian disregard for over-politeness, but using Italian to express strong emotions is a sign that the language now comes naturally to you.

‘Che schifo’ (how disgusting) and ‘mi fa cagare’ (it makes me shit) are two of the blunter ways to make your disapproval known.


Photo: Marcus Spiske/Unsplash

You also know that it's bad manners to throw 'confetti' at a wedding, and understand friends who moan about their 'sensible skin'. False friends are a source of endless frustration for language learners – not to mention hilarity among natives when their foreign friends inevitably slip up.

QUIZ: Are you fooled by these Italian 'false friends'?

Once you’ve realized that ‘casino’ means ‘brothel’, ‘sensibile’ means ‘sensitive’ and ‘confetti’ means ‘sugared almonds’, you’re doing well. The only downside? You might start mixing up the meanings and using the Italian sense when speaking English.

You say things like ‘speriamo che faccia bello’ with confidence

Casually slipping the subjunctive into conversation will make you the envy of any friends still getting to grips with Italian grammar. The subjunctive mood, which tends to express ‘unreal’ conditions, is rarely used in modern English, and its forms can be difficult to learn.

READ ALSO: Seven songs that will help you learn Italian


Photo: Gilles Lambert/Unsplash

Learning Italian from textbooks and Dante is one thing, but being able to communicate with locals in real life is quite different. Dealing with text abbreviations – with not a single hand gesture to help you out – can be hard at first, so mastering the art is impressive.

The above example translates as ‘Dove sei? Domani ci sentiamo. Ti voglio bene’ or ‘Where are you? See you tomorrow. Love you.’

You know how to use ‘magari’ and do so frequently

‘But what does ‘magari’ mean?’ This question plagued you throughout Italian lessons and conversations with natives.

Once you’ve accepted that it can mean almost anything you want it to, and you feel comfortable using it in several different contexts (it most commonly loosely translates as ‘if only!’ or a sarcastic ‘yeah, right’), you have successfully assimilated into Italian culture.

READ ALSO: 21 mildly interesting facts about the Italian language

Photo: Filippo Monteforte/AFP

A version of this article was first published in November 2015.

Member comments

  1. The correct expression is “piove a catinelle”, meaning that rain is coming down as if the content of many sinks was falling, not the sinks themselves.

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LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Le Havre rules: How to talk about French towns beginning with Le, La or Les

If you're into car racing, French politics or visits to seaside resorts you are likely at some point to need to talk about French towns with a 'Le' in the title. But how you talk about these places involves a slightly unexpected French grammar rule. Here's how it works.

Published: 30 November 2021 13:04 CET
Updated: 4 December 2021 17:47 CET
An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre.
An old WW2 photo taken in the French port town of Le Havre. It can be difficult to know what prepositions to use for places like this - so we have explained it for you. (Photo by AFP)

If you’re listening to French chat about any of those topics, at some point you’re likely to hear the names of Mans, Havre and Touquet bandied about.

And this is because French towns that have a ‘Le’ ‘La’ or ‘Les’ in the title lose them when you begin constructing sentences. 

As a general rule, French town, commune and city names do not carry a gender. 

So if you wanted to describe Paris as beautiful, you could write: Paris est belle or Paris est beau. It doesn’t matter what adjectival agreement you use. 

For most towns and cities, you would use à to evoke movement to the place or explain that you are already there, and de to explain that you come from/are coming from that location:

Je vais à Marseille – I am going to Marseille

Je suis à Marseille – I am in Marseille 

Je viens de Marseille – I come from Marseille 

But a select few settlements in France do carry a ‘Le’, a ‘La’ or a ‘Les’ as part of their name. 

In this case the preposition disappears when you begin formulating most sentences, and you structure the sentence as you would any other phrase with a ‘le’, ‘la’ or ‘les’ in it.

Masculine

Le is the most common preposition for two names (probably something to do with the patriarchy) with Le Havre, La Mans, Le Touquet and the town of Le Tampon on the French overseas territory of La Réunion (more on that later)

A good example of this is Le Havre, a city in northern France where former Prime Minister, Edouard Philippe, who is tipped to one day run for the French presidency, serves as mayor. 

Edouard Philippe’s twitter profile describes him as the ‘Maire du Havre’, using a masculine preposition

Here we can see that his location is Le Havre, and his Twitter handle is Philippe_LH (for Le Havre) but when he comes to describe his job the Le disappears.

Because Le Havre is masculine, he describes himself as the Maire du Havre rather than the Maire de Havre (Anne Hidalgo, for example would describe herself as the Maire de Paris). 

For place names with ‘Le’ in front of them, you should use prepositions like this:

Ja vais au Touquet – I am going to Le Touquet

Je suis au Touquet – I am in Le Touquet 

Je viens du Touquet – I am from Le Touquet 

Je parle du Touquet – I am talking about Le Touquet

Le Traité du Touquet – the Le Touquet Treaty

Feminine

Some towns carry ‘La’ as part of their name. La Rochelle, the scenic town on the west coast of France known for its great seafood and rugby team, is one such example.

In French ‘à la‘ or ‘de la‘ is allowed, while ‘à le‘ becomes au and ‘de le’ becomes du. So for ‘feminine’ towns such as this, you should use the following prepositions:

Je vais à La Rochelle – I am going to La Rochelle

Je viens de La Rochelle – I am coming from La Rochelle 

Plural

And some places have ‘Les’ in front of their name, like Les Lilas, a commune in the suburbs of Paris. The name of this commune literally translates as ‘The Lilacs’ and was made famous by Serge Gainsbourg’s song Le Poinçonneur des Lilas, about a ticket puncher at the Metro station there. 

When talking about a place with ‘Les’ as part of the name, you must use a plural preposition like so:

Je suis le poinçonneur des Lilas – I am the ticket puncher of Lilas 

Je vais aux Lilas – I am going to Les Lilas

Il est né aux Lilas – He was born in Les Lilas  

Islands 

Islands follow more complicated rules. 

If you are talking about going to one island in particular, you would use à or en. This has nothing to do with gender and is entirely randomised. For example:

Je vais à La Réunion – I am going to La Réunion 

Je vais en Corse – I am going to Corsica 

Generally speaking, when talking about one of the en islands, you would use the following structure to suggest movement from the place: 

Je viens de Corse – I am coming from Corsica 

For the à Islands, you would say:

Je viens de La Réunion – I am coming from La Réunion 

When talking about territories composed of multiple islands, you should use aux.

Je vais aux Maldives – I am going to the Maldives. 

No preposition needed 

There are some phrases in French which don’t require any a preposition at all. This doesn’t change when dealing with ‘Le’ places, such as Le Mans – which is famous for its car-racing track and Motorcycle Grand Prix. Phrases that don’t need a preposition include: 

Je visite Le Mans – I am visiting Le Mans

J’aime Le Mans – I like Le Mans

But for a preposition phrase, the town becomes simply Mans, as in Je vais au Mans.

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