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ITALIAN LANGUAGE

Ten phrases to talk about cold and wet weather like a true Italian

Although Italy is known for being balmy and bright, Italians have plenty of expressions and proverbs to refer to cold and rainy weather. Here are ten phrases you can throw into conversation in these chilly days.

Fa un freddo cane.
Fa un freddo cane. Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

The weather in Italy has taken a turn for the colder and wetter, with storms and high winds sweeping through the country.

As autumn turns into winter, the mercury is set to drop even further, setting teeth chattering and extremities tingling.

Of course, the temperature difference is markedly different between the northern alpine regions and the much milder southern regions.

READ ALSO: From beer to hairdryers: 10 Italian words that come from German

Still, Italians from all corners of the peninsula share a love of talking about how cold and wet it is, so if you’re an Italian language learner who wants to impress with your command of cold-themed lingo, we’ve got you covered.

Che Freddo GIF - Che Freddo Coperta Cold GIFs

Fa un freddo cane

When the cold is really biting, simply saying fa freddo (it’s cold) doesn’t go far enough. Fa un freddo cane is an idiomatic phrase used in spoken Italian on those freezing cold days. It means, “It’s freezing cold!”

The phrase literally translates as, “It makes a cold dog”, which doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense. But it means something more like “it’s dog cold!”

Dogs don’t have much to do with the phrase in reality, much like with the English phrase “it’s raining cats and dogs”. It’s just a (polite) way of emphasising how awfully cold it is. For more language tips on this phrase, see here.

Ho il naso gelato

“Sono stanco e ho fame, ho la coda gelata, e il naso gelato, e le orecchie gelate, e i piedi gelati”.

This adorable quote from one of the puppies in Disney’s 101 Dalmatians pretty much sums up winter. Everything is cold and frozen.

As the family of dogs made their way through freezing snow drifts to escape the evil clutches of Cruella de Vil, one of the exhausted little fellas said, “I’m tired and I’m hungry, my tail is froze, and my nose is froze, and my ears are froze, and my feet are froze”.

READ ALSO: 10 of the most common Italian translation fails

Of course, it should be frozen in English but he’s only little for getting past participles right.

Although you’ll likely best know gelato as a staple of Italian food, in winter you’ll probably have an ‘ice cream nose’ at some point. It really means you have a frozen nose, as gelato simply means ‘frozen’ from the verb to freeze, ‘gelare’.

Che freddo, ho i brividi!

When you want to express how chilly the weather is making you feel, you might want to convey that it really is so cold that you’re shivering.

So you could say through chattering teeth, ‘Che freddo, ho i brividi!’ to mean, ‘It’s so cold! I’ve got the shivers!’

Ho la pelle d’oca

Another way of saying that you’re suffering from the freezing temperature is to compare your skin to that of a goose’s.

In English you’d say, ‘I’ve got goosebumps’, whereas the Italian equivalent is close: ‘Ho la pelle d’oca’ means ‘I’ve got goose skin’.

Cielo a pecorelle acqua a catinelle

If you really want to show off your language chops, try throwing this Italian proverb into conversation. It literally means, “Sky in sheep’s clothing, water in buckets” and is the great classic of Italian weather proverbs.

Not only does it give a clear picture of the impending rain shower, it also has a solid scientific basis.

READ ALSO: 12 of the most useful Italian words you need to know

Those small clouds similar to lots of little cotton balls – that look like a flock of sheep – are cirrocumulus clouds found between six and seven thousand metres above sea level. They indicate the presence of cold and unstable air at that altitude, often signalling the arrival of a humid warm front accompanied by possible thunderstorms or showers.

So, the next time you see this cloud formation in the sky, you can say ‘Cielo a pecorelle acqua a catinelle!’ and therefore both sagely predict the weather and impress people with your Italian at the same time.

Viene giù che Dio la manda

“It’s raining and God is sending it”, was the custom, blaming God for the bad weather. Blasphemy is a delicate topic in Italy, a country that is overwhelmingly Catholic, but you’ll notice that a lot of Italian phrases curse God or Mary (Madonna).

If you really want to emphasise how much it’s raining, this phrase will express it well – just be careful who you say it to.

Piove di brutto

Perhaps you want to say more than it’s just simply raining. The heavens are opening and it’s bucketing down, it’s definitely not a little drizzle. 

Commenting ‘piove’ doesn’t quite cut it in this case. Adding on ‘di brutto’ makes it clear that it’s raining ‘badly’. You can use ‘di brutto’ in a lot of contexts to emphasise your point, just as in English you might say you want something badly. It isn’t always necessarily negative, rather that it magnifies and adds weight to your point.

Rain Rainy Day GIF - Rain Rainy Day Miss You GIFs

READ ALSO: 19 of your favourite Italian words (and some of ours)

Piove a dirotto

The expression ‘piove a dirotto’ is used to describe an abundant, copious amount of rain. The origin of the term is believed to be linked to the etymology of the adjective ‘dirotto’, which means ‘broken’.

So it provides the imagery of rain breaking into several parts, a heavy rainstorm therefore, like a river bursting its banks.

Si muore di freddo

It’s so cold that you can’t feel your fingers or your toes and all you can do is imagine getting somewhere warm and cosy before you turn into a complete ice block.

‘Si muore di freddo’ gives the really rather serious impression that it’s so cold, you’ll die because of it – equivalent to the English ‘I’m dying of cold’.

Piove sul bagnato

If it’s so wet that you just can’t get any wetter, this phrase will come in handy. ‘Piove sul bagnato’ means it’s raining on the wet.

Handy for those days when you wonder if you’ll ever see the blue sky again.

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For members

ITALIAN LANGUAGE

7 things you should know about the Italian language

With its musicality and large vocabulary, Italian is one of the most fascinating languages on the planet. But do you know everything about it?

7 things you should know about the Italian language

Italian is frequently considered as one of the most beautiful languages in the world. Its musicality, intonations and smoothness make it one of the most poetic languages out there. 

This Romance language is spoken by 67 million native speakers across the globe and it’s the official language of Italy, San Marino, The Vatican (along with Latin) and Switzerland (along with German, French, and Romansh). While the Italian language, like all Romance languages, derives from Vulgar Latin, Italy’s standard form is based on the Florentine dialect from hundreds of years ago.

Though standard Italian existed prior to the Unification of Italy in 1861, Italians themselves identified more strongly with their regional dialects, a lot of which are still in existence today.

Television played a crucial role in Italians learning the language: in the 1960s, national broadcaster RAI aired Non è mai troppo tardi (‘It’s never too late’), a TV programme where Italian teacher Alberto Manzi taught Italian to his audience.

Let’s take a look at some more interesting facts about Italian.

It became Italy’s official language in 2007

Yes, you read that correctly. Exactly 146 years after the country’s unification, Italian was formally written into the constitution as being Italy’s official language. 

There is a 500-year-old institution dedicated to researching Italian

The Accademia della Crusca (literally, ‘Bran Academy’) is a Florence-based institution which focuses on Italian linguistics. Founded by five Florentine men in 1582, the institute claims it wrote the first Italian dictionary (Vocabolario degli Accademici della Crusca), which was first published in 1612.

The longest Italian word has 30 letters

The word in question is (get ready for it) Psiconeuroendocrinoimmunologia. It’s a medical term that studies behaviours in response to external stimuli so it is rarely used in everyday speaking. 

Another long word is precipitevolissimevolmente.

READ ALSO: The Italian version of 11 famous English sayings

It’s a superlative of the adverb ‘hastily’, or precipitevolmente in Italian. There’s even a proverb with this word: chi troppo in alto sal, cade sovente precipitevolissimevolmente (‘those who climb too high, often fall very hastily’).

Italian is not the majority language in some areas of the country

The northern region of South Tyrol has approximately 520,000 inhabitants. Of those 520,000, around 69 percent use the German language more frequently than the Italian language. Even road signs in some of the areas bordering Austria are in German. 

Another northern region, Aosta Valley, recognises French as an official language. While the ratio of French speakers to Italian speakers is not quite as high as the ratio of German speakers to Italian speakers in South Tyrol, many of the region’s signposts are in both Italian and French.

South Tyrol

A German-Italian sign reading ‘private property’ at the entrance of a vineyard in the small village of St. Michael Eppan, South Tyrol. Photo by Christof STACHE / AFP

The name of a continent comes from Italy

It is generally accepted that the name ‘America’ derives from Italian explorer Amerigo Vespucci, who claimed that the lands fellow explorer Christopher Columbus set sail to in 1492 were in fact part of a separate continent.

A map created in 1507 by Martin Waldseemüller was the first to depict this continent with the name America.

The word ‘volt’ was created by an Italian

Speaking of nouns named after people, Alessandro Volta was an Italian scientist who made a breakthrough in the late 18th century when he created his ‘voltaic pile’ – the first-ever device to provide a steady supply of electricity. His last name is where ‘volt’ (and ‘voltage’) originates from.

READ ALSO: 15 Italian words that change their entire meaning with one letter

There are only 21 letters in the Italian alphabet

The Italian alphabet, which derives from the Latin one, only contains 21 letters. Letters j, k, w, x, and y are not formally included in it, though they can often be found in words of foreign origin.

The above list is non-exhaustive. If you know any other interesting facts about the Italian language, let us know in the comments below.

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