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Sep. 22nd, 2003
Wordy things
Sep. 22nd, 2003 05:51 pmAnybody have any idea where I can find the correct spellings for various Italian phrases? My Italian linguistic heritage comes down to about six words/phrases, leaving aside the names of food items (mangia, eat imperative, capisce, understand interrogative, papagal, parrot(I think with the sense of mimicry), chebol, onion-head, pastachone noodle-head, and statta zit, that's enough/be quiet - all spellings and translations v. approximate). The last one, statta zit is the one I probably heard the most as a kid, and I'd like to be able to use it in written form.
As an aside, one of my roommates last year was taking Italian and remarked that none of these words sounded Italian to him, because they didn't end in vowels. Last night I finally realized that that's because I'm getting them via native-speaker elision (as with my great aunts' occasional murmurs of O Madon, with the final 'na' dropped off). So. Way to wait a year to figure that one out, wizard.
As an aside, one of my roommates last year was taking Italian and remarked that none of these words sounded Italian to him, because they didn't end in vowels. Last night I finally realized that that's because I'm getting them via native-speaker elision (as with my great aunts' occasional murmurs of O Madon, with the final 'na' dropped off). So. Way to wait a year to figure that one out, wizard.