Lorna at Vicenza

SMILE AND TAKE HEED ............

Let's have a laugh - we all know how difficult it can be to learn Italian - especially when it gets mixed up with dialect so tell us about your little "gaffs".

Have you ever asked for pene instead of penne?
Have you ever told anybody that you're going for a pisellino instead of a pisolino?
Does the verb 'scopare' have a double meaning in your area?
Have you ever (like I once did) told a whole table of people that you won't eat "ucello" ?
Have you ever tried to translate an English proverb only to discover it makes no sense here?

Share your little faux-pas with us and let other readers learn from our mistakes.
Go on - have a laugh today and forget that it's piove cani e gatti !!!!!!!!!

duffer

You so've asked for pene but then claim not to eat uccello?
Hmmmm.

Lorna at Vicenza

ha ha very funny - but not all of these mistakes are mine - and I prefer not to spend my money on pasta in a restaurant and get something different so the pene/penne mistake hasn't actually happened to me but to a friend. I admit to the ucello one though.

Beep

Umm rather a lot

Calling a firefighter a pompino instead of a pompiere

Telling someone that I had left the dog in the oven instead of the meat

Saying that I thought there was going to be tuna and lightening instead of thunder

Exclaiming how lovely the tits looked covered with snow instead of the roofs

Asking in the farmacia if they sold carpets to stick in my ears instead of earplugs




and thats just the ones I can remember off the top of my head

Lorna at Vicenza

oh I just loved the fireman pompino - never heard that one before

yellowdog

Good one! I'm sure I've done a few of those. I don't pronounce my r's very well so dog and meat always sounds the same coming from me.

genzana

My boyfriend's rugby team mates kindly taught him to say pompino instead of pompiere! With friends like these...

I've talked about the big "tette" in Alpine regions - meaning the overhanging roofs!

The double letters can be really hard for us to hear and pronounce I find - ani versus anni being the classic example (anuses versus years).

I regularly look for the cassetta instead of the casetta, or the palla instead of the pala.

Here's a good list I found online. Once you can pronounce the difference between these, you're rolling!

agio—ease, comfort aggio—premium
ano—anus anno—year
casa—house cassa—crate, box
eco—echo ecco—here
gramo—miserable grammo—gram
nono—ninth nonno—grandfather
note—note notte—night
pala—shovel palla—ball
papa—father pappa—bread soup
pena—pain penna—pen
rosa—rose rossa—red
sbafo—scrounging sbaffo—smear
sera—evening serra—greenhouse
sete—thirst sette—seven

sands

I showed this thread to my half Italian hubby who thought it was hysterical
I won't comment on what he thought about Duffy's answer ....

yellowdog

I think that we, as in english, have problems with the pronunciation because quite often in english there are silent letters in words. Whereas the italians pronounce every single letter in every word. I do think genzana's list is a good one to practice on.

kathrynverona

I remember my first meal with the inlaws where I understood that they had an exorcist living on the floor below, turns out it was only an estetiste. Easy mistake to make.

Lorna at Vicenza

My name is Lorna so I often find myself being called Lorrrrrrna - but I have a group of friends who call me Lornina or Lornetta - I really don't mind this diminutive invention of my name but I often wonder what they would call me if I weighed a hundred kilos ..... LORNONA ????

kathrynverona

I never get called by my name, not even by the hubbie. They just can't seem to cope with it. At work I'm usually bionda, kat, beffana, and several more that I can't list here or I'd be kicked off the site. They have difficulty with my son's name as well, they can't say the h in henry.
It quite funny as well when visitors come from the UK and they expect a bloke from the name and they turn out to be women (andrea)

Lorna at Vicenza

My sister is called Andrea. Nobody has a problem with the pronunciation of my daughter's name Chloe but they are all surprised it has an H in it. It even took her teacher 3 months to start writing it with an H and that was only because complained to her !!!

duffer

you mean the grammatical error i made in muddling up the words. whoops. hehe.
Now where are my pene... Got some writing to do!

duffer

We'll be the judge of that! How much do you weigh Lorni?!