Lorna at Vicenza

God dialect is a bugger isn't it!

I once asked for amphetamines in the chemist instead of antihistamines.
The nice chemist chap kept asking me if I was sure I wanted amphetamines and the poor old sod didn't have a clue what I really wanted until I said "YES - pills for allergies."

At a party once I'd just got talking to a guy on crutches....rather loudly to be heard over the music. Of course the next words that came out of my mouth were wrong and happened at the exact same time the song finished so the whole room heard me ask the guy how long he had to walk around on stampatelle (capital letters) instead of stampelle (crutches).

I also once blithely hopped into a friend's car and told all the other passengers that Rosie had decided to go in the other car so that she could hold Dario's hand.

I said "tenere in mano Dario" which doesn't actually mean hold Dario's hand. The others took it to mean "hold his willy in her hand" and fell about laughing.

indiebird

The worst was putting an 'o' on the end of the word fig thinking this was the Italian word for fig. Just for the record, it isn't!!!!!!!!!!!! The italian for fig is 'fico' the other word is a word for the female genitalia and it is extremely rude apparently.

Lorna at Vicenza

errrr ........... that would be figA.

FigO means a dishy, attractive man. Kids use it sometimes as well to say that something is cool, trendy etc. like they also use "che figata /ficata"

All very very colloquial and slang words though.

indiebird

oh. Trust me to get it wrong again.

lindaf

Hi Lorna

How do you say 'anticipate' in Italian? Colleagues of my husband seem to use this word with a different meaning to the english meaning (if that makes sense) but when he asked them about it they said anticipate in English = anticipate in Italian.

Thanks Linda

Lorna at Vicenza

Hmmm.

Anticipate as in 'expect' can be used in the same way..eg.

I don't anticipate bad weather for the picnic. Non anticipo brutto tempo per il picnic.

But most Italians round here seem to use the verb "aspettare" in that sense rather than anticipate. Non mi aspetto brutto tempo per il picnic.

I know that anticipare in Italian is used a lot in business and other conversations to mean "in advance" or "up front" - especially about money.

It can also be used in the sense of 'seen it coming' or pre-guessed.

Ho anticipato già la sua risposta. Avevo già anticipato la sua risposta.
I know what her answer is going to be / I knew what her answer would be. Like in "forsee"


and in Italian anticipare also means to bring a date, time, appointment forward.

Hope that helps and doesn't complicate you further.

lindaf

Thanks Lorna

This is what we thought - that Italians seem to use anticipate more to say 'in advance' or 'to bring forward' rather than to expect something in the future.

Linda

debra

For anybody trying to get a grip on the Italian grammar. I have just brought a great book called "Edexcel italian grammar for A Level", its a great help even for numpties like me

indiebird

hmmmm wonder if it will even work for a numptie like me though!!.....

debra

Just read it whilst drinking a glass of wine............if it gets too difficult consume the bottle. Works for me just costing me a fortune in wine

lindaf

Our Italiano classes have always been grammar based and at first it was really hard, not to say frustrating because whilst we could change single into plurals, recognise regular and irregular verbs etc we couldn't manage to speak conversationally! It's getting better now after lots of lessons and lots of wine

We've just got back home from our Italian class where tonight we've been looking at the Conditional tense - 'Would you, Can we' etc and tonight our teacher has introduced Il futuro nel passato - ie Avrei comprato .... or Sarebbe andato .... !!

I can barely cope with one at a time, never mind both tenses together! I do quite enjoy learning Italian - I just wish I had a photographic memory to remember everything.

Lorna at Vicenza

Think of it this way :

Avrei + past tense - in first person only - means : I would have ...........

Avrei mangiato pesce : I would have eaten fish.

Avrei chiesto il numero : I'd have asked for the number.

The difficulty with this is that Italians (a bit like the French) have avere verbs and essere verbs. That means that not all sentences start with 'avrei'. Some start with 'sarei'

Sarei andata alla festa : I would have gone to the party


The difficulty with this type of conditional is just the same as teaching it in English - it is often connected to something else.


Think of English phrases like :

I would have gone to the party BUT, I wasn't invited.

I would have eaten fish BUT it wasn't on the menu

I would have called you BUT I didn't have your number.


The second part of the phrase is generally the easier part as it is just simple past and not conditional.

I'm not saying it's easy to get a grasp of though - the conditional never is.

lindaf

Thanks Lorna for your explanation and examples - they are exactly what I need to try and get the idea into my head ie I would have done BUT . . . I didn't.

We watched the English film 'If Only' on RaiDue last night and could follow and understand the subtitles quite well - we couldn't listen to the film properly because we were both saying 'oh look there's a conditional, there's a future tense' etc, etc

Gio

I once made the mistake at Italian family "do" of saying, with the ancient zia's and zio's nodding and smiling when was produced a huge plate of fresh figs.... "Me piace Fica"...silence and then up came the reply from a male cousin "and me too"...then great gales of laughter..I still didn't truly understand and was taken aside and it was explained...I felt a real numptie..
Ernie

Lorna at Vicenza

yeah - but mistakes like that only get made once and never again.

It's very very easy to forget a normal every day word but the bad ones get imprinted on the memory much more quickly.

When I was learning Italian I remember thinking loads of time ..."oooh that's a good useful word - must remember that one" and I never could the next day.