Becoming Italian Word by Word

Italian for Travelers: Ten Phrases to Know Before You Go

10 Phrases to Take to Italy

If you're packing your suitcases and heading for Italy in the coming months, some practical phrases are sure to come in handy. And so I'm launching a series of posts on "Italian for Travelers."  Let's begin with some essential and quintessentially Italian conversation starters. I'll be filling in more details and examples in the coming weeks:

1. Common courtesies. You’re more likely to get what you ask for when you preface a request with “per favore” (please) and respond to any kindness with “grazie” (thank you).  Prego can mean, “You’re welcome,” or, in some circumstances, “by all means.”

2. Salutations.  Although “ciao!”  has become world-famous, the more polite greeting is “Buongiorno" (Good day). An alternative more common in the North than the South is “Salve!”  Take your leave with a cheery "Arrivederci!" (See you again!)

3. Introductions. In Italian, you don't simply announce your name. You say, "Mi chiamo..." (I call myself).  To find out another person's name, ask, "Come si chiama?" (How do you call yourself?)

4. How are you?   When asked “come sta?” you might reply "bene" (well),  "molto bene" (very well) or non c’é male (not bad). If asked “come va?” (how’s it going),  the most common answer is the Italian equivalent of  “okay”: va bene (it’s going well). 

5. Asking for help.  If it’s a true emergency, shout “Aiuto!”  If you’d like help with something less urgent,  ask, “Scusi, può aiutarmi?"  (Excuse me, can you help me?) To acknowledge the kindness of a stranger, say, “Lei é molto gentile” (You are very kind).

6. Buying.  It’s possible to shop without words anywhere in the world, but the following phrases will serve you well in Italy: Quanto costa? (How much does it cost?)  Posso pagare con la carta di credito? (Can I pay with a credit card?)  “In cash" translates as in contanti.  If you want to try something on, ask “Posso provarlo?”

7. Time.  To find out  the time, you ask “Che ora é?” (what is the hour?) or "Che ore sono?" (what are the hours?). Italy uses a 24-hour clock (sistema orario a 24 ore) so that 6:00 p.m., for instance, is 18:00 (diciotto).  

8. Weather. Everyone talks about it everywhere, but in Italian weather (il tempo) “makes” rather than “is.”  “Fa bello” (literally makes beautiful) means “It’s a nice day.” Weather can also fa brutto (ugly), freddo (cold) or caldo (hot).  On a sunny day, "c’è sole” (there’s sun). "Cloudy" translates as coperto (covered) or nuvoloso; “it’s raining,” as piove.

9. Illness. “Sto male” means “I’m feeling bad.”   Common travellers’ complaints  include headache (mal di testa), stomach ache (male di pancia),  fever (febbre) and pain (dolore). 

10. Compliments. Che bello!  (How beautiful! How nice!) works in almost any circumstance.  With any luck, you’ll have many occasions to use it.

Words and Expressions

Sono americano/inglese/ francese, etc. -- I’m American, English, French, etc.

Non ho capito -- I didn't/don't understand

Può ripetere, per favore? -- Can you repeat, please?

Parla inglese? -- Do you speak English? 

Come si dice......in italiano? -- How do you say ...... in Italian?

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language. Click here for more information on her "writer's studio" in Capri this fall. 

Women of a Certain Age in the Italian Language

L'età del fascino

The Age of Charm

Meglio belli o meglio affascinanti? Better to be beautiful or better to be fascinating? This was the delicious question posed in an Italian newspaper’s column on “dilemmi beauty.”

A recent survey asked some two thousand American respondents when women reach the peak of their charm (raggiungono il picco del proprio fascino). The consensus: at age 30. They begin to age (cominciano a invecchiare) around age 41 and stop being sexy (smettono di essere sexy) when they reach age 53.

An Italian begged to differ. Tommaso Ariemma, docente di estetica e filosofiao (an instructor of aesthetics and philosophy), explained that there is una “cruciale” differenza (a crucial difference) between beauty and fascination.

Il fascino,he argues is direttamente proporzionale alla maturità (directly proportional to maturity), and women can acquire it only con il passare degli anni (with the passage of the years). While beauty is legata alla fisicità e al corpo (tied to the physical and the body), fascination requires un apprendistato (an apprenticeship). Solo con il passare del tempo (only with the passing of time) can a woman gain quella consapevolezza di sé (that self-awareness) that le ventenni (twenty-somethings) non possono possedere (can not possess).

So much for what Italians call la bellezza dell’asino (the fresh-faced appeal of youth)!

Dottoressa Ariemma suggests that questo periodo della vita (this period of life) begins around age 30 as a woman entra nel mondo del lavoro (enters the work world) and masters le strategie legate al prestigio sociale (the strategies tied to social prestige).

When does this period end? “Più difficile” (more difficult), he says, “stabilirne la fine” (to establish its end).

The researchers also posed la stessa domanda (the same question) about men. According to the respondents, gli uomini enter l’eta del fascino (the age of fascination) at age 34—and lose their allure by age 43. The docente’s response to this gender difference: "Questa mi sembra un'ottima notizia per le donne." (This seems good news for women.)

Perhaps women of every age would be better off if they paid less attention to their looks. According to an old Italian saying, “donna specchiante poco filante” (a woman looking in the mirror, or too conscious of her own beauty, is not that charming).

Words and Expressions

subire il fascino di -– to be under the spell of

vecchione, vecchiona –- very old man, very old woman

befana –- witch, old hag, ugly lady

bellezza al bagno -– bathing beauty

trattamento di bellezza –- beauty treatment

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language. Click here for more information on her "writer's studio" in Capri this fall. 

Celebrating Mamma in the Italian Language

La festa della mamma 

 Mother's Day 

Every year as the dark, cold winter gave way to the bright rebirth of Spring, the ancient Romans paid tribute to their gods of fertility. One holiday, Matronalia, was dedicated to Juno, the queen of the gods, and children gave gifts to their mothers on this day.  

Traditionally la festa della mamma in Italy fell on May 8. The current practice of celebrating Mother’s Day on the second Sunday of May (la seconda domenica di maggio) started in 1957.  

La mamma italiana is part of her family’s life every day of the year--as was mine (above), even though she was 100 percent Polish. Men may hold the highest political offices, but the person at the helm of the family—the strongest Italian institution—is Mamma. Grown men called mammoni (big mama’s boys) remain at home well into their thirties (and sometimes beyond). Mammismo (“momism”), some contend, stems from a son’s belief that nothing could ever compare with amore materno (motherly love). 

Mothers inspired the most common—and versatile --expression in Italian: Mamma mia! You can translate it as “My God!”, “How great!”, “Oh no!”, “Incredible!” and hundreds of other ways—depending on context and inflection. A wide range of human emotions--from surprise to shock, delight to disbelief, joy to horror--can be conveyed in these two words. 

To help children of all ages express their love for Mamma, Italian websites post “auguri” (best wishes) for la festa della mamma. Here are some exampes: 

*”Le rose sono rosse, le viole sono blu, e tu sei la mamma migliore di quaggiù.” (Roses are red, violets are blue, and the best mamma down here is you.) 

*”Mamma, sei la mia vita, sei come un raggio di sole che al mattino mi sveglia con felicità e come la dolce luce di una stella, che la sera accompagna il mio sonno.” (Mamma, you are my life. You are like a ray of sun that awakens me with happiness in the morning and like the sweet light of a star that accompanies my sleep in the evening.) 

*”Mamma, sei la cosa più bella e dolce che la vita mi potesse donare. Ti voglio bene!” (Mamma, you are the most beautiful and sweetest thing that life could give me. I love you!) 

Words and Expressions 

“come mamma l’ha fatto” -- literally as his mother made him: completely naked, in his birthday suit 

casa madre -- mother or head office 

scena madre -- main scene, the most dramatic and revealing scene in a movie or play 

cocco di mamma --mama’s boy, mammone

madre in affitto -- surrogate mother  

le gioie della maternità -- the joys of motherhood 

Dianne Hales  is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH ITALIAN,THE WORLD'S MOST ENCHANTING LANGUAGE. Click here for information on her "Writers' Studio" in Capri this fall.  

Here is a classic tribute to an Italian mamma: 

The Year of Italian Language and Culture: Machiavelli

Niccolò Machiavelli

As part of its celebration of "The Year of Italian Culture," Italy is commemorating the 500th anniversary of the writing of a classic work: Machiavelli's  Il Principe (The Prince). Although completed in 1513, the treatise by the man who "put the science into political science" wasn't published until 1532, five years after his death. Machiavelli's name since penetrated  the global vocabulary as an international byword for  political cunning and pragmatism. However, no one,  as T. S. Eliot observed, “was ever less Machiavellian than Machiavelli.” 

After fourteen years as a civil servant and diplomat in the Florentine Republic, Niccolò Machiavelli was tried, tortured, and exiled  after the Medici reclaimed power.  Frustrated in his forced retirement to his modest country home, Machiavelli began work on The Prince in the hope that a clear-eyed, no-nonsense tactical handbook would  display his political acumen and win him a government position. 

His  dreams, personal and political, never materialized. He died—“of a surfeit of failure,” one historian stated—before the printing of his masterwork. But by analyzing affairs of state dispassionately, with logic and objectivity, Machiavelli put the science into political science. 

Five centuries after Machiavelli’s time, The Prince still compels and shocks readers for two reasons: what its author says and how he says it. What if a prince acts so ruthlessly that he loses the adulation of his people?  Better to be feared than loved, shrugs Machiavelli. Since men are generally ungrateful, vacillating, cowardly, and greedy, he observes, they might promise their souls to a prince yet  desert or betray him because love is fickle, while fear is not.  Machiavelli never agonized over whether the ultimate end might justify any means.  He was sure it would.   

Just as remarkable as The Prince’s unflinching pragmatism is its language. Considered by some the finest Italian stylist of the Cinquecento (1500s),  Machiavelli wrote in a clean, stiletto-sharp  vernacular that echoed the everyday speech of his fellow Florentines (including, in some of his more ribald works, their earthiness). 

Machiavelli, whose satiric play The Mandrake is still revived and performed around the world,   couldn’t resist mocking the pretensions of some of his  newly prosperous countrymen.  In his own twist on bella and brutta figura, he recounts the story of a character named Castruccio.  A man from Lucca invites him to dinner at his house, which—thanks to a recent windfall--he has just remodeled in the most ostentatious manner possible. During the meal Castruccio suddenly spits in his host’s face. Rather than apologize, he explains that he did not know where else to spit without damaging something valuable.

Shortly before his death, the heart-broken political strategist wrote to a friend,  “I love my country better than my very soul.”  His country, which ignored him in life, didn’t know quite what to say of him in death. His  monumental tomb in Florence's Santa Croce, the burial site for Italy’s titans of history, reads simply, “To so great a name, no epitaph can do justice.”

Words and Expressions

machiavellismo –- political cunning

machiavellico –- crafty

machiavellicamente –- in a crafty manner

vivere da principe –- to live like a prince

principesco -– princely, prince-like 

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language. Click here for more information on her "writer's studio" in Capri this fall. 

How a Chocolate Kiss Is Like an Italian Mamma

Il Bacio Perugina e una mamma italiana

The Perugina “Kiss” and an Italian Mom

How is a world-famous chocolate made in Perugia like an Italian mother?

In a delightful essay published in a collection called Italianità, the author Alessandro Guerriero explains that Il Bacio Perugina is like una mamma italiana because:

*non cambia mai (it never changes).

*è un po’ troppo dolce (it’s a little too sweet), ma non priva (but not lacking) a certain tartness.

*come una mamma italiana d’altri tempi (like an old-style Italian mamma), it is ricca di sentenze (rich in sayings) che non servono assolutamente a nulla (that serve absolutely nothing) but make you smile. (Click here for some samples of frasi dei baci Perugina.

*come una mamma Italian d’altri tempi con gli abiti della festa (like an old-style Italian mom dressed in Sunday clothes), it is un po’ sognante (a little dreamy), un po’ futile (a little frivolous), un po’ fane’ (faded) but you become fond of these things because they make her stand out tra migliaia di altre mamme italiane (among millions of other Italian mothers).

*come una mamma italiana di altri tempi vestita con gli abiti della festa (like an old-style Italian mom  dressed in party clothes), it’s nice to encounter her ma non tutti giorni (but not every day).

*come tutte le mamme italiane è da prendere a piccole dosi (like all Italian moms she should be taken in small doses), altrimenti provoca “maldipancia” insormontabili (otherwise she provokes an insurmountable tummy ache).

Of course, there are many other types of kisses, including a mother's baci affettuosi (affectionate kisses). Friends might exchange a bacino or bacetto (little kiss), but you'd reserve a bacio sulla bocca (kiss on the mouth) or a baciozzo (slang) or bacione (hearty kiss or smooch) for a romantic partner. A date usually ends with a bacio della buonanotte (goodnight kiss). Lovers say goodbye with a bacio d’addio (parting kiss). But there's one type of kiss everyone want to avoid: il bacio della morte (the kiss of death).

Words and Expressions

mandare un bacio -- to throw a kiss

sbaciucchio -- continual kissing, smooching

sbacciucchiarsi -- to be always kissing one another,  to smooch, to canoodle (if anyone remember this word)

baciamano -- hand-kissing

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language.

Click below for a tribute to an Italian mamma:

An Ode to May in the Italian Language

Un omaggio a maggio

An homage to May

"Aprile con il fiore, maggio con il colore,"  Italians say, "April with its flower May with its color.”  May, one of my favorite months anywhere, is a particularly special time in Italy. As an old saying goes, “Di maggio s’innamorano anche le civette.” (In May even the owls fall in love.)

The month’s name derives from the Roman goddess Maia (dalla dea romana Maia), mother of Mercury, but in Christian culture (nella cultura cristiana) maggio is dedicated to the Madonna, the mother of Jesus.

Devout Catholics often will fare il mese di maggio (do the month of May) by reciting il rosario (the rosary) every day. This consists of a series of fifty prayers called the Ave Maria (Hail Mary), divided into five groups of ten.  Catholics keep  track of the number of prayers with una corona del rosario (a rosary crown).

May in Italy also is known as  il mese delle rose e delle spose (the month of the roses and the brides).  Le rose (roses) blossom during May, a popular time for le nozze (weddings).

May starts with il Primo Maggio (the first of May) and la festa del lavoro (the equivalent of America’s Labor Day) and includes a host of celebrations, including la festa della mamma (Mother’s Day).  But Italians never stop keeping an eye on the weather (il tempo) during this unpredictable month.

On May 16, the feast of Sant’Ubaldo, they warn: “Per Sant’Ubaldo, guardati dal freddo e non dal caldo” (for St. Ubaldo,  watch out for the cold and not the heat).  On May 22, the feast of Santa Rita, they delight that “per Santa Rita, ogni rosa è fiorita (for St. Rita, every rose is blossoming). On May 26, they observe: “Se piove per San Filippo, il povero non ha bisogno del ricco” (If it rains for St. Philip, the poor won’t need the rich).  Yet another weather prediction: Quello che fa maggio, fa settembre (what May does, September does).

Rain is the biggest preoccupation. According to one proverb, “una piovuta a maggio, se è sola che vantaggio!” (a rainfall in May, if just one, what a gain!).  Another cautions: “Maggio ortolano, molta paglia e poco grano” (literally the greengrocer’s--a rainy--May, lots of straw and little grain). 

If the sun shines, maggio brings ciliegie per assaggio (cherries to taste) and well priced produce. “Maggio soleggiato, frutta a buon mercato.”  (Sunny May,cheap fruit.)

The bottom line on this merry month:  Maggio caldo ti arricchisce, freddo ti impoverisce. (A hot May makes you rich; a cold one makes you poor.)

Words and Expressions

maggiolata –- May song

maggiolino -– May bug, beetle

maggiostrino -– May or straw hat archaic)

L’inverno a metà maggio riprende breve ingaggio –- Winter briefly takes up the fight again in mid-May

Dianne Hales is the author of LA BELLA LINGUA: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language. Click here for more information on her "writer's studio" in Capri this fall.