Words, words, words: Sfingica

Word-of-the-day is becoming a bit too ambitious, so I'm thinking word-of-the-week is a little more realistic.

This one was overheard at work last week: Sfingica. I love this word; I love how it feels to say it. (I take particular delight in saying s+consonant words in Italian, but this one has an especially nice ring to it.)

It means "like a sphinx, or pertaining to a sphinx" (la sfinge). In particular, it is used to describe someone with no facial expression, who shows no emotion or personality. Impassive, vapid, dull.

Quella tipa è così sfingica, probabilmente non ha neanche il cuore!

Or, to put it much more poetically, in the words of Alfred de Musset*:
"She would drink the blood of her children from the skull of her lover and not feel so much as a stomach ache."

*The authenticity of this quote is not to be trusted. It is, however, from one of the best films ever.

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Words, words, words: Piagnucolare

Piagnucolare- to whine, to whimper, to snivel

I have been meaning to look up this word for a while. You can also say frignare which means basically the same thing, but I prefer piagnucolare because its a bit more onomotopoeic. You almost have to whine just to say it.

Happy Giorno di Ringraziamento (Thanksgiving) sweet bloglings, and if there isn't enough pumpkin pie to go around, please, non piagnucolate!

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Words, words, words: Aiuola

Today’s word is aiuola (flowerbed) which I love simply because it feels so good to say. It’s like a diction exercise in one word! If you’re an actor or a singer and need to get your facial muscles warmed up, just repeat this word several times and you’re good to go! I also love that, even at only 6 letters and 2 syllables, it has 5 vowels! (This is particularly good to remember for the next time you play Scarabeo (Italian scrabble).)

The aiuola in front of the Vittoriano on occasion of the 150th anniversary of Italian Unification.

The other day I mentioned that there was a certain person in my life who inspires my passion for the Italian language. Just in case you were wondering, Maritino means little husband, and this is how I refer on this blog to the man I was lucky enough to marry nearly six months ago. Not, as my mother thought, the name of an ex-boyfriend who used to write me Italian poetry! She was quite scandalized! Must remember to refer to him as The Maritino to avoid confusion in future.

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Words, words, words: Parannanza

Last night I was at a dinner party and made some new acquaintances. One of them was a very cute two year-old Italian girl. Just before it was time to eat, her mother tied a tiny red apron on her, which I thought was much sweeter and more grown-up than a bib, which a big girl of her age might have resented. When I complimented her style, saying “Mi piace la tua parannanza!” (I like your apron!) her mother was impressed by my vocabulary and asked how long I had been in Italy.

I was a bit surprised, thinking to myself that ‘apron’ wasn’t such a difficult or unusual word to know. But I did a bit of digging today and discovered that parannanza is not the only word for apron. Grembiule is the much more commonly used word, and it seems that many Italians have never heard of the word parannanza! Even my trusty Word Reference site didn’t have it in their dictionary, although a Google search proved I hadn’t just made it up. Strange, I thought...

Until I remembered from whom I had learned the word: Maritino. This man is fanatic for the Italian language and writes and speaks it as if every phrase were a line of poetry. In fact, back in our courtship days, he actually wrote me poems, and it was from these that I learned words like leggiadria (gracefulness, loveliness) and bramare (to long for, to yearn for). He has awakened in me a desire to deepen my understanding and appreciation of this beautiful language. I've been reading in Italian much more these days, realizing how much I still have to learn.

Since my two favorite things are memorizing random bits of information and impressing people I’ve just met (usually by reciting said random bits of information), I’ve decided to look up and memorize one new (and hopefully impressively unusual) Italian word a day, and share it with you, dear bloglings. Then I will try to use that word in a sentence at least three times that day, even if it is only to the Maritino.

I can already think of one for tonight…

Amore, mettiti la parannanza e lava i piatti!!  (Love, put on an apron and wash the dishes!!)

(Just realized that grembiule should actually be the word of the day, as I already knew parannanza, and just discovered grembiule...)

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Back to School!

Today is the day all the little ones in Italy are heading back to school. Such an exciting time. A time of new backpacks, mechanical pencils and crisp blank notebooks just waiting to be filled up. A time to wonder what your new teacher will be like, if you'll get to be in the same class as your best friend, and what new friends you might make. Ah, those were the days.

Well, guess what? I'm going back too! Well, not exactly back to elementary school, although that would be fun too.

It's been a long time since I've been a student. In fact, it's nearly a decade since I finished graduate school! Yikes! Now, I haven't decided to go back to university (I kind of swore I would never do that again, but actually, never say never), but I am taking a course. A pretty in-depth course by the look of it. I won't go into the whys and wheres of it, but it will cover Roman history, from ancient to present as well as Italian Art History, and specifically works of art found in Rome. As you might have guessed, this course was made for me, and I absolutely can't wait for my first day: today!

The course meets four times a week for the next three months, so I'm warning you now that this blog may get a touch history-heavy for the time being. My plan is to post about every bi-weekly lesson and every bi-weekly visit, in order to make sure I am fully absorbing everything. Hopefully you'll bear with me, and come along as I learn even more about my favorite subject in the world: Roma.

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