La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language Read online

  I bring the question of Italian’s eternal appeal to the language’s oldest and most prestigious champion: the Società Dante Alighieri, founded in 1889, with some five hundred branches spanning the globe, from Australia to Argentina to Nepal to Croatia. Its offices in Rome’s Palazzo Medici, once the ornate home of the Florentine ambassador, are a shrine to the language, with shelves of leather-bound volumes lining the walls of the high-ceilinged rooms, and busts of Dante and other literary giants mounted on pedestals.

  In these hallowed halls, Luca Serianni, a renowned professor of the history of the Italian language at Rome’s La Sapienza University and one of the Società’s consiglieri, tells me that the foreigners thronging to Italian classes around the globe are seeking more than vocabulary and grammar. “You cannot separate our language from our culture,” he explains. “When you learn Italian, you enter our history, our art, our music, our traditions.”

  In fact, you enter the Italian soul. Acclaimed as the most musical of tongues, Italian is also the most emotionally expressive. Its primal sounds—virtually identical to those that once roared through Roman amphitheaters and forums—strike a chord in our universal linguistic DNA.

  “Pronto!” (“Ready!”), Italians say when they answer the telephone. And ready they are—to talk, laugh, curse, debate, woo, sing, lament. Their native tongue conveys a sense of something coming alive. Its sinewy verbs flex like muscoli (muscles), from a Latin word for “little mice,” scampering under the skin. In Italy the ubiquitous @ in e-mail addresses mischievously curls into a chiocciola, or snail, just as a spiral staircase spins into a scala a chiocciola. Rome’s local dialect describes a tightwad as someone with pockets in the shape of a snail.

  Even ordinary things—such as a towel (asciugamano) or handkerchief (fazzoletto)—sound better in Italian. The reasons start with its vigorous vocali, or vowels, which look like their English counterparts but sound quite different. In my first formal class in Italian, the teacher had us look in a mirror as we mouthed a-e-i-o-u in the flat English manner and then in the more emphatic Italian style, with the vowels puffing our cheeks, tugging at our lips, and loosening our jaws.

  An Italian a slides up from the throat into an ecstatic “aaaah.” Its e (pronounced like a hard English a) cheers like the hearty “ay” at the end of hip-hip-hooray. The i (which sounds like an English e) glides with the glee of the double e in bee. The o (an English o on steroids) is as perfectly round as the red circle Giotto painted in a single stroke for a pope demanding a sample of his work. The macho u (deeper, stronger, and longer than its English counterpart) lunges into the air like a penalty kick from Italy’s world-champion soccer team, the Azzurri (the Blues).

  Sounds of all sorts take on different accents in Italian. Rather than with a sloppy “ah-choo,” an Italian sneezes with a daintier “eccì.” Italian distinuishes between the sound of swallowing water (glu glu glu) and chewing food (gnam gnam gnam). Bells ring din don dan. Trains ciuff-ciuff. Motors vrum-vrum. Clocks tic-tac. Guns fire with a pim pum pam. A telephone’s busy signal stutters tuu tuu tuu. Over the years I’ve been awakened by little birds that cip cip cip, dogs that abbaiano, roosters that go chicchirichì, and crickets that cri-cri-cri. In the morning, Bambola, the mangy stray cat who has become my pet at the villa we rent every summer, curls onto my lap and fa le fusa (purrs).

  A color becomes more than a hue in Italian. A giallo (yellow) refers to a mystery—in life, literature, or movies—because thrillers traditionally had yellow covers. A Telefono Azzurro (blue telephone) is a hotline for abused children; a settimana bianca (white week), a ski holiday in winter; and a matrimonio in bianco (white wedding), an unconsummated and ostensibly unhappy marriage. While Americans who overspend their budgets wind up in the red, Italians go to the green (al verde), an expression that dates back to the time when the base of a candle was painted green. When the flame burned down to the green, people, presumably out of money to buy another, ran out of light as well. According to another etymological explanation, al verde refers to the hapless state of a gambler who has lost everything—il proprio gruzzoletto, his hard-earned life savings—and sees only the bare playing table, traditionally green, in front of him.

  Prince Charming always appears as Principe azzurro (the blue prince). Viola (purple) triggers so much apprehension that the wife of the Italian consul in San Francisco stopped our interview to ask me to switch to a different pen. Italians, she explained, associate purple with Lent, when drapes of that color shroud church statues. For many centuries, theaters closed during this penitential season so actors and singers lost their jobs and incomes. Because of their misfortune, unlucky purple became a color to avoid.

  Italians basic word chest, as tallied in a recent dictionary, totals a measly 200,000, compared to English’s 600,000 (not counting technical terms). But with a prefix here and a suffix there, Italian words multiply like fruit flies. Fischiare (whistle) sounds merry enough, but fischiettare means “whistling with joy.” No one wants to be vecchio (old), but invecchiare (to become old) loses its sting—and, according to an Italian proverb, no one does so al tavol0 (at table). Sooner or later we all may end up in a garbuglio, or muddle, but stumbling through the syllables of ingarbugliarsi is sure “to get (you) muddled.” A sign outside a rustic osteria (a tavern serving simple food) summarized its entire menu in three variations on a single word: pranzo (lunch)—fifteen euro; pranzetto (lighter lunch)—ten euro; pranzettino (bite to eat)—five euro.

  I might never have appreciated such linguistic finesse if not for Niccolò Tommaseo, a nineteenth-century essayist and iconoclast (arrested and exiled for his political views) whose passions included women and words. He demonstrated his devotion to the latter by compiling the Dizonario dei sinonimi, an encyclopedic narrative dictionary of Italian synonyms, published in 1864, and unmatched in any other language and literature. Italian alone, he contended—and in particular the Tuscan dialect that shaped the language—captures life’s sfumature (nuances), the same word Italian uses for Leonardo’s subtle brushstrokes.

  “It is worth learning Italian just for the pleasure of reading Tommaseo’s dictionary,” Maurizio Borghi, a visiting professor from Milan, tells me during an interview at the University of California, Berkeley. Rather than compiling a straightforward list of words, Tommaseo played with Italian’s treasure chest of metaphors and diminutives in a mammoth collection of 3,579 synonyms, from abbacare (to daydream) to zuppa (soup). As soon as I read a sampling, I pegged him as a kindred soul, as captivated as I by the ability of Italian words to take flight, soar, spin, dip, and pirouette with incomparable flair.

  Take, for instance, Tommaseo’s entry on Italy’s national pastime (past and present): flirting, which translates into fare la civetta, or “make like an owl.” Only Italian distinguishes between a civettino, a precocious boy flattering a pretty woman; a civettone, a boorish lout doing the same; a civettina, an innocent coquette; and a civettuola, a brazen hussy. A giovanotto di prima barba (a boy who starts flirting even before growing a beard) may turn out to be a damerino (dandy), a zerbino (doormat), a zerbinetto (lady-killer), or a zerbinotto (a fop too old for such foolishness). If he becomes a cicisbeo, he joins a long line of Italian men who flagrantly courted married women.

  I’ve met every one of these varieties over the years. On my first trip to Florence, I was craning out the window of a taxi to take in the Duomo’s multistriped magnificence when I felt a hand sliding up my skirt.

  “What are you doing?” I snapped at the young driver.

  “Just looking,” he responded in English, although that’s not what he was doing. (Italians picked up this phrase, I later learned, from the standard American reply to a shopkeeper’s offer of help.) For the most part, Italian flirts keep their hands to themselves and rely on their looks—and their lines. Most have complimented my eyes, a quite ordinary green that passes unnoticed in the United States but grabs attention on the streets of Florence. A few years ago at a festive reception in that city, two men be
hind me—never thinking I might understand Italian—began debating whether my eyes were the color of giada (jade) or smeraldo (emerald). When one seemed to imply that I had an artificial eye, I couldn’t stay silent any longer.

  “No, no, no, signora,” the speaker protested, explaining that to him my eyes seemed made of porcelain, created by an artist greater even than those of his native city. “Bellini” (“little beauties”), he added, using one of the ubiquitous diminutives that sweeten the language like the heaps of sugar Italians add to a thimbleful of espresso.

  Vento (wind) melts into venticello (a nice little breeze); caldo (hot) snuggles into calduccio (nice and warm). When an Italian stuffs cash in appreciation or anticipation of a favor into an envelope, a busta becomes a welcome bustarella. A tiny tail at the end of the word transforms the coarse culo into culetto (a sweet little baby bottom) or culoni (big butts), a popular nickname for Americans. The Italian physicist Enrico Fermi (1901–1954) added the term neutrino (little neutral one) for a particle even smaller than the neutron, to the scientific lexicon. In music prestissimo means a little faster than presto (fast) and andantino not as slow as andante (slow).

  Although endings such as -ino, -otto, or -ello are generally endearing, my Italian friends warn me to beware of anyone asking for a little anything, whether it’s a tiny little moment of your time (attimino), a peck of a kiss (bacino), or a bit of help (aiutino). Bigger (indicated with-one as in torrione for big tower) isn’t necessarily better. Italians mistrust a parolone (a big meaningless word) in the mouths of politicians and scoff at sporcaccioni (dirty old men). Suffixes such as -astro, -ucolo, or -accio also spell trouble. No one wants to hire an avvocatuccio (small-time lawyer), read the works of a poetucolo (untalented poet), wear a cappellaccio (ugly hat), or drive on a stradaccia (bad road).

  Just about everything that can be said has been said in Italian—then rephrased, edited, modified, synthesized, and polished to a verbal gleam. It’s no wonder that a single Italian word can reveal more than an entire English paragraph. A headline in Rome captures the misadventures of Britney Spears with a nickname: la scandalosa. A historian’s description of Machiavelli as a mangiapreti (priest-eater) neatly sums up the master strategist’s religious views. An Italian friend winces and blames “il colpo della strega” (the strike of a witch, a fitting term for a back spasm). Barcollare—to move like a boat—perfectly conveys the swaying stride of a drunken sailor. Although I have yet to use it in a sentence, the very existence of colombeggiare, which means “to kiss one another like doves,” makes me smile.

  Italians’ irrepressible wit sparkles in words like trucco (trick) for makeup and bugiardino (little liar), the term doctors use for the patient information insert for a prescription drug. Friends encapsulate the fourteen-inch height discrepancy between my husband and me by describing us as an il—the combination of a short i and a tall l that translates into “the.” Neapolitans’ invention of a word for a man who painted the eyes of day-old fish in markets so they appeared fresh crystallized the ingenious survival skills of the locals. Would-be buyers of Tuscan villas might take heed of a new meaning for the word falsificatore to refer to a craftsman who makes new furniture look antique and sells it at exorbitant prices to gullible foreigners. “To trust is good,” says an old Italian proverb my friends like to quote. “Not to trust is better.”

  A very good person, someone we might praise in English as the salt of the earth, becomes un pezzo di pane (a piece of bread) in Italian. Rather than having heart or guts, a brave Italian has fegato (liver), while a man in gamba (literally “on a leg”) is on top of his game. In Italian, it’s a compliment to be praised for your nose (naso), for intuition; hand (mano), for artistry; or testicles (coglioni), for being, well, ballsy.

  One night, dressed di tutto punto (to the nines) at an informal wine-tasting with friends on the roof of Rome’s Hassler Hotel, we found ourselves in a linguistic barnyard, with the waiters chiming in with examples of bestial metaphors. Italians, although quite foxy, have no word to say so. Yet Italian corrals animals of every sort to describe a person who eats like an ox (bue), sings like a nightingale (usignolo), cries like a calf (vitello), fights like a lion (leone), hops like a cricket (grillo), or sleeps like a dormouse (ghiro). As in English, a testa dura (hard head) can be as stubborn as a mule (mulo), but an Italian also may be as silent as a fish (pesce), crazy as a horse (cavallo), or mischievous as a monkey (scimmia). And without clothes, an Italian is—proudly, I would venture—nudo come un verme (naked as a worm). “In bocca al lupo!” “In the mouth of the wolf!,” Italians say to wish someone luck (“buona fortuna” is considered unlucky). The correct response: “Crepi il lupo!” (“Let the wolf die!”)

  Just as in Italy’s cars, clothes, and countryside, there is nothing happenstance about the language. English speakers blurt, spitting out words without a moment’s thought. Italians, skilled in the art of sistemarsi (organizing a life), assemble a sentence as meticulously as they construct tiramisu. “Tutto a posto e niente in disordine,” my friend Cinzia Fanciulli, manager of the Borgo San Felice resort in Chianti, likes to say as she surveys her gleaming realm, every flower bed manicured, every tabletop shining. “Every thing is in order, and nothing is disorganized.” Romans, scanning the city even they describe as caotica (chaotic), prefer to joke, “Niente a posto, e tutto in disordine” (“Nothing is in order, and everything is disorganized”).

  Italian devotes an entire tense, the elusive congiuntivo, similar to English’s little-used subjunctive mood, to desires, doubts, wishes, dreams, and opinions. My friend and teacher Francesca Gaspari considers it the sexiest of verb forms because of its ambiguities; for this very reason, I never use it without trepidation. Thankfully, you can often dodge this tricky tense by prefacing a subjective comment with “secondo me,” “according to me,” and using the just-the-facts declarative.

  Italy’s long past requires four tenses (not counting the subjunctive’s past forms): passato prossimo, trapassato prossimo, passato remoto, and the imperfetto, or imperfect—“the most Italian of tenses,” one of my teachers contends—for unfinished business. Business can remain unfinished a long time in Italy. A researcher tells of requesting a book from the catalog of the Vatican Library only to receive a notice stating, “Missing since 1530.”

  Northern Italians relegate the musty passato remoto to historical events such as Dante’s birth. Southern Italians, with a telescoped sense of time, use it to recount what they had for breakfast. In literary Italian (though not daily conversation) memories of times past can be summoned up in three words and ways—rammentare (with the mind, for facts), ricordare (with the heart, for feelings), and rimembrare (with the body, for physical sensations).

  What Italian doesn’t say also is revealing. Italian has no words that precisely translate lonely (unthinkable for its gregarious speakers), privacy (equally unthinkable in an Italian family), spelling (since words generally look as they sound—to Italians, that is), or dating (although it begins before puberty). Yet some of the most tantalizing Italian words, such as garbo, a pitch-perfect combination of style and grace, and agio, a sense of comfort and ease, don’t translate into English.

  Even when foreigners learn Italian words, they often miss their hidden meanings. Only after years of visiting Italy did I realize that that Italians admire rather than disdain a furbo, someone cunning enough to pull off a clever deception. A young furbetto shifts the blame for a childish prank to his little brother. A shrewd furbacchione obtains a coveted building permit for a rectangular, cement-lined hole in his backyard by describing it not as a swimming pool (prohibited by law) but as a storage vat for water that local firefighters might need to douse a blaze. A more deceitful furbastro somehow manages to make money in the process, while a wheeler-dealer furbone reaps big profits by negotiating permits for an entire village.

  My husband, transformed from Bob to Roberto in Italy, cannot resist a little linguistic furbizia. When he casually drops well-rehearsed Italian wittici
sms into conversations as if he were fluent, Italians invariably applaud his facility with their language. Giustina, who looks after the villa we rent in Tuscany, praises Professor Roberto for improving his pronunciation every year while dismissing my Italian as un po’ arrugginito (a little rusty). However, a bit of furbizia also lurks in my soul. The very first aphorism I taught Bob—and encouraged him to say on every occasion—was Mia moglie ha sempre ragione. (My wife is always right.)

  I snatched other sage sayings from hand-painted ceramic ashtrays, the sort you find at kitschy souvenir stores next to aprons decorated with pasta shapes or the chubby cherubs with mischievous grins that decorated Renaissance ceilings. Several years ago, during Bob’s academic sabbatical in Italy, we rented the thousand-year-old castello at Monte Vibiano Vecchio in Umbria, with a stone watchtower dating back yet another millennium, a Renaissance maze, an amphitheater, a chapel, and a peacock that strutted majestically around the grounds. Adjacent to its grand formal rooms, with fireplaces so big that we posed for photographs standing inside them, there was a smallish alcove for cards and other games. Hundreds of hand-painted ceramic ashtrays, each with a different saying, covered the walls with pithy words of wisdom.

  The whimsical wall treatment inspired me to select a few choice phrases to teach Bob on our daily hikes through the postcard-perfect countryside. “Il padrone sono io,” he would repeat, and repeat, and repeat (rapid language acquisition is not one of Bob’s many natural gifts), “ma chi comanda è mia moglie.” “I’m the head of the house but the one in charge is my wife.”

  I cribbed the words from another ashtray for a brindisi, or toast—one thing I do better in Italian than English—for a final dinner with the castello’s owners, with whom we’d become friends. “Chi trova un amico trova un tesoro” (“Whoever finds a friend finds a treasure”), I said. “E qui, in questa bella casa antica, abbiamo davvero trovato un tesoro.” (“And here in this beautiful ancient home, we have found treasure indeed.”)