Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
That much is true, I believe, for anyone who moves to a new country after his or her form-
ative childhood years. But Italian has some devilish peculiarities that really raise the bar for
newcomers.
As far as I know, all the European languages, apart from English, divide the world of per-
sons, places and things into masculine and feminine. Italian is no exception: the nouns
are either masculine or feminine and the articles and adjectives have to match. “La” is for
Venus, “il” is for Mars. That seems reasonable enough, but there is absolutely no logic
to the gender classifications. Wouldn't you think that a bold, thrusting tower, the ultimate
macho phallic symbol, would be masculine? No, it's “la torre”. And what about the delic-
ate flowers that grace the fields and invite the bees to gather their nectar? Well, “flower”
turns out to be a guy word: “il fiore”. There is nothing at all reasonable or predictable about
this game. Every word's gender needs to be memorized. This is Italy's revenge on America
where the spelling and pronunciation of our words follow neither rhyme nor reason.
I thought that my knowledge of French would help with all this, but I soon discovered that
it was not a dependable crutch to lean on. “Art” is feminine in Italian and masculine in
French. The sea in Italian is masculine ( il mare ); in French it is feminine ( la mer ). Ditto
for the Renaissance (il Rinascimento in Italian, and la Renaissance in French). Even the
word for flower changes gender between the languages, though here one must commend
the French for having the good sense to make it a feminine noun.
Asifthiswerenotenoughtodriveaforeignermad,Italianevenhaswordsthatchangetheir
genderwhentheyswitch fromsingular toplural. Oneegg: il uovo .Moreeggs: le uova .One
arm: il braccio . Two arms: le braccia . Then there are words like “ mano ” (hand) that have
standard masculine endings in both the singular and plural, but, for some reason, they are
still feminine words and require the feminine forms of the adjectives when they are modi-
fied. Asking Italians why things are this way is a bit like asking Americans why “dough”,
“cough” and “through” are spelled the same but pronounced differently. In our native lan-
guages we are all like proverbial centipedes that just keep moving forward and don't worry
overly much about the mechanics of it all.
After living here for a number of years you realize that, although you will continue to be-
come more proficient with the language, it will never become another mother tongue. As
soon as you open your mouth, people know you are from somewhere else. Fortunately,
the Bush years not withstanding, Italians still like Americans very much and are fascinated
with American culture. The older Italians also remember the immense sacrifices made by
America's soldiers on their behalf. They remain deeply grateful and never forget that, if not
for us, they would all be speaking German today.
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