advisability of reserving seats on Italian trains and learning Italian phrases

The phrasebook I picked up has buon pomereggio (sp?) as good
afternoon. Is this not commonly used?

Also, when do you use per piacere vs per favore? mi scusi vs mi
dispiace? (This is the sort of thing I was thinking of when I was
asking about finding a phrasebook that will teach me colloquial
Italian.

BTW, thanks for the tip ciao. I will be sure to use buon giorno
and buona sera...

Incidentally, regarding gender of nouns, does an Italian noun retain
the same gender as the same noun in Latin? Oe is it a case of
memorizing vocabularies and genders?

Lil


Barbara Vaughan wrote in message ...
mimi wrote:

"Barbara Vaughan" wrote in message
...
If you're leaving in a few months, you don't have much time for grammar.
However, you certainly should learn the usual polite phrases that any
traveller should master before going to another country. These are "Good
morning" (or other appropriate greeting for the time of day), "Please",
and "Thank you"....

Barbara--and maybe Luca and Giovanni--, when's the cutoff time between Buon
giorno and Buona sera? In the morning one says Buon giorno; in the evening
one says Buona sera. Sometime in the afternoon it switches. When is it?

I have a feeling it's not fixed. Around here people switch to buona sera
sometime around 4 PM

Barbara

Lil wrote:

The phrasebook I picked up has buon pomereggio (sp?) as good
afternoon. Is this not commonly used?

Well, it may be used.


Also, when do you use per piacere vs per favore?

Equivalent.


mi scusi vs mi dispiace?

"Mi dispiace" means you are sorrowful. For little accidents or for
requiring the attention of a person "mi scusi", that sounds neutral, is
more appropriate. But if you have made life difficult for anybody (say,
sending a guy to fetch your luggage and discovering only later that this
involved him waiting under the rain for 15 minutes) "mi dispiace" is
better.


Incidentally, regarding gender of nouns, does an Italian noun retain
the same gender as the same noun in Latin?

No, as Italian has no neuter gender. Usually what was female in Latin
stays female, and what was male stays male. What was neuter turns mainly
male, but there are a lot of exceptions (for example "war" is neuter in
Latin and female in Italian).

--
Luca Logi - Firenze - Italy e-mail:

On 4 Nov 2003, Lil wrote:

The phrasebook I picked up has buon pomereggio (sp?) as good
afternoon. Is this not commonly used?

"pomeriggio" (from Latin : post meridiem). It will be understood, but is
rarely used.

Also, when do you use per piacere vs per favore? m

These are fully equivalent.

mi scusi vs mi dispiace?

Here consider the English equivalent, The first is "excuse me" and the
second "I'm sorry". They are equivalent if you stamp on somebody's feet,
but if you want to ask an information you say only "excuse me", and if
you want to pass in a crowd you also say "excuse me" (you can also say
"permesso" ... literally "permission" or "permitted", actually an
abbreviation if "e' permesso" "is it permitted")

Incidentally, regarding gender of nouns, does an Italian noun retain
the same gender as the same noun in Latin?

More or less. If you have a Latin basis you will recognise the roots.
However Italian has no neutral gender, only masculine and feminine, has
no declinations, and has been somewhat normalised.

The vast majority of nouns in -a (latin 1st declination) are feminine,
with few exceptions (il poeta, il pirata). Plural in -e (fem.) or -i
(masc.)

The masculine -us and neutral -um (latin 2nd declination) are generally
turned into masculine in -o. Also the 4th declination -us (*), e.g.
spiritus - spirito. Plural in -i (+).

The latin 3rd declination usually gives nouns in -e which can be
masculine (padre) or feminine (madre), usually in a natural way.
Sometimes not obvious (il cane, la nave). Plural in -i.

The latin 5th declination had so few words that they disappeared.

(*) some 4th declination words were "normalized" so quercus, oak tree
is quercia (fem.). Some other were truncated so tribus, tribe is
tribu' (accented on u), virtus, virtue is virtu' ...

(+) there are a few cases where the latin neutral form has been
preserved usually with a shift from masculine to feminine at
the plural (e.g. egg, l'uovo has a plural le uova and not gli uovi,
finger, il dito has a plural le dita and not i diti). In same cases
both form coexist (knee il ginocchio - le ginocchia or i ginocchi,
ear l'orecchio - gli orecchi or le orecchie here with a straight
change of gender, arm il braccio - le braccia or i bracci).
Sometimes with slight differences in meaning (le braccia are the
arms of a person, i bracci are arms of a mechanical device).

You will however learn that if you make concordance errors, italian
listeners will understand you, and be much more lenient to mistakes than
e.g. a british listener.

Come tu visit us on it.cultura.linguistica,italiano if you have more
language questions.

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On Wed, 5 Nov 2003, Luca Logi wrote:

No, as Italian has no neuter gender. Usually what was female in Latin
stays female, and what was male stays male. What was neuter turns mainly
male, but there are a lot of exceptions (for example "war" is neuter in
Latin and female in Italian).

Sorry Luca, that's not really an appropriate example. It's more an
example of false friend (like italian vs spanish "burro", butter in
Italian and donkey in Spanish). The Latin word for "war" (bellum) is
dead in Italian, the Italian word (guerra) is more akin to the English
word, and actually derives from Langobard "werra" and probably shares a
common germanic origin (lost in German as well).

Soembody knowing only Latin will be puzzled by italian word "bello"
which means "beautiful" :-)

At least you should visit us on it.cultura.linguistica,italiano (a
great place for language questions, most discussion in italian, but
occasional questions in foreign languages will be answered).

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Lil wrote:

The phrasebook I picked up has buon pomereggio (sp?) as good
afternoon. Is this not commonly used?

Pomeriggio. However, I've never heard anyone say that.

Also, when do you use per piacere vs per favore?

These mean roughly the same thing. "per favore" is more common where I
live.

... mi scusi vs mi
dispiace?

"Mi dispiace" means excuse me in the sense, "I'm sorry". "Mi scusi" is
more generic.

Incidentally, regarding gender of nouns, does an Italian noun retain
the same gender as the same noun in Latin? Oe is it a case of
memorizing vocabularies and genders?

My Latin's not good enough to answer that definitively. However, since
Latin has a neuter gender, there must be some exceptions at least!

Barbara

Giovanni Drogo wrote:

And of course "buona sera" (good evening) is a greeting to be used when
you get in, and "buona notte" (good night) EXCLUSIVELY when you go away
and you wish to wish (!) a good sleep !

Actually, that's easy for an English speaker, because it's the same in
English.

Barbara

wrote:

Italian is an easy language to pick up on a basic level, also a very easy
one to pronounce intelligibly if not perfectly, and the Italians don't
seem to mind us Anglophones mangling it.

The Italians are better than any other nationality I know in deciphering
their own language mangled by a foreigner. My theory is that it's
because foreigners have been visiting their country in great numbers for
over 2000 years.

A little illustration: I have heard many Spanish speakers say that they
can manage perfectly well in Italy by speaking Italian. On my first trip
to Italy, I knew no Italian, but managed fairly well with Spanish. Last
week, I had a visitor who knows very little Italian but is fluent in
Spanish. I observed that everyone seemed to understand what she meant
when she used a Spanish word in place of an Italian one.

On a trip to Spain two years ago, my Italian husband assumed that he
would be able to manage with his phrasebook Spanish, supplemented by
Italian words when he didn't know the Spanish equivalent, but his
attempts got nothing but blank looks.

Barbara

"Barbara Vaughan" wrote in message
...
wrote:

Italian is an easy language to pick up on a basic level, also a very
easy
one to pronounce intelligibly if not perfectly, and the Italians don't
seem to mind us Anglophones mangling it.

The Italians are better than any other nationality I know in deciphering
their own language mangled by a foreigner. My theory is that it's
because foreigners have been visiting their country in great numbers for
over 2000 years.

It is funny though because there has not been Italy nor Italians for 2000
years.

"Markku Grönroos" wrote:

"Barbara Vaughan" wrote in message
...
wrote:

Italian is an easy language to pick up on a basic level, also a very
easy
one to pronounce intelligibly if not perfectly, and the Italians don't
seem to mind us Anglophones mangling it.

The Italians are better than any other nationality I know in deciphering
their own language mangled by a foreigner. My theory is that it's
because foreigners have been visiting their country in great numbers for
over 2000 years.

It is funny though because there has not been Italy nor Italians for 2000
years.

The political organization is fairly recent, but the people and their
culture are much older even than 2000 years.

Barbara

"Barbara Vaughan" wrote in message
...

The political organization is fairly recent, but the people and their
culture are much older even than 2000 years.

I guess it is the Roman culture. Italian man is not much closer related to
the Romans than let's say the Finns. Many Greeks are similarly eager to
introduce themselves as sons of Archimedes. The Roman Empire collapsed some
1500 years ago and hordes of savage peoples from North and East stepped in.