Curiosities

Hi you all!

Sorry if I disappeared from the blog for so long but my computer decided to break down on me! But finally I’m back!!!

In this article I want to discuss with you all about some curiosities I have been reading and discovering lately. At my advice they are all interesting, maybe you know them already but they totally passed my mind :)!

First curiosity: did you know that the letter z is a foreign letter? It is not Italian, what a deception :(! hehehe

As Mariangela Galatea Vaglio writes in her book ” L’Italiano e’ bello” the letter z comes from the old Greek and it didn’t exist not even in the latin alphabet. So Roman people decided to adopt it and thank to them we acquired this letter. So we have zanzara, zebra, zaino, etc. just to list some Italian words that begin with z.

Second curiosity: the group of words that starts with pn– is connected to the Greek word pneuma which means “blow“. Now in medicine we have different words from this group like: pneumotorace, pneumologo, pneumococco, etc. But in the colloquial Italian we do have pneumatico, to indicate car’s wheel. Now we say il pneumatico and i pneumatici: did you know that, if we refer to the wheels, it may occur us to hear  i pneumatici even if it may be grammatically wrong, but if we refer to the pneumatici, perfect human beings inspired by the Pneuma, the divine breath, then we should use gli pneumatici?

Third curiosity:  the pronoun ne means “this thing” in Italian. It comes from the latin inde which means in Italian di li’ (from there). It can be an adverb of location, a personal or demonstrative pronoun preceded from the preposition di or da. For example: “Ne parlo con lui“, means “Parlo con lui di questa cosa” (I talk with him about this thing). Always when you know what you are talking about, that is you know who or what is the subject, you use ne in order to avoid repeating it.

Well, so now that I am back, I will continue my philosophy to share with you all, every little or big discovery about this beautiful language and the others that I speak! STAY TUNED!!! Hope you have a nice autumn season!