50 Fun Facts About Italian Language

Which everyday Italian greeting grew out of a Venetian phrase that literally meant 'I am your slave'?

Ciao began as 's-ciào vostro', a courteous Venetian way of saying 'at your service'. It spread across northern Italy only in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

A traveller who asks for just a 'latte' in an Italian café will be served a glass of what?

Milk is all that 'latte' means in Italian, where it is an everyday word. The espresso drink is a caffè latte, and it is traditionally served in a glass.

A diner in Italy who orders a pizza with 'peperoni' gets which topping instead of spicy salami?

Bell peppers are what 'peperoni', the plural of 'peperone', means in Italian. The spicy salami is an American creation, and a chilli is a 'peperoncino'.

What does the name of tiramisù, Italy's coffee-soaked dessert layered with mascarpone, literally mean?

Pick me up is what 'tirami su' means in Italian. The dessert is younger than it looks: one widely reported account has it invented at a Treviso restaurant in 1969.

Which English word comes from the Venetian for 'forty days', the time ships once had to wait before landing?

Quarantine comes from the Venetian 'quarantena'. It replaced a shorter wait, the thirty-day 'trentino' that Ragusa, now Dubrovnik, first imposed on newcomers in 1377.

The word 'paparazzi' comes from a news photographer named Paparazzo in which Federico Fellini film?

La Dolce Vita won the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 1960. Fellini said the name Paparazzo suggested to him 'a buzzing insect, hovering, darting, stinging'.

Italians call the @ symbol of email addresses 'chiocciola', the everyday Italian word for which creature?

A snail is what Italians see in the symbol's coil. Dutch speakers picture a different animal and call it 'apenstaart', which means monkey tail.

English speakers dine 'al fresco' on a terrace, but in Italian slang the same phrase means spending time where?

In jail is the slang Italian sense of 'al fresco', which literally means 'in the cool'. For a meal outdoors, Italians say 'all'aperto' or 'fuori' instead.

What does 'Vespa', the name Enrico Piaggio gave his company's famous motor scooter, mean in Italian?

Wasp is what the prototype's thick tail and narrow waist looked like to Enrico Piaggio, who exclaimed 'Sembra una vespa!' on first seeing it.

The piano's full Italian name, pianoforte, joins the words for which two qualities of sound?

Soft and loud is the meaning: Bartolomeo Cristofori's new instrument could play both. The harpsichord it grew out of gives no such control over individual notes.

Which medieval poet, condemned to lifelong exile from his home city, is called the father of the Italian language?

Dante Alighieri wrote his Divine Comedy in his native Tuscan when Latin still ruled serious writing. Italians often call him simply 'il Sommo Poeta', the Supreme Poet.

Standard Italian grew out of the literary dialect of which Tuscan city, rather than the speech of Rome?

Florence had prestige and geography on its side: its dialect was a middle way between the speech of northern and southern Italy, which helped it win out.

Italy's national football team is nicknamed the Azzurri, an Italian word for which colour of the players' shirts?

Blue was the traditional colour of the Savoy dynasty, Italy's former royal family, which is why the team wears it rather than the green, white and red of the flag.

Italians wish each other good luck with 'in bocca al lupo', a phrase that sends a person into which animal's mouth?

A wolf is the danger in this phrase, a wish that works like the English 'break a leg'. The standard reply is 'crepi il lupo', meaning 'may the wolf die'.

In the 'gorgia' of Tuscan speech, the hard c between vowels in a word like 'identificare' turns into which sound?

An h takes the place of the k sound, so the word comes out as 'identifihare'. The name gorgia means 'throat', and the habit is strongest in central Tuscany.

What does 'opera', the Italian word borrowed around the world for sung stage drama, literally mean?

Work is the literal meaning, covering both the labour and its result. The Italian word comes from Latin, where 'opera' also served as the plural of 'opus'.

In Italy, 'confetti' are not scraps of coloured paper but which sweets, often given as wedding favours?

Sugared almonds are what Italians mean by confetti. The paper kind is called 'coriandoli', after the sugar-coated coriander seeds once thrown at carnivals.

Which Italian word, literally 'I pray', is the standard polite reply when someone says thank you?

Prego is one of the handiest words a beginner can learn. Besides 'you're welcome', it means 'after you' at a doorway and 'of course' in answer to a request.

In Italian, counting begins uno, due, tre; which word for a number comes next?

Quattro means four, which is why Audi picked it in 1980 as the name of its four-wheel-drive system.

Which relative does an Italian child call 'nonna', a word that has also passed into informal English?

Grandmother is 'nonna' and grandfather is 'nonno'. The prefix bis- steps back another generation, so a 'bisnonna' is a great-grandmother.

What does 'al dente', the Italian term for pasta boiled so that it stays firm, literally mean?

To the tooth is the literal sense: the pasta should still resist when bitten. Pasta served this way also has a lower glycaemic index than pasta boiled until limp.

Italic type, named for its birth in Italy, was first used in 1500 by which Venetian printer and humanist?

Aldus Manutius did not intend italics for emphasis. He wanted a compact type that looked like handwriting, for compact, easily carried editions of popular books.

Farfalle, the pinched pasta that Americans call bow ties, takes its Italian name from which creatures?

Butterflies are 'farfalle' in Italian. In Emilia-Romagna the same pasta is known as 'strichetti', a local word that does mean bow ties.

English menus treat 'panini' as one sandwich, but it is an Italian plural; which word names a single one?

Panino is a diminutive of the Italian for bread and properly means a bread roll. The same trap catches 'paparazzi': one photographer is a 'paparazzo'.

Which letter is missing from the traditional 21-letter Italian alphabet and turns up only in borrowed words?

W shares its outsider status with J, K, X and Y. Italians meet it mostly in loanwords such as 'weekend' and in foreign names.

The English word 'fiasco', meaning a humiliating failure, is the ordinary Italian word for which object?

A bottle, usually the round straw-wrapped kind that holds Chianti. The 'failure' sense comes from the theatre phrase 'far fiasco', literally 'to make a bottle'.

A medieval scheme sorted the Romance languages by their word for 'yes'; which word, still in use, marked Italian?

Sì made Italian 'the language of sì'. The rival word 'oc' labelled the speech of southern France, and it survives on the map in the region called Languedoc.

The Italian word 'influenza' named the illness after an old belief that epidemics were caused by what?

The stars were thought to send down an 'influence' that made people ill. English borrowed the Italian word in 1743, during an outbreak that was sweeping Europe.

Which word was first the name of the Venice district where Jews were compelled to live from 1516?

Ghetto is recorded in English from the 1610s, and its deeper origin is disputed. One theory links it to 'getto', a foundry that stood near the district.

Which Italian port city gave its name, by way of French, to the hard-wearing cotton trousers called jeans?

Genoa is 'Gênes' in French, which English turned into 'jeans'. Denim has a matching story: it is short for 'de Nîmes', after the French city that wove it.

In everyday Italian, what does 'allegro', the musical marking for a brisk and lively tempo, actually mean?

Cheerful is the plain meaning. Italian tempo words tend to describe a mood or a movement instead of a speed: 'andante' is simply 'at a walking pace'.

What does 'a cappella', the Italian term for singing with no instruments, literally mean?

In chapel style is the sense, pointing to church choirs. Even so, some early Palestrina pieces written for the Sistine Chapel seem to have been backed by an organ.

Which brass instrument's Italian name simply adds a suffix meaning 'large' to the word for trumpet?

Trombone is 'tromba' plus the enlarging suffix -one. The same ending turns 'minestra', a soup, into minestrone, a very substantial one.

Which Italian pronoun, literally 'she', is the polite way to say 'you' to a stranger or an elder?

Lei has been the formal 'you' since the Renaissance, and it takes third-person verbs. Friends and family get the informal 'tu', and parts of the south may use 'Voi'.

What does 'diva', the Italian word English borrowed for a celebrated female singer, literally mean?

Goddess is the meaning in Italian, and in Latin before it. English took the word up for leading sopranos in the 1860s and has since stretched it well beyond the stage.

Stiletto heels take their name from the Italian word for which slender weapon?

A dagger with a short, narrow blade was the original stiletto, a word English has used since the 1610s. The shoe borrowed it in the 1950s, when very thin high heels arrived.

The word 'umbrella' reached English from the Italian 'ombrello', built on a Latin word that means what?

Shade was the whole point: around the Mediterranean the umbrella was a sunshade. In rainy England it became a shelter from the weather instead.

What does 'casino', the Italian word that English adopted for a gambling hall, literally mean?

Small house is the literal sense, a diminutive of 'casa'. English first used the word in 1744 for a public room for music or dancing, and the gambling came later.

What does 'macchiato', the Italian name for an espresso topped with a little foam, literally mean?

Stained, or spotted, describes the cup: the dark espresso has been 'marked' with a single drop of white.

What does 'biscotti', the Italian name for crunchy Prato biscuits often dunked in sweet wine, literally mean?

Twice cooked is the meaning, from the medieval Latin 'biscoctus'. A second spell in the oven dried the dough so thoroughly that it kept for long periods.

Which Swiss canton, home to Lugano and Locarno, is the only one with Italian as its sole official language?

Ticino is named after its longest river. Italian is also spoken just to the east, in the southern valleys of the canton of Grisons.

On which Mediterranean island was Italian an official language until 1934, alongside English?

Malta dropped Italian after a long political quarrel known as the Language Question. Even so, about two in three islanders told a 2012 survey they could still speak it.

Which regional language of Italy do many linguists rank, alongside Italian, as the closest descendant of Latin?

Sardinian drifted least in a 1949 study by the linguist Mario Pei: its stressed vowels had moved only 8 per cent from Classical Latin, against 44 per cent for French.

Which Italian word, literally 'midday', is the everyday name for the southern part of Italy?

Mezzogiorno points to where the sun stands at noon. France names its own south the same way: 'le Midi' also means midday.

Which verse form, whose Italian name means 'little song', is credited to Giacomo da Lentini at Frederick II's court?

The sonnet was born in Palermo, at the Sicilian court of Frederick II. By tradition it runs to fourteen lines with a set rhyme scheme.

The Accademia della Crusca, guardian of the Italian language since 1583, takes its name from which part of wheat?

Bran is sifted out of flour, and the academy saw itself sifting corrupt words out of Italian in the same way. Its emblem is a sifter.

Which Milanese novelist recast The Betrothed in Tuscan speech, a job he likened to rinsing laundry in the Arno?

Alessandro Manzoni took his time over the rewrite: the novel first came out between 1825 and 1827, and the definitive version followed only between 1840 and 1842.

Which Venetian cardinal argued in the 1520s that written Italian should imitate the Tuscan of Petrarch and Boccaccio?

Pietro Bembo saw his ideas prevail, and they shaped the standard language. He also found time, during a stay in Ferrara, for a love affair with Lucrezia Borgia.

Which Italian poet is credited with coining 'tramezzino' as a home-grown replacement for the English word 'sandwich'?

Gabriele D'Annunzio's word stuck. A tramezzino is still what Italians call a triangular sandwich of white bread with the crusts cut off.

The Placiti Cassinesi of the 960s, some of the first texts in an Italian vernacular, record sworn statements about what?

Monastery land was at stake: in a property dispute, witnesses declared in the local vernacular that the monks of St Benedict had owned certain fields for thirty years.