I will not talk about anything specific but I will try to help whoever wants to learn some Italian and I will also help to reveal the "truth" about some of the most common believes that people in the US have about Italians and the food.
So why don't we start with the most known word..."ciao"! Ok first of all ciao can be used when you meet and/or leave a person as long as this person is a friend, ciao is pretty colloquial. It is written "ciao" and I know that to explain the pronunciation people use to spell it like "chiao" but watch out...the group "ch" exists in Italian and it is pretty used in many words but its sound is like the letter "K" in "Kevin". I will tell you more about the difference between "ci" and "ch" in a future post, when we will talk about a really easy but delicious food, "bruschetta".
Let's learn a little bit about the background of this word. It comes from the Venetian "s'ciavo" that comes from the latin "sclavus" and both had the same meaning, slave (schiavo in Italian). In the past "sclavus" referred to people of Slavic ethnicity since most of the slaves of the Mediterranean area belonged to that ethnicity.
OK don't start worrying. You are not really offering yourself as a slave greeting someone with "ciao". In the past it was used to show respect, real or pretended, and the willingness to offer yourself, in each meeting, at the other person disposal.
There are few other ways of using ciao. When in a hurry, people tend to put 3 or 4 ciao all together, almost forming a word, to show that they really need to leave.
If you meet someone after a long time or you are simply happy to met someone, you can pronounce the letter 'a' in ciao a little bit longer than normal, but sometimes people do the same in a sarcastic way...
Moreover, is not unusual to hear a person saying "ciao ciao" before leaving. Some people find one ciao not enough so using 2 ciao sounds less harsh or cold.
A little oddity: during the 1990, Italy hosted the world cup. The mascot was named "Ciao". As you can see it wasn't actually the best mascot ever...
Ciao ciao!
No comments:
Post a Comment