Tag Archives: Italy

Ear are ringing, words are singing

Main piece:

S.C.:I don’t know what kind of origin this can have, but my mum used to tell me that when your ears start ringing, someone you know is either thinking or talking about you. Ehm…From the moment that it is something related to the ear, it is said that if the ear ringing is the right one, what the person is saying is positive, while if the ear ringing is the left one, the person is saying bad things. Generally, if in the moment of the ringing you are with a group of people you should ask one random person for a number comprehended between 1 and 21, and that number correspond to a letter of the alphabet. In this way, you get to know who is talking or thinking about you, because…yeah the number the person picked corresponds to the initial of the name of who is talking and thinking about you. 

This should, also, serve as a cure for the fastidious ringing [smiles] I don’t know, saying it out-loud makes it sound absorb, but it has actually always worked for me. Every-time I asked for a number and associated the resulted letter with a person, the ringing stopped. 

Background:

My informant -my mother- is a 57 years old woman, born in Bologna from Italian parents. She learnt this practice from her mum and she passed it down to her daughter as well. She still practices nowadays. 

Context:

I was in the informants’s house when she mentioned and explained it.   

Thoughts:

I think that this tradition is quite common for many cultures and countries, however, I am not so sure about the diffusion of the counter-action my informant suggests taking or performing.

I have always been “educated” at performing it by my mum, who, whenever her ears were ringing, would exclaim “tell me a number”, and then would start to list the alphabet to find the corresponding letter. This particular action of asking for a number can be, in my opinion, interpreted as a peculiar form of conversion superstition, which is meant to send the possibly evil energies or gossips away. In fact, if the ringing is interpreted as a bad thing -as I usually do-, the fact of discovering the source and auto-curing the ‘ailment’ by saying its name out-loud is a form of prevention and shield. 

Tutti i nodi vengono al pettine

Main piece:

“Tutti i nodi vengono al pettine”

Transliteration: 

Tutti: All

i nodi: knots

vengono: come

al pettine: to the comb

Translation: All the knots come to the comb, meaning that the truth will always come out in the end and that all the bad actions or lies one commits or tells will eventually be unmasked and punished.

Background:

My informant is a 57 years old woman, born in Bologna from Italian parents. She has been told this words since she was a child and they made up much of her upbringing and education, which both had a particular emphasis on the importance of caring for the other and treating him or her as “you would treat yourself”.

Context:

My informant -my mother- has always repeated these words to me since I was really young, and when I asked her if she had some proverbs she wanted to tell me for tis collection project, she immediately brought this one up. We were having breakfast in the informant’s house.

Thoughts:

This proverb wants to be both a teaching and a warning, a philosophical approach to the evil received and, at the same time, an educational indication that should be respected.

On on side, indeed, the proverb serves as a sort of eschatological or, better, karmic ‘prophecy’ for actions committed. I often received this proverb as a reassurance when lamenting for injustices or wrongdoings received, so as to say that those who act badly or give negative energies to others will, in the end, receive their share of punishment. 

On the other hand, this saying also serves as an advice, which basically invites you to always think twice before doing something, especially if this something involves other people as well. 

Even if my general interpretation and understanding of this proverb was mostly related to what I have just explained, as my informant pointed out, the proverb can also be interpreted with a meaning related to truth: no matter how many lies are told or how many obstacle will be placed in its course, truth will always find its way to be revealed. 

I believe this proverb to be quite representative of Italian values and principles, which have been, in time, greatly influenced by Catholicism and Christian doctrine. As a matter of fact, this proverb encompasses both the care one should have towards the other and, simultaneously, the conception of Final Judgment, which are two of the main pillars of the Roman Church.

Ummarell

Main piece:

Ummarell

Transliteration in Italian: omarello, omino, ometto

Transliteration in English: little man

Translation: old man who is retired 

M.P.: This is a typical Bolognese expression, which indicates those old men who are like retired and spend their time looking at construction sites. In the common imaginary they are portrayed in their typical pose, with crossed hands behind their backs.

[gets up laughing and mimics the physical pose]

And yes, this word actually entered the slang of the city because it is sometimes used also as a…a sort of joking insult. Like if someone…I don’t know…If someone acts like an old man, or stops in front of building sites, or repeatedly walks with his hand crossed behind his back, friends will make fun of him saying things like “Do not act like an ummarell”. 

Background:

My informant is a 23 years old girl who was born in Bologna, Italy, and who is now getting her master degree in archaeology and Egyptology at the city’s university, and who got her bachelor degree in anthropology and oriental studies 2 years ago always at Bologna’s Alma Mater Studiorum. She does’t recall the exact place and time in which she learnt this word, and neither she remember the first source from which she heard this term, she just knows it is a fundamental part of her “folk-culture”, as she herself defined it.

Context:

I myself use a lot this word and my informant mentioned this piece while we were chatting at a restaurant in the city center of Bologna.

Thoughts:

Something I have always found quite intriguing is the great amount of dialects present in the Italian peninsula. Every region has its own peculiar and proper dialectal speech, and while in some places, especially small towns, they are still spoken -particularly by the older generations-, in bigger cities, dialects have been transformed into slang and adapted to the official language, that is, Italian. In fact, every main city of every Italian region -there are 20 regions in Italy- has words that are typical to that city -or the surrounding area- only. In the majority of cases, these words are not used or even understood by people who do not belong to that community. 

Furthermore, these words tend to evolve from generation to generation, so it happens that only peer groups understand what is being said or meant through that term. 

In these ways, they can be said to perfectly reflect folklore’s definition of “multiplicity and variation”.

Ummarell, precisely, is one of these folk-terms as, deriving from the Emilian dialect, it’s used by people inside the colloquial lingo to represent not only the old retired men who stop at every building site they encounter -as the original meaning implies-, but also all those people who act in this way. 

It becomes an informal way of making fun of a person who act as an old man, or that has the same behavior of old retired man. In this way, a sort of generational division is created, as the youth makes fun of peers pejoratively associating it with the elderly. 

Additionally, it is also used to indicate those who are nosy and who, not having much to do in their spare-time, do useless stuff like watching construction sites and giving unrequested advices to the ones who are working.

The paradigm of Italian hand-gestures

Main piece:

Background:

P.S.: It happened to me countless times, when abroad or speaking with non-Italians citizens, to receive this gesture, articulated in senseless ways, as an answer to my “I am Italian”, and…I don’t know, it has always been for me quite funny, but irritating at the same time.

My informant was born in Belgium from Italian immigrants and spent the first years of his life in Mons, before moving to Italy. Even after his transferring, he continued to visit many times his native country, and he had occasion of traveling and visiting a lot of world’s countries both for business and pleasure during his lifetime. 

Context:

My informant talked about this piece -and then ‘performed’ it- in his living room.  

Thoughts:

I believe it is quite known that Italians gesticulate a lot with their hands while speaking, so much that they are told to ‘speak with their hands’. Many are, indeed, the natural hand and body gestures people from Italy use while communicating, and they represents, for the most part, a genuine and unconscious means of expression. 
This particular piece my informant presents probably is the most famous one, which is often erroneously practiced by non-Italian speakers without acknowledging its real significance. As a matter of fact, this particular hand-gesture is the most-commonly used one to imitate and make fun of Italians, and it’s usually accompanied by nonsense exclamations like “pizza, pasta and mafia”. In reality, this gesture expresses and signifies concepts like “what are you saying?”, “who?”, “when”, so it is basically used to physically ‘supplement’ questions.

Aperitivo – Italian Ritual

Description of Informant

AG (18) is an Italian-American dual citizen and high school student from Berkeley, CA. At home, she speaks primarily Italian, and spends her summers in Italy.

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Context of Interview

The informant, AG, sits in the kitchen with her father and the collector, BK, her step-brother. Text spoken in Italian is italicized, but not translated.

Interview

BK: What’s aperitivo? Aperitivi?

AG: Basically it’s like… actually? I miss Italy *laughing*. Here in America, like, if you want to do something with someone, you have to kind of like have an excuse to do something with someone. Like “Okay let’s go to the movies,” or “Okay, let’s go to an amusement park.” You know? You’re never just walking around downtown, not really. In Italy, you just say “Oh, you want to go out?” Like that’s it. No reason. You just go out, someone walks to the front of someone else’s house, you know, whatever. And you start walking and you keep walking until you sit down somewhere to have a drink. And the drink is called an aperitivo.

BK: Is the activity called aperitivo? Like the process of going to get an aperitivo? And is the aperitivo a specific drink, or just any drink consumed during the activity?

AG: Yes… it’s like… those little midday snacks. Or midday drinks. You usually have them in the evening. The drink can be anything but it’s usually alcoholic.

*At this point, AG‘s father EG (52) interjects*

EG: You guys are gonna disagree with me on this, but I insist, and [AG] I think you’ll agree with me when you get back from Spain… it’s very much like tapas in Spain. Tapas is not a meal in Spain. It’s never a meal. It’s a snack.

AG: What is tapas?

EG: Tapas. Oh it’s very popular. It’s like small plates. But here in America, they completely misinterpreted it as like small plates that are shared, as meals. But in Spain it’s never a meal. It’s aperitivo, it’s a snack. But it’s later, too, because everything’s later in Spain.

AG: That’s similar in Italy. Like the whole culture around eating— everything is different. Like that “gastronomical culture.” Yeah it’s like everything is pushed two or three hours later. Like having dinner in the summer at like 10pm is not abnormal. And then, you have like literally snacks throughout the whole day. And like, yeah you have you breakfast, and then you usually have merenda, and then you have pranzo which is— oh, merenda is snack, and pranzo which is lunch— and then an aperitivo or two in the evening, and then you have cena which is dinner. Sometimes another merenda before dinner. Then desert. And that’s always how it is! 

BK: So going back to aperitivo, aperitivi, what’s the difference?

AG: Aperitivo is singular, aperitivi is plural.

BK: How would you ask someone on an aperitivo?

AG: Prende, take. Would you like to take an aperitivo? Like do you want to go out for one? Or you’d just ask someone to walk to the bar or restaurant with you.

BK: Is there a literal translation for aperitivo? Does it mean appetizer, pre-dinner?

AG: No, no. I would define it as a drink you have in the evening with a friend, usually one friend. You would never have an aperitivo alone. That’s weird. It’s all about the social. In Italy, food is social, period.

Collector’s Reflection

Put simply, aperitivo is a pre-meal drink, usually alcoholic, meant to whet one’s palate or “open the stomach.” It’s an extremely social ritual, as with many aspects of Italian culture. The term seems to derive from Latin for “opener” (as in opening one’s stomach in anticipation of dinner). 

One may immediately draw a comparison to American “Happy Hour” rituals, wherein peers gather over drinks in the early evening: well after lunch, but too early for dinner. These ritual gatherings do not often “limit” the number of attendees; it is interesting to note that the informant specified two individuals to an aperitivo gathering. AG clarifies that more may be present, but in her experience, it has been a one-on-one affair.

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For an in-depth exploration of the Aperitivo ritual, please see:

Mussio, Gina. “The Art of the Aperitivo: The Best Italian Tradition That You’ve Never Tried.” Walks of Italy, 2 Mar. 2017, www.walksofitaly.com/blog/food-and-wine/aperitivo-in-italy-what-it-is-and-how-to-enjoy-one.