Michael's Italian Language Blog

In a blog post titled: Cocomero, Anguria, Melone D'Acqua, Kyle Phillips, the About.com Guide to Italian Food, offers up refreshing watermelon recipes and notes that the fruit is rich in potassium, one of the elements the body looses through sweating, as well as vitamins A and C.

Anguria (watermelon) is frequently referred to as a melone d'acqua in Naples and the surrounding region, while Romans usually use the term cocomero for the large green oval fruit with a juicy sweet red interior.

First there were bread and tulips, now there are days and clouds. The couplets refer to film titles by director Silvio Soldini. His film "Pane e Tulipani," released in 1999, was a critical and commercial success. Now there's "Giorni e Nuvole," currently in limited engagement in the U.S.

According to The New York Times, in an article titled "Hard Look at Tough Times for an Italian Marriage," the Italian film: "...suggests that Italy's middle class is as much under siege as that of the United States. In both countries, it appears, job security isn’t what it used to be, and corporate downsizing is plunging affluent families into sudden financial tailspins."

No more Anita Ekberg frolicking in the Fontana di Trevi, it seems.

A community member of the About.com Italian Language Forums makes an interesting point when contrasting the use of Latin terms by native English speakers versus the use of English terms by native Italian speakers:

"È stato buffo per me scoprire che usare parole latine o latineggianti in inglese aggiunge importanza o pomposità alle frasi; in Italia se uno si vuole fare credere importante inserisce qualche parola inglese o inglesizzata, in genere a sproposito e spesso scritta male, e non si rende conto che quello che mette in evidenza è solo la sua ignoranza."

What about native Latin speakers who use English terms?

Traduzioni letterarie di Ercole Guidi per gli amici che imparano l'inglese: Testi Bilingue. And the (almost) parallel text in English: Literary translations by Ercole Guidi for all those in love with the language of Dante: Italian-English Parallel Texts.

What makes these Italian-English parallel texts (testi a fronte is the Italian term) especially praiseworthy is that the professional translator responsible for them, Ercole Guidi, is completely fluent in both languages. In addition, there are both Italian and English classics as well as contemporary works. Now there's no excuse not to read great literary works such as I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) and The Sound and the Fury (Il Rumore e Il Furore), as well as short stories such as Blackbird Pie (Torta di Merli), and recent best-selling Italian novels such as La Rossa e il Nero (The Red and the Dark).

Recently the About.com Guide to Cross-Stitch fielded a query from a reader about cross-stitch magazines in Italy. It turns out that punto croce is popular in Italy and is represented online by such publications as Mani di Fata and Penelope.

Wondering what cross-stitch is? "Il punto croce è una tecnica di ricamo su tela, con ago a punta arrotondata e cruna lunga, basata sull'intreccio di fili colorati (generalmente di cotone, lana, lino o viscosa) in modo da formare una X."

Wear Fila, run faster? Maybe not. Interestingly, the sportswear company Fila, founded in 1911 in Italy, doesn't take full advantage of word play in their advertising (then again, it's now owned by a South Korean company). To wit: The verb filare in Italian means: to speed (along), to run, to go at full speed. The III person singular form of the regular -are verb is fila. But alas, quick foot speed has nothing to do with the origin of the company name—Fila was the last name of the brothers who founded it. (And no, Fila doesn't stand for "Finally I left Adidas"!)