Street Sign Language Lesson LVII

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In this round of Street Sign Language Lesson, we find Bud Spencer in the canned-bean aisle, learn the job description of an alpine sheepdog, get warned about a sobbalzo while walking in Bergamo, and encounter an organo in movimento in Milan. We also get watched by many eyes in Genoa, wait for medicine at Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital, and read two lost-pet notices.

As usual, the signs start out as language lessons and wander off into film, shepherding, road paving, machinery, public transportation, hospital logistics, and dogs that look sort of like Beagles.  Let's begin.

Fagioli alla Bud Spencer. Ricetta originale.
"Bud Spencer-style beans. Original recipe."

The grammar isn't the interesting part here. Alla Bud Spencer simply means roughly "Bud Spencer style." The more interesting question for an English-speaking visitor looking at a can of beans in Carrefour might be: Who is Bud Spencer?

Bud Spencer was the screen name of Carlo Pedersoli, an Italian swimmer who represented Italy at the 1952 and 1956 Olympics before becoming an actor. In 1967, when he was asked to adopt an American-sounding name for an Italian western, he combined Budweiser, his favorite beer, with the surname of actor Spencer Tracy. His co-star Mario Girotti similarly became Terence Hill, and Bud Spencer and Terence Hill went on to become a hugely successful screen duo, especially in comic westerns and action films.

And the beans aren't random. Beans cooked in a pan became strongly associated with the Bud Spencer-Terence Hill films, particularly the Trinità movies, enough that Italian food writing has referred to an entire comic "fagioli-western" tradition.

So, there is quite a lot packed into a €3.35 can sitting between the mushrooms and lentils. The label assumes you already know the joke.

Il cane da raduno raduna e sposta il bestiame seguendo le indicazioni dell'allevatore.
"The herding dog gathers and moves the livestock, following the farmer's instructions."

We liked this sentence because of the repetition: il cane da raduno raduna...

The noun raduno comes from radunare, meaning to gather or bring together. We usually encounter raduno referring to a gathering of people: un raduno degli Alpini, un raduno automobilistico, a rally, meet, or gathering.

Here, though, cane da raduno is literally a "gathering dog," what we would normally call a herding dog in English. Then comes raduna, the third-person singular of radunare: the gathering dog gathers. The Pasturs sign itself contrasts this job with that of il cane da protezione, whose task is to defend livestock against predators and other threats.

Then we get sposta, from spostare, "to move," and seguendo, "following": raduna e sposta il bestiame seguendo le indicazioni dell'allevatore = gathers and moves the livestock according to the farmer's instructions.

The distinction between the dogs took on a little more meaning after our recent long hike up the Vò Valley to Rifugio Tagliaferri, where we came across a herd of roughly 1,000 Pecora Gigante Bergamasca and spoke with the shepherd tending them. With that many sheep, radunare e spostare stops sounding like a vocabulary exercise and starts sounding like quite a job description.

Attenzione, sobbalzo di corsia.
A natural translation here would be something like “Caution: uneven lane surface” or “Caution: sudden change in lane level”.

We saw these signs while walking in Città Alta as a road was being resurfaced. Sobbalzo was new to us.

The noun sobbalzo comes from the verb sobbalzare. Treccani defines sobbalzare as making small repeated jumps or jolts, particularly when talking about a vehicle traveling over an uneven road. With a person, it can also mean to jump or start suddenly from surprise or fear. Sobbalzo is the resulting jolt or sudden movement.

So:

• La macchina sobbalza sulla strada sconnessa.
  The car jolts along the uneven road.
• Ho sobbalzato quando ho sentito il rumore.
  I jumped when I heard the noise.

What we like about sobbalzo is that it doesn't really name the physical bump or unevenness in the road. It names the jolt or sudden vertical movement produced by it. A car can sobbalzare when it hits an uneven patch of pavement, and that movement is un sobbalzo. So attenzione sobbalzo di corsia is effectively warning that the difference in road level may make your vehicle jump or jolt.  

 

Organo in movimento.

Moving part / moving machinery.

We saw these two signs in Milan. Our first reaction was to organo in movimento, which translated word for word gives us organ in motion. This sounds considerably more medical than mechanical.

But organo has a technical meaning in Italian. In machinery, an organo can be a component or functional part of a machine. Italian safety literature routinely uses expressions such as organi in movimento, organi ruotanti, and organi di trasmissione for moving, rotating, and transmission components.

The other question we had was whether in movimento means that the thing is moving right now, or that it could move.

Grammatically, it simply means "in motion." There is no "might" or future sense built into the phrase. But as a safety warning, organo in movimento is better understood as a category of hazard: moving part. The component does not have to be moving at the instant you read the sign, any more than an English "Caution: Moving Parts" label becomes false when a machine is switched off. The warning is that this thing moves when the system operates, so don't assume it will remain where it is

That is particularly useful information when the thing in question looks, at first glance, rather like part of the floor.

OCCHIO!
Watch out! / Careful!

We saw this AMT sign during our weekend in Genoa, a city where getting around can involve buses, elevators, funiculars, and a fair amount of vertical thinking.

Occhio literally means "eye," but by itself as an exclamation, Occhio! means Watch out!, Be careful!, or Pay attention! Treccani specifically lists it as an interjection used to call someone's attention to a danger.

You can also say:

• Occhio alla macchina!
  Watch out for the car!
• Occhio a dove metti i piedi.
  Watch where you step.

The AMT poster has fun with both meanings. It says: Tutti i mezzi AMT sono dotati di molti occhi, quelli delle telecamere e quelli di tutti noi. "All AMT vehicles are equipped with many eyes, those of the cameras and those of all of us."

So OCCHIO! is simultaneously "watch out" and an actual eye, reinforced by the camera lens sitting inside the eye in the image. It is one of those cases where the Italian is considerably more compact than the English explanation required to understand why it works.

A causa delle diverse modalità di trasporto la consegna potrebbe non rispettare la successione del numero di coda.

A fairly literal translation is: “Because of the different methods of transport, delivery may not follow the sequence of the queue numbers.” A more useful translation in context would be: “Because the medications arrive by different transport methods, they may not be dispensed in queue-number order.”

We encountered this sentence while waiting at the Farmacia delle dimissioni at Papa Giovanni XXIII hospital in Bergamo. This is not simply a pharmacy conveniently located near the exit. After a patient is discharged from the hospital with a newly prescribed drug therapy that must continue at home, the Farmacia delle dimissioni can provide the drugs for the first treatment cycle, enough to bridge the period until care passes back to the patient's general practitioner. It also dispenses certain hospital and chronic-therapy medications.

So dimissioni here means hospital discharge, and Farmacia delle dimissioni is reasonably translated as discharge pharmacy.

The sign becomes easier once it is pulled apart:

• a causa delle = because of / due to
• diverse modalità di trasporto = different transport methods
• la consegna = the delivery or, here, dispensing of the medication
• potrebbe non rispettare = might not follow
• la successione = the sequence/order
• del numero di coda = of the queue number

The smaller sign underneath explains what is really going on: the medication kits are handed out in the order in which they arrive from the pharmacy warehouse, which may not match the order in which patients took their queue numbers.

There is even more machinery behind that sentence than we realized. Papa Giovanni uses an automated pharmacy warehouse and a pneumatic transport system to move some medication kits from the warehouse to the Farmacia delle dimissioni.

In other words, if you are number 46 and they call 48 first, this does not necessarily mean the Italian queue has finally abandoned all pretense of numerical order. Number 48's medicine may simply have arrived before yours.

We were already in the intellectually receptive state produced by sitting around watching a hospital queue display, so naturally we photographed the explanation.

Avvistata l'ultima volta nella chiesa di Sant'Alessandro di via Pignolo.

Last seen in the church of Sant'Alessandro on Via Pignolo.


This was a notice for a missing black-and-white cat. What was that cat doing in the church?

The useful verb here is avvistare, from vista. It means to sight or spot something, traditionally with the sense of beginning to see or recognize something from a distance. It turns up particularly in contexts such as sighting a ship, aircraft, person, or something being searched for.

The full sentence could be: È stata avvistata l'ultima volta... She was last seen... On the notice, è stata disappears and we are left with the compressed: Avvistata l'ultima volta...

Also note that it is avvistata, feminine, because the missing animal is una gatta.

English normally reduces the whole idea to the very ordinary "last seen." Italian's avvistata feels closer to last spotted or last sighted, which seems particularly appropriate when everyone in the neighborhood has temporarily become part of a cat-search operation.  

Light a candle in your local church for this cat.

Simil Beagle, femmina, taglia medio/contenuta.
Beagle-like female, small-to-medium size.

This was another missing-animal notice, this time for Bella (who prefers shopping at LIDL over churches?).

The interesting word is simil. It isn't the adjective simile with the final e casually dropped. Simil- is a combining form derived from simile and is used to indicate something with characteristics resembling something else. Treccani gives examples such as similpelle, imitation or synthetic leather.

So simil Beagle means Beagle-like, resembling a Beagle, or, more loosely in English, Beagle type.

We might be tempted to translate it as "Beagle mix," but that says slightly more than the Italian does. Simil Beagle describes appearance or type; it doesn't necessarily make a claim about Bella's actual parentage.

It's useful shorthand for a lost-dog sign. If you don't know exactly what she is, but she looks enough like a Beagle that "Beagle" will help someone recognize her, simil Beagle gets the job done.

Foreign at Ciao: Ten Years of Speaking Italian

One World is Enough ~ The R Bar ~ The Woman Who Disappeared ~ 

What Our Italian Can Do ~ My Grandfather Was American ~ Foreign at Ciao

 

We enter a bar, a shop, or an office and say ciao.

“Di dove siete?”

One word is often enough. We haven't ordered, explained our problem, or asked where the bathroom is. Nonetheless, the international portion of the conversation has begun.

This is not a big deal in the scheme of things. The question is usually friendly, and often it leads somewhere interesting. We have met people, exchanged travel stories, and explained many times how two Americans ended up living in Bergamo. Still, after ten years, there are mornings when we would prefer simply to order a macchiato.

This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that we write about our odyssey with the Italian language. We have dozens of posts (TravelMarx: Italian Language) on the subject. We love Italian, we love living in Italy, and our lives here would be impossible without the language. But affection does not eliminate frustration.

After ten years, we speak enough Italian to live in Italy, but perhaps not enough to disappear into it.

One Word is Enough

“Where are you from?” after a single ciao demonstrates how quickly we can be identified and sorted. The question may be nothing more than curiosity or an easy way to make conversation. Repeated hundreds of times, however, curiosity can begin to feel a little like border control that you weren't expecting.

What tires us is not being foreign. We are foreign. It is the speed with which foreignness can become the subject, pushing aside whatever we were trying to say or do. How we pronounce the words becomes more interesting than the words themselves.

Italy has a highly tuned linguistic ear. Italians identify one another by pronunciation, vocabulary, rhythm, and regional cadence. A few sentences may reveal that someone is Bergamasco, Roman, Neapolitan, Sardinian, educated, provincial, working class, or trying rather hard not to sound like any of those things. Italians are not only locating foreigners through language. They have long been locating one another.

The difference is that a regional accent usually places an Italian somewhere within Italy. Our accent places us outside it.  We can get placed "outside" of Italy anywhere from Germany, the Netherlands, England, or the US. It's a slight chuckle on our part when we asked if we are German.

We touched on this feeling in Transplants: Notes on Aging and Living Abroad, where we described our accent as a kind of passport carried in our voices. That post considered the larger experience of living between cultures. In this post, we want to stay with one small but persistent part of it: how a single ciao can locate us before the conversation has really begun.

That may be all that is happening after ciao: a person hears something unexpected and asks a natural question. But repeated over years, the exchange begins to carry a little more weight. It reminds us that we may participate fully in the conversation while never becoming acoustically invisible within it.

The R Bar

The Italian r has become our recurring symbol of linguistic struggles.  Someone rolls an extravagant r for us. We try to reproduce it. What comes out is recognizably an r, but not the correct kind. Everyone laughs, including us. Then we try again, with greater concentration and usually worse results.

Repeat for ten years.

The joke is affectionate. We understand that. Often the person correcting us is genuinely trying to help, and we would not want people to stop correcting us altogether. The tiring part is how easily the correction can take over the conversation. We may be explaining something complicated, making a joke, or telling a story, but one poorly executed r suddenly becomes the most interesting thing at the table. The message briefly disappears behind the delivery.

In that moment, the Italian r seems to outweigh years of vocabulary, grammar, residence permits, utility bills, medical appointments, friendships, misunderstandings, and daily life. We may have explained the problem perfectly, but we have not rolled the r with sufficient authority.

Perhaps this does not mean we failed to work hard enough. Adult learners vary greatly in their ability to perceive and reproduce unfamiliar sounds, and late learners (like us) commonly retain a non-native accent even at high levels of proficiency. According to the research A hypothesis on improving foreign accents by optimizing variability in vocal learning brain circuits adults learn foreign pronunciation poorly because they stop experimenting too soon and the result is a foreign accent. (This is research to follow up on!)

Many people like us who learn a language later in life retain an accent even when they speak fluently. At some point, the mouth seems to settle on its preferred collection of sounds. Ours settled before it encountered the Italian r.

The Woman Who Disappeared

We went to a party recently where many of the guests had international backgrounds. One English woman had lived in Italy for more than twenty years. She had married an Italian, raised children here, studied languages, and could move easily between English and Italian.

A few days later, a friend who had attended the same party remarked on how perfectly she spoke. He had to listen closely to tell that she was not Italian.

His admiration was generous, and deserved. Still, I felt a brief flash of envy. Apparently, there was a finish line after all, and we haven't passed it (yet).

The English woman had achieved a kind of native invisibility. Her Italian no longer announced her before she had a chance to say anything else. She could enter a conversation without immediately becoming the foreign person in it.

Do we want the same thing?

Yes and no.

We do not necessarily want to disappear. The way we speak is part of who we are and how we think. Our accents record where we came from, when we learned Italian, and the fact that another language still lives close beneath the surface.

But we would like the option to disappear now and then.

Sometimes we want to say ciao, order a coffee, and not explain how two Americans ended up in Bergamo. Sometimes we want the conversation to continue without turning toward our pronunciation, our origins, or the inevitable question: “Why Bergamo?”

What Our Italian Can Do

It is easy to measure our Italian by what it cannot do.

It cannot disguise us. It cannot reliably roll an r. It cannot always keep pace with a crowded dinner table when three people are speaking at once and a fourth is beginning a story from the middle.

But isn't this a strange way to measure your language ability?

Thinking about the woman at the party also forced us to take stock of what our own Italian can do.

It has built a life. It gets us through bureaucracy, friendships, driving exams, meals, repairs, jokes, and misunderstandings. It allows us to participate, not perfectly and not invisibly, but fully enough to belong to the life we are living. That's all good.

Also, our language level has allowed us to notice things we would otherwise miss. We hear differences between formal and informal speech. We recognize regional expressions. We stop at signs and wonder why Italian phrases an instruction one way while English would phrase it another. We may not speak like native Italians, but we no longer experience Italian as noise passing around us and because of our gap, we notice more. Or, that's our hope!

There are, of course, limits. In a fast conversation, we may arrive at the perfect response several seconds too late. A joke may need to be explained, which is rarely an improvement. Some days our Italian feels fluent; on others, we struggle to assemble a sentence we are certain we used successfully the day before.

Still, "medium-level Italian" may be an unfair description. Medium compared with what? A native speaker? The English woman at the party? An imaginary version of ourselves who studied the congiuntivo (subjuncitve) every evening instead of doing something else?

Perhaps the more useful measure is not whether we can pass as Italian, but whether our Italian language level allows us to participate in the life around us. And by that measure, it works.

Our Italian is imperfect, accented, and occasionally held together with gestures. It is also durable. It gets us through the day and into conversations, relationships, and situations that would otherwise remain closed to us. That may not be mastery. It is not invisibility. But it is much more than nothing.

My Grandfather Was American

The United States is hardly innocent when it comes to judging people by the way they speak. Accents can affect how people are treated at work, in public, and in everyday conversation. Race and class are often tangled up in those judgments. Someone can be born in the United States and still be asked where they are "really" from.

Still, that was not how I understood American identity growing up.

My grandfather was born in the United States to Italian parents. He spoke and wrote English imperfectly and was possibly illiterate. In an earlier post, A Happy Sound in the Grotto, I wrote about the sounds he made while sitting at the kitchen table, working slowly through the newspaper. His limited literacy was part of his history. It was never evidence that he was somehow less American. He did not have to pass linguistically.

Perhaps that is because the United States tells itself that it is a country made from arrivals. The story is often contradicted by the country’s behavior, but the story still matters. An accent may identify someone as Italian American, Chinese American, Southern, Midwestern, working class, or recently arrived. It can place a person within a complicated American landscape without necessarily removing them from it.

Italy tells itself a different story, one built more around place, family, town, region, and inherited culture. This is curious because Italy contains enormous linguistic variety. Italians have always used pronunciation and vocabulary to locate one another. Yet a regional accent usually places an Italian somewhere within Italy. Our accent more often seems to raise the prior question of whether we belong inside the category at all.

That may be too simple a comparison. Perhaps I remember the United States generously because it was where I grew up and experience Italy more critically because I am still learning how to inhabit it. Perhaps this is rosy retrospection with an American accent?

But the difference continues to feel real.

My grandfather’s imperfect English did not make his nationality conditional. Our imperfect Italian can sometimes make our connection to Italy feel provisional, even after ten years of living here.

Maybe that is the question beneath all the questions that follow ciao: not simply where we came from, but how a person who came from somewhere else can ever become fully from here.

Foreign at Ciao

So, where are we in this discussion? After ten years, we speak enough Italian to live in Italy, but perhaps not enough to disappear into it.

Fine.

We may never be mistaken for Italians, at least not once we open our mouths. But being mistaken for Italian may be the wrong measure.

The woman at the party could pass. We cannot. Yet passing is only one form of belonging, and perhaps not the most important one. A perfect accent can conceal a history. An imperfect one can reveal it in interesting ways.

Our accents record lives lived in two languages. They tell people that we arrived from somewhere else and learned Italian later. They do not tell them how long we've been here, what we understand, what we contribute, or how thoroughly we have made Italy home.

Perhaps this is what people are trying to discover when they ask where we are from. The question may be less a judgment than an opening, an attempt to place us within the story they already understand.

Still, there is a difference between being welcomed and being unremarkable.

We have been welcomed. That is for sure. We have built friendships, routines, and a life in Italian. We participate fully, even if we do so audibly as foreigners. What we may never achieve is the ordinary privilege of passing unnoticed. But, there are worse things in life.

Remaining recognizable as ourselves while living in another language may be a more modest achievement than mastery, but it is also a more interesting one. We do not need our Italian to erase where we came from. We need it to carry us further into where we are.

Even if, immediately after ciao, we are sometimes asked to explain the whole journey before we have managed to order the macchiato.

Studying for the Italian Driving Test

Thirty Questions ~ Cultural Cues ~ Reading Carefully ~ Study Partner ~ 

Culture ~ Exam Day ~ Idoneo ~ More Than Driving

If you think about how to prepare for the Italian written driving exam, you might think to start by simply reading the manual. That's a good idea, but only up to a point.

I read the manual. More than once.

Looking back, however, I don't think the primary value of reading it was memorizing every rule. The value was building a mental map. Later, after I inevitably missed a question on a practice exam, I usually had a vague idea where to return in the book to understand what I'd gotten wrong.

The real preparation came elsewhere.

Thirty Questions at a Time

The final and practice exams consist of thirty true-or-false questions. Three mistakes or fewer and you pass. Four mistakes and you don't.

By the time I sat for the real exam, I had completed roughly 215 practice tests through the ACI (Automobile Club d’Italia) app. Toward the end, I was consistently finishing with one or two mistakes, just below the passing threshold.

At first, I wondered how many practice tests would be "enough." Fifty? One hundred?

After 150 tests, I began to suspect that the app was serving up different questions the more I used it. I can't prove this, but it certainly felt as though new questions continued to appear well after I thought I'd seen everything. Whether that was clever programming or simply a large question bank, the lesson is the same: don't stop practicing just because your average score starts looking good.

Practice tests don't simply measuring what you know. They expose you to what you don't know.

Note: I used the Automobile Club d’Italia (ACI) as the school to help me with paperwork and in theory to help me study, though I did all the studying on my own. ACI had in person and video lessons, so that was available. ACI was able to watch my process on the app and knew when I was ready.

Cultural Cues

I expected to spend months learning road signs, right-of-way rules, speed limits, and stopping distances. There is plenty of all that. More questions than I care to remember involved trailers, towing weights, and which license category allows you to pull what combination of vehicle.

There were also many questions about railway crossings and passing. If the frequency of exam questions reflects national concerns, Italy appears to spend a surprising amount of time thinking about trains and passing, il sorpasso. Drilling on trains makes sense because many roads cross tracks. But the passing questions exhaust you. It’s as if they are trying to cover every possible little 'pass' an Italian driver has tried.

Another thing that surprised me was how much space the Italian driving manual gives to what happens after an accident. Not just the mechanics of stopping, putting out the warning triangle, or avoiding further danger, but the duty to help. In Italy, this is not presented as a nice thing to do, or even only as a moral obligation. It is a legal obligation. Article 189 of the Codice della Strada says that a road user involved in an accident connected to their behavior must stop and provide the necessary assistance to anyone who may have suffered personal injury. Failure to stop after an accident involving injury can bring reclusione, the word that managed to stump me during the real exam, along with suspension of the driving license. 

This felt different from the way I remembered the subject being framed in the United States, where the emphasis, at least in my memory, was more on calling 911, not leaving the scene, and not making things worse unless you knew what you were doing. The U.S. is complicated because each state has its own rules. California, for example, does require a driver involved in an injury accident to stop, exchange information, and render “reasonable assistance” to injured people. But for ordinary bystanders, the California framing is less a general legal duty to intervene and more a Good Samaritan protection: if you voluntarily help in good faith and without compensation, you are generally protected from civil liability unless your conduct is grossly negligent or willful.

All of this about providing help as a bystander made me wonder if I'm up to the task.

Reading Every Word

Somewhere along my study path I realized I wasn't just learning traffic law. I was learning how to read Italian carefully.

I found that many of my mistakes weren't because I misunderstood the driving rule, rather the mistake happened because I skimmed. A single word could reverse the meaning of an entire sentence.

Words like sempre, soltanto, generalmente, può, or deve demanded attention. Miss one qualifier and suddenly a statement that looked perfectly reasonable became false. And watch out for the word “solo”!

Examples:

• Il giubbotto retroriflettente ad alta visibilità è utile solo quando si deve sostituire una ruota forata. [Falso]
• Il pannello integrativo raffigurato si trova solo se l'incidente è avvenuto in autostrada. [Falso]

Sometimes the challenge wasn't vocabulary but grammar. An adjective agreed with a noun I wasn't expecting. A pronoun referred to something earlier in the sentence.

A phrase like minor consumo, norme internazionali, or lungo quel tratto carried just enough nuance that reading quickly became dangerous.

Other times I encountered words I'd never seen before like dirigibilità and incolumità. These aren't exactly words that come up while ordering coffee.

Examples:

• Le frecce direzionali in figura sono a freccia combinata diritta-destra per corsie destinate a chi deve proseguire diritto o a destra. [Vero]
• Analysis: "le frecce" in general not specifically
• Nel caso in cui la sosta è espressamente vietata da una norma del codice della strada, l'osservanza di tale divieto è comunque condizionata dalla presenza di cartelli segnaletici. [Falso]
• Analysis: "condizionata" agrees with "osservanza" not "divieto"
• Tenere aperto il tettuccio scorrevole del veicolo comporta un minor consumo di carburante. [Falso]
• Analysis => "minor consumo" means "consuma meno", which is not true!
• Gli stivali ad uso motociclistico sono omologati secondo norme internazionali. [Vero]
• Analysis => "norme internazionali" doesn't mean rigid international agreements but standards.
• Attraversare un passaggio a livello senza rispettare tutte le norme previste, può mettere in pericolo l'incolumità di molte persone che viaggino su un treno in transito. [Vero]
• Analysis => "incolumità" just means "safety".
• Le sospensioni non collaborano alla dirigibilità del veicolo, perché questa è assicurata unicamente dagli organi di direzione. [Falso]
• Analysis => "dirigibilità" means "La dirigibilità è la capacità di un veicolo, di un aeromobile o di un'imbarcazione di essere guidato e manovrato con precisione, seguendo una rotta stabilita."
• Il bordo del marciapiede dipinto come in figura indica che non si può sostare lungo quel tratto. [Vero]
• Analysis => "lungo + noun", not “a lungo”

So, in a small way, preparing for the exam gradually retrained the way I read Italian. Instead of looking for the general idea, I learned to slow down and pay attention to every word.

A Study Partner

After finishing practice tests, I often turned to AI. Not to answer the questions for me, but to explain why I had gotten one wrong. 

Often the explanation wasn't about driving at all. It was about grammar, vocabulary, or understanding how Italian legal language is constructed. Sometimes I'd ask for the explanation in Italian. Sometimes I'd ask it to compare the Italian wording with English. Occasionally I'd ask it to invent similar examples until the rule finally clicked.

It became an unexpectedly useful tutor, especially for someone taking the exam in a second language.

It’s easy to take a snapshot of the screen after the practice test is over and feed it into AI to ask why what you were thinking was wrong (or right in some cases).

A Small Window into Italian Culture

One unexpected pleasure was discovering what the exam writers considered worth asking. Some questions seemed delightfully specific.

Apparently, it is important to know that throwing a lit cigarette butt from the window is particularly dangerous if two-wheeled vehicles are approaching. (I wondered, what if the cigarette butt was extinguished first? Or, it was just another car?)

Another question asked whether a motorcycle rider may weave between stopped vehicles at a traffic light. It isn’t, but you see it all the time.

One question wanted to know whether two mopeds may ride side-by-side outside urban areas. Again, no, but hey, it saves space on the street, right?

And one memorable question suggested that elderly pedestrians should be encouraged across the road by flashing headlights and honking the horn. Thankfully, that statement was false.

Examples:

• Gettare mozziconi di sigaretta accesi dai finestrini è molto pericoloso soprattutto se sopraggiungono veicoli a due ruote. [Vero]
• Il conducente di un motociclo può fare lo slalom tra i veicoli al semaforo. [Falso]
• Fuori dai centri abitati, su una stessa corsia possono circolare affiancati due ciclomotori. [Falso]
• Quando le persone anziane attraversano la carreggiata bisogna lampeggiare e suonare il clacson per farle attraversare rapidamente. [Falso]

The questions occasionally felt like tiny snapshots of everyday Italian life. Whether they reflected reality or simply the collective imagination of the Ministry of Transport, they made studying more entertaining than I expected.

Reading the manual also helped explain some things I'd already noticed living in Italy. One entire section dealt with noise — when to use the horn, when not to, and why unnecessary noise matters. We wrote about this extensively in the Noise, According to the Italian Driving Manual.

Exam Day

The actual exam was almost anticlimactic. About halfway through the 20-minute exam, I encountered a word I couldn’t remember the meaning of: reclusione. I had in my head other license-related terms like revoca, revisione, ritirata, and sospensione, but not reclusione.

The meaning of the word finally came to me (“imprisonment”) and then it was a matter of trying to determine if the activity of the question – betting on illegal street races – could lead to imprisonment. For a moment I forgot I was taking a driving test and wondered whether I'd accidentally wandered into a law school exam. I guessed wrong, and that was one of the two questions I got wrong on the test.

Fortunately, one unfamiliar word and subject area (betting/racing) didn't derail the rest of the questions or the results.

On the day of the test I went for the test at the motorizzazione (DMV), I was in a group of about 25-30 young people.  I was one of the last to finish. In the room adjacent to the testing room, the results appeared within a few minutes after everyone was finished. The results were on a single sheet of paper thrown on a desk. Everyone flocked around the sheet of paper, squinting at the very small text to find their name and see if they passed.

Students gathering around to see results after the exam. 

Idoneo

Passed. That’s what idoneo means in this context: suitable, adequate. That's what you'll see next to your name right after the exam.

A little later I received a copy of my completed exam showing exactly which two questions I had missed. It was oddly satisfying after months of preparation to finally see the scorecard.

More Than a Driving Test

Preparing for the Italian written exam taught me the rules of the road. It also taught me something about learning a language.

The manual gave me a map. Hundreds of practice tests taught me where the difficult terrain was. Careful reading became more important than quick reading. AI helped explain the places where grammar and vocabulary got in the way.

And somewhere between trailer weights, railway crossings, and questions about cigarette butts, I became a more careful reader of Italian.

Altered Street Signs

Studying for the Italian patente has made me hyper-aware of street signage. I start seeing rules everywhere painted on the road, hanging on poles, implied in the way people drive (or don’t). One rule that stuck with me, somewhere between right-of-way diagrams and trick questions about parking, and that was: you are not supposed to alter street signs!

Fair enough. Traffic signs are, after all, meant to be clear, consistent, and unambiguous. A shared visual language that keeps things moving and, ideally, prevents chaos.

And then we went for a walk in the old town of Cuneo and found on a few side streets were signs where someone had creatively ignored that rule. The signs in question were senso vietato (do not enter), direzione obbligatoria (mandatory direction), direzione consentita (allowed turn), divieto di sosta (no parking), and senso unico frontale (one way).

   

Left: Senso vietato and direzione obbligatoria.

Center left: Senso vietato.

Center right: Direzione consentita.

Right: Senso unico frontale.

Example of the alterations: A standard divieto di accesso (no entry) sign becomes a pillory holding a person bound by their hands and head. Another no entry sign featured a suited figure, head obscured by the white bar, giving off a kind of anonymous, noir presence. One no entry sign showed a bent figure carrying the bar like a burden. And yet another had a figure painting out of the sign itself, as if frustration had turned literal.

These weren’t acts of vandalism in the usual sense. They felt more like small interventions where someone looked at an impersonal, authoritative symbol and decided to make it more human.

Which brings us back to language.

In a recent post, we talked about how Italian often prefers the impersonal: È vietato, si prega di, divieto di…. The impersonal comes across as facts, not commands. “No entry” becomes “Entry is forbidden.” No finger-pointing, just a statement of reality.

These altered signs flip that dynamic, just a bit. They reintroduce a subject. Suddenly there is someone there ducking under, carrying, resisting, nibbling at the rule. The impersonal becomes personal again.

There’s something disarming about seeing a rigid, standardized system loosened just enough to allow a bit of personality through. Not enough to confuse the meaning—you still know you can’t go that way—but enough to create a small pause and smile.

Of course, the patente book would not approve. Somewhere in its pages, this is clearly filed under non si fa. And yet, walking those streets, it was hard not to feel that something was gained in the breaking of the rule.

  

Senso vietato and Divieto di sosta signs in Cuneo.

La Dolce Metà

Showing your sweet side and your better half.

I meant to ask our friend and Italian barista: “where is your better half?” referring to her husband. What came out of my mouth was: dov’è il tuo dolce lato. That was followed by laughter. Oops! I got burned by a false friend and a too-literal translation. The correct way is to say la tua dolce metà.

“Dolce lato” sounds like an overly sweet new dessert. “Dolcelatte” is a similar to gorgonzola. So maybe I asked her where her cheese was?

Other traps include:

• Sono freddo — “I’m a cold person” VS Ho freddo — “I’m cold”. Italian uses avere (to have) for physical states.

• Prendo una foto — “I’ll take this photo” (with me, almost like grab it) VS Faccio una foto - “I’ll take a photo” (take a picture).

• Ti ho perso — “I lost you” (in the crowd, e.g.) VS Mi sei mancato — “I missed you”.

They all share the same pattern because you recognize the words, you trust the structure and the sentence is technically understandable. But it lands…off.

I made a mistake – Ho sbagliato o Mi sono sbagliato

How to say I made a mistake in Italian? It's one of those cases where Italian looks deceptively simple but the meaning shifts dramatically. Here are your options to say you were wrong: 

• Option 1: "Ho sbagliato" 

• Option 2: "Mi sono sbagliato" 

• Option 3: "Io sono sbagliato" 

Which would you choose? 

A criceto holding a sign for the easiest way to say "I'm wrong".

Option 1: "Ho sbagliato" 

This is the cleanest, most neutral, most widely used way to say "I made a mistake." 

• Literally: "I have erred." 
• Idiomatic meaning: I messed up / I was wrong / I made a mistake. 
• It's direct, non‑reflexive, and works in almost every context. 
• It doesn’t carry the slightly apologetic or self‑correcting nuance of mi sono sbagliato. 

Examples: 

Ho sbagliato il calcolo. → "I got the calculation wrong."
Ho sbagliato a parlare. → "I shouldn’t have said that." 
Ho sbagliato strada. → "I took the wrong road." 

Option 2: "Mi sono sbagliato" 

This is another way to say "I made a mistake" or "I was wrong". 

• It’s reflexive: I got myself wrong → I made an error. 
• Slightly apologetic and admits a mistake in your judgment or assumption.
• It refers to a specific action, not your identity. 

Examples: 

Mi sono sbagliato di numero. → "I dialed the wrong number." 
Mi sono sbagliato a prendere la strada. → "I took the wrong road." 

Option 3: "Io sono sbagliato" 

This means "I am wrong as a person", in the sense of flawed, defective, mistaken in my very nature. It's a statement about identity, not about making a mistake. 

• It sounds existential, heavy, almost self‑blaming. 

• Italians rarely use it unless they truly mean something psychological or moral. 

Example (uncommon, dramatic): 

Io sono sbagliato per te. → "I’m not right for you / I’m the wrong person for you." 

Rule

The guidelines to keep in mind are:

• Use "ho sbagliato" when you want to be neutral and factual. Use for any error (action, choice, behavior). The mistake is the action. 

• Use "mi sono sbagliato" for mistakes where you want to be slightly apologetic, self-correcting. Use when you thought something wrong (misremembered, misjudged). The mistake is in your judgment or assumption. 

• Avoid "io sono sbagliato" unless you’re writing a poem or having an existential crisis. 

Examples to feel the difference between the two more common forms: 

• If you dial the wrong number:
• Ho sbagliato numero (most common) 
• Mi sono sbagliato di numero (also fine, more "oops, my bad") 

• If you say the wrong date: 
• Mi sono sbagliato, era il 12, non il 13. (You misremembered.) 

• If you choose the wrong wine: 
• Ho sbagliato vino. (You selected poorly.) 

Street Sign Language Lesson LVI

previous lesson | next lesson

In this round of Street Sign Language Lesson, we deal with a fascist-era sign spotted during a bathroom break, try to understand if a place is open or closed in Bergamo, and why people think drinking collagen will help their skin.

I Sigg. CLIENTI SONO PREGATI DI ORINARE ALL’INTERNO DELLA CASA ONDE EVITARE DI LORDARE LA PUBBLICA, ANNO 1929 (VIII) EF.
“Gentlemen customers are kindly requested to urinate inside the establishment to avoid dirtying the public space outside.”


Really, we just stopped for a pee-break and thought this looked like an interesting sign. We were at Snack Bar Giusy (near Passo Pordio) skiing the Sellaronda. We didn’t expect to get a history lesson out of it. Perfect for Travelmarx.

This sign is a little time capsule of Italian public‑hygiene regulation, social class performance, and Fascist‑era dating conventions, all wrapped in a politely stern voice.

The sign addresses “I Sigg. Clienti” — “Gentlemen customers” — and asks them to urinate inside the establishment rather than in the street, “to avoid dirtying the public road.” Then it ends with “Anno 1929 (VII° E.F.)”, meaning year 1929, year 7 of the Fascist Era (Era Fascista), which was the official dating system used by Mussolini’s regime. What!? Didn't know that.

Urban sanitation in the early 20th century was uneven. Bars, cafés, and osterie often had to remind patrons not to relieve themselves outside. This sign is part of that everyday infrastructure of discipline.

The “VII° E.F.” signals the sign (or at least the original) was produced after 1926, when the regime mandated Fascist dating. It reflects the regime’s obsession with order, cleanliness, and public discipline. Even mundane signage became part of the ideological landscape.

What’s curious here is this that this sign is likely some kind of reproduction. Why was it put here? What are the owners trying to signal? Humor or something else?



PREZZI IN ALLESTIMENTO
“Prices under set-up”

Shops use this kind of signage when the display is ready but the price tags aren’t finalized or haven’t been placed yet. It’s a kind of moment in retail when the shelf is complete, but the economic meaning hasn’t been attached.

The sign is nearby some prostate medicine, so I was fixated on the sign being relevant to only that product. However, the pharmacist explained that the sign really applies to all prices marked (non drug-items) as a way to sort of cover the fact that not all prices are show for all products and/or the prices aren’t updated. Kind of a cover-your-ass thing.

MOSTRA IN DISALLESTIMENTO, ESPOZIONE IN RIALLESTIMENTO
“Exhibition being taken down, display being re-installed".

I guess you can say this gallery space is not fully closed nor fully open, but in transition. It’s a polite way of saying don’t expect too much of us at the moment. This reminds us of the famous “open” until we’re not state of places. Often we see a sign that says a place is open, the hours are right, but the place is closed.




Diamoci del tu
“Let’s be informal (between us)”

Dare del tu - “to address somebody informally” and Dare del lei - “to address somebody formally”. This ad for the new (and very much improved) Bernareggi museum is very simple and effective. Come on in and let’s get to know each other



SAN BENEDETTO – COLLAGENE + ZINCO + ACIDO IALURONICO
“San Benedetto – collagen, zinc, hyaluronic acid"

A ritualized wellness product: a small, daily gesture that makes people feel they’re caring for their skin from the inside. More specious products selling the narrative of inside-outside beauty. Collagen consumed is broken down into amino acids. It doesn’t stay as intact collagen molecules that magically patch your skin.

Zinc could be useful if your diet is low in this mineral, but this is rare, and you’d being buying a supplement instead of overpriced water.

Now to hyaluronic acid, this typical skincare additive is useful for holding water in the skin. However, ingesting it doesn’t act like a topical moisturizer.

At the end of the San Benedetto commercials, the model/actor turns to the camera and says “San Benedetto, my secret”. The only secret is how they get away with marketing this stuff.


 

Carote al selenio; Selenella – La carota
“Selenium carrots”

Here we go again. This time, it’s selenium in carrots.

Selenium is a trace mineral essential for human health. In general, in a country like Italy, selenium deficiency isn’t an issue in normal diets at least you wouldn’t think it is until you start reading packaging.

The selenium in these carrots comes from soil management, not genetic modification. Producers add selenium to the soil or select naturally selenium‑rich areas. The most visible brand is Selenella, a consortium of Italian growers that promotes potatoes, onions, and carrots as fonte di selenio (source of selenium). This marketing niche has been around since 2011.

The taste? We haven’t done a blind taste test but we’ve not heard that selenium-enriched carrots taste any different. We are so done with “functional foods”.

CEROTTI PER HERPES LABIALE
"Cold sore patches"

Sounds so much nicer in English. If this poor girl shown on the packaging had just had drank more Skin Care water and eaten more selenium-enriched carrots, then she would not have ended up in this situation.

GATTO CICCIONE E COCCOLOSO DI 7 ANNI CERCA CASA. CRESCIUTO IN APPARTAMENTO. PIGRO E MANSUETO.
“Fat, cuddly 7-year-old cat looking for a home. Raised in an apartment. Lazy and meek.”


What drew our eye to this ad was the word mansueto, as we never had seen it used before.

What a mammone! Even the cats in Italy jeez. I got news for the current owners; it’s all an act.

Notes on the Impersonal in the Italian Language

Overview ~ Language context ~ Reframing the impersonal

Examples of signs in Italian and English showing the use 

of impersonal in Italian and imperative in English.

When you’ve been learning Italian for a while, certain patterns jump out. For us, one of those patterns is the love of the impersonal. It’s everywhere—on street signs, in official notices, and even in casual conversation. And once you notice it, you can’t unsee it and then you start to wonder about it. Many examples are included in our Street Sign Language Lesson series of posts.

Overview

Take a walk in an Italian park and you’ll see: È vietato calpestare l’erba. (Literally “It is forbidden to walk on the grass.”) Compare that to the English equivalent: Keep off the grass. The Italian version feels softer, more formal, and less bossy. It doesn’t tell you what to do. It just states a fact: walking on the grass is forbidden. No one is pointing a finger at you.

Italian signs lean on impersonal phrasing; English signs go for the imperative.

Here are a few other examples:

• Si prega di non fumare → “One is kindly requested not to smoke.”
• Divieto di accesso alle persone non autorizzate → “No entry for unauthorized personnel.”

English equivalents? No smoking. Keep out. Direct, and to the point.

Language context

Over time, we started wondering how this language tendency is tied into cultural aspects of Italy. We’re not linguists, just curious learners, but here’s what we’ve noticed and what research supports:

1. It softens authority.
   Instead of a command (“Don’t do this”), Italian often states an impersonal condition (“It is forbidden…”). It’s not you doing the action; it’s the world arranging itself a certain way.
   
   
2. It diffuses blame. È stato deciso (“It was decided”)
   By whom? Not important. Italian formal language frequently leaves the agent unspoken.
   
   
3. It keeps things polite.
   Si prega di… feels gentler than “Don’t do that.” A classic way to phrase requests with gentleness and distance.
   
   
4. It aligns with the norms of a moderately high-context culture.
   This part often gets oversimplified, so we explain this point a little more next.

According to cross-cultural communication research (Edward T. Hall’s Beyond Culture; Katan, Ting-Toomey; Wierzbicka’s work on pragmatics), Italian tends toward high-context communication—at least relative to English, especially American English.

High-context cultures rely more on:

• shared background knowledge
• situation and tone
• indirect or softened phrasing
• linguistic strategies that avoid unnecessary confrontation

Italian isn’t as high-context as Japan or China, but it sits higher than English-speaking cultures or northern Europe.

Impersonal constructions—si impersonale, passive forms, and nominal prohibitions (Divieto di…)—fit well within that communication style.

High-context tendencies (Italy, Spain, France):

• Use of indirect requests
  → Magari potremmo… (“Maybe we could…”) - We hear this used a lot!
  
  
• Impersonal signs
  → Si prega di…, È vietato…
  
  
• Agent-less decisions
  → È stato stabilito… (“It has been established…”)

Low-context tendencies (U.S. English, German, Scandinavian languages):

• Clear agents and instructions
  → “You must show ID”
  
  
• Imperatives
  → “Do not enter”
  
  
• Explicit reasoning or rules spelled out

Language reflects cultural norms; it doesn’t necessarily cause them. Italians are perfectly capable of being direct when needed. But in public, formal, and polite communication, Italian gravitates toward gentler, more distanced constructions.

Impersonal use in some languages:

• Italian uses si for the impersonal.
• French uses on.
• English uses “one” (rarely) or a dummy subject “it.”
• Finnish uses the passive.

All languages have tools to avoid naming the agent. Italians just reach for those tools more often in certain registers.

Reframing the impersonal

Once you start noticing the impersonal in Italian, it quietly rewires how you pay attention. At first, we frowned at these constructions thinking why so vague, why so roundabout? But over time they became something else entirely: a key to understanding how communication works here. We began to see how a sign, an announcement, or even a bureaucratic notice wasn’t just delivering information but reflecting a cultural preference for softening the edges of interaction.

Instead of feeling irritated at yet another si prega or è vietato, we began reading these constructions as small gestures toward social harmony. A sign was no longer telling you what to do; it was simply describing the state of things. That shift in tone, once visible, changes your own orientation. You start looking for what’s implied rather than what’s commanded. And maybe most surprisingly, you find yourself wanting to adopt a bit of that gentler, less confrontational mode of communication—something we could probably use more of in English-speaking contexts.

Lost in Translation: Italian and English Idioms That Can’t Be Translated Literally

Italian idioms ~ English idioms ~ Why idioms matter

  


One of the joys—and frustrations—of learning Italian is discovering that words don’t always mean what you expect. Literal translations can take you down some very strange paths. Take the phrase pirata della strada. We saw it reading an article in the newspaper. We imagined a swashbuckling figure on the highway, sword in hand. In reality it means “hit-and-run driver.” Not quite the same cinematic flair.

This is where idioms come in. Idioms are the secret handshakes of a language—phrases that don’t make sense if you translate them word for word but unlock a whole world of cultural nuance once you know them. Using idioms is tricky but demonstrates a level of proficiency that will impress native speakers.

Here are a few of our favorite Italian idioms, paired with their English counterparts. Following that are some English (American) idioms paired with their Italian counterparts.

Italian idioms

Here are some Italian idioms that ,if you translate word-for-word, will lead you astray. 

In bocca al lupo → literally “in the mouth of the wolf,” but it means good luck. The Italian equivalent of “break a leg.” The common reply is Crepi il lupo! (“May the wolf die!”)

Avere le mani bucate → “to have holes in your hands,” which means to spend money easily.

Non avere peli sulla lingua → “to have no hairs on your tongue,” or in other words, to be blunt with no sugarcoating.

Cadere dalle nuvole → “to fall from the clouds,” meaning to be completely surprised or unaware

Essere al verde → “to be in the green,” meaning to being broke, i.e., out of money.

Andare in bianco → “to go in white,” meaning to fail at something, often romantically.

Saltare di palo in frasca → “to jump from pole to branch,” used to describe someone who changes topics erratically.

Acqua in bocca! → “water in your mouth!” which is a way of saying “keep it secret!”

English idioms

And then there are the English idioms that Italians scratch their heads at. A bee in your bonnet doesn’t mean insect troubles—it means you’re obsessed with something. Italians might say avere un chiodo fisso (“to have a fixed nail”) to capture the same idea. Different imagery, same human tendency to get stuck on a thought. 


A bee in your bonnet → Italians don’t keep bees in their bonnets. They’d say avere un chiodo fisso (“to be obsessed with”) or for more emphasis avere un chiodo fisso in testa.

Raining cats and dogs → Italians don’t imagine animals falling from the sky. They’d say piove a catinelle (“it’s pouring rain”). Another variant is piove a dirotto.

Steal someone’s thunder → Italians might be puzzled by this one. The closest idea is rubare la scena (“to steal the scene”). Italians might also say rubare la luce dei riflettori (“steal the spotlight”).

Let the cat out of the bag → Italians don’t keep cats in bags. They’d say vuotare il sacco (“to empty the sack”) for confessing or revealing a secret.

Bite the bullet → Italians prefer ingoiare il rospo (“to swallow the toad”) when facing something unpleasant.

Hit the sack → Italians don’t hit the sacks; they say andare a letto (“go to bed”) or andare a nanna (“go to sleep”).

Kill two birds with one stone → Italians soften it slightly: prendere due piccioni con una fava (“to catch two pigeons with one bean”).

Have skeletons in the closet → Italians say avere degli altarini (“to have little altars”), meaning hidden secrets. Altarini refers to small secrets, not necessarily dark ones. For serious secrets, Italians might say scheletri nell’armadio (literally the same as English).

Be under the weather → Italians don’t put health under the weather; they’d simply say non mi sento bene (“I don’t feel well”). Other idiomatic options are sentirsi così così and essere giù di corda (“to feel down”).

Spill the beans → Italians don’t spill beans; they vuotare il sacco, or spifferare (“to blurt out”).

Break the ice → Italians share this one, but they say rompere il ghiaccio — the cultures align here!

Kick the bucket → Italians would say tirare le cuoia (“to kick the hides”) for dying.

Cost an arm and a leg → Italians would say costare un occhio della testa (“to cost an eye from your head”).

Why Idioms Matter

Idioms aren’t just colorful expressions; they’re a window into how a culture encodes meaning. From a linguistic perspective, idioms are what scholars call non-compositional phrases: the meaning of the whole cannot be deduced from the sum of its parts. You can parse peli (hairs) and lingua (tongue) all day long, but you’ll never arrive at “to be blunt” without cultural context.

Idioms are non-compositional because:

• They demonstrate semantic opacity. The meaning is conventionalized and often culturally bound.
• They have a fixed structure, and you can’t freely substitute words, e.g., “kick the pail” doesn’t work.
• They break the rule that meaning equals the sum of their parts.

Non-compositionality is a key property that makes idioms challenging for machine translation and language learners.

Idioms also highlight the metaphorical frameworks that different languages rely on. English speakers imagine secrets as beans to be spilled, Italians imagine them as sacks to be emptied. English speakers put bees in bonnets, Italians hammer nails into their thoughts. These metaphors reveal how each culture conceptualizes abstract ideas like secrecy, obsession, or luck.

There’s also a pragmatic dimension: idioms are shortcuts to belonging. Using them correctly signals fluency not just in grammar but in cultural nuance. A learner who says in bocca al lupo instead of buona fortuna immediately sounds more natural, more “inside” the language. Conversely, a literal translation (“into the wolf’s mouth”) risks confusion or even comic misunderstanding.

Finally, idioms remind us that language is not a transparent code but a cultural artifact. They carry history, humor, and worldview. To study idioms is to study how people think, what they value, and how they play with words. That’s why mastering them is less about vocabulary lists and more about stepping into another culture’s imagination.

So the next time you’re tempted to translate literally, pause and ask: is this really about wolves and nails and buckets? Or is there a hidden meaning waiting to be discovered? That’s where the fun begins.