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 Patente and Learning the Language of Road Signs

Road Signs as a Language ~ The Vienna Moment ~ Sign History Timeline 

~ Why Italy’s Road Signs Feel So Chatty ~ Words vs. Pictures: Europe and the United States

~ How Many Signs Are We Talking About? ~ Reading the Street Differently

 

Studying for an Italian driver's license (patente) has introduced us to an unexpected new language: the language of road signs. What once looked like visual clutter—triangles, circles, arrows, and the occasional startled deer—turns out to be a carefully structured system with grammar, vocabulary, and very precise meanings. The deeper we go into the study materials, the more we realize that Europe’s road signs aren’t random at all. They are part of an international visual language born from a 1968 treaty in Vienna, designed so that a driver from Milan, Munich, or Marseille could read the road the same way.

Once you start noticing this, every signpost becomes a small lesson in translation.

Recently, we’ve been walking up in Bergamo’s Città Alta with a slightly different goal than most visitors. Tourists arrive looking for churches, frescoes, and views over the Lombard plain. We arrive hunting for road signs. A narrow street might reveal a perfect little stack: a red circle announcing a restriction, followed by two or three smaller plates explaining who the rule applies to and when. While others are admiring Romanesque façades, we find ourselves studying metal rectangles attached to poles and quietly trying to decode their syntax.

Road Signs as a Language

Like any language, road signs in Italy have a kind of grammar. Once you start studying them, patterns emerge.

• Shapes signal the type of statement. Triangles warn about hazards ahead. Circles regulate behavior—either prohibiting or requiring something. Rectangles generally provide information.
• Colors provide tone. Red usually signals prohibition or danger. Blue often indicates required actions or services. Yellow typically marks temporary situations such as construction.
• Supplemental plates—those small rectangles stacked underneath the main sign—act like modifiers in a sentence. They add conditions: times, exceptions, vehicle types, or directions.

Seen this way, a typical Italian signpost starts to look less like clutter and more like a sentence diagram. The main sign delivers the core message, and the smaller plates underneath modify the meaning. What once felt chaotic starts to feel almost grammatical.

Seen another way, many Italian signposts resemble a little piece of syntax. A pole becomes a vertical sentence:

Main clause (the primary sign) + modifier (time restriction) + modifier (vehicle type) + exception (residents, deliveries, etc.)

You begin to read them the way you might parse a sentence in a grammar exercise: first the main statement, then the qualifiers. That chaotic stack of metal plates begins to feel surprisingly structured.

And that realization leads to a bigger question: where did this visual language come from?

The Vienna Moment: 1968 and the Birth of the Modern Road Signs

The system most of Europe uses today traces back to the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals. The goal of the convention was simple: make road signs understandable across borders. By the 1960s, car travel had exploded and European drivers were regularly crossing national boundaries. A French driver entering Italy or Austria might encounter completely different signage systems, often relying on text in unfamiliar languages.

The Vienna Convention attempted to solve this by standardizing the basic grammar of road signs. Shapes, colors, and symbols were assigned consistent meanings so that a driver could understand a sign even without reading a word. A red circle generally indicates prohibition. A red triangle warns of danger ahead. Blue signs indicate obligations or services. The idea was to shift road communication away from language and toward universally recognizable symbols.

Today most European countries follow this system, including Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and many others. Once you start noticing it, you realize the remarkable effect of the convention: a driver can move across thousands of kilometers and still understand the road’s visual language.

Of course, not every country signed on. The United States, for example, relies on its own standard, the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), which historically favors text-based instructions like "No Left Turn" or "Wrong Way." That difference becomes obvious when you compare American signs to their European counterparts—one reads like a sentence, the other like a pictogram.

For someone studying for the Italian license (patente), this historical footnote becomes surprisingly practical. What you are really learning is not just Italy’s road rules, but a shared visual vocabulary that stretches across much of Europe.

Sign History Timeline

1909 — First international road sign agreement

The Paris Convention on Road Traffic introduces the first attempt to standardize road signs internationally. Only a small set of four warning signs are agreed upon (such as bumps, curves, railroad crossings, and intersections), but it establishes the idea that drivers should be able to recognize signs across borders.

1935 — United States standardizes road signs

The first edition of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) is published in the United States, creating a national standard for traffic signs, signals, and road markings.

1949 — Early international attempt

The Geneva Convention on Road Signs and Signals attempts to harmonize signage internationally, but adoption is uneven and many countries continue using different systems.

1968 — The Vienna Convention

The Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals establishes the modern symbol-based system used across most of Europe. Shapes, colors, and pictograms are standardized so drivers can understand signs regardless of language.

Today, thanks to these efforts, much of Europe shares a common visual vocabulary for the road. A driver can cross borders—from Italy to Austria to Germany—and still read the road almost instinctively.

The Vienna Convention defines the grammar of European road signs, but each country still speaks the language with its own accent. Italy’s ZTL signs, driveway permits (passo carrabile), and local traffic zones are good examples of how national systems layer their own rules onto the shared visual vocabulary.

Why Italy’s Road Signs Feel So Chatty

If the Vienna Convention established the grammar of modern road signs, Italy sometimes feels like the place where that grammar gets… enthusiastically used. Spend time walking or driving through an Italian town and you quickly encounter the phenomenon of the sign stack: a pole with several plates layered underneath the main sign.

A typical example might look like this:

• No entry
• Except residents
• Except deliveries
• Between certain hours
• For vehicles under a specific weight

Each additional plate modifies the rule above it. By the time you reach the bottom of the stack, the sign has effectively become a small paragraph of traffic law.

This density is not accidental. Italy’s urban landscape is unusually layered. Many streets in historic centers were laid out centuries before cars existed. Modern traffic rules—parking zones, delivery windows, pedestrian protections, resident permits, and tourist access—have all been added onto streets that were originally designed for horses, carts, and pedestrians. The result is a regulatory palimpsest where each generation adds another plate to the signpost.

What initially looks like bureaucratic overcommunication is often simply the city explaining how to make a medieval street work in the 21st century.

Words vs. Pictures: Europe and the United States

Another thing you notice once you start studying road signs is how different the European system feels compared to the American one.

In Europe, thanks largely to the Vienna Convention, the system leans heavily on pictograms. A driver sees symbols—arrows, bicycles, falling rocks, deer—and interprets them visually. The goal is immediate recognition regardless of language.

The United States took a different path. American signage developed under the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) and historically relied more on written instructions. Signs often spell things out directly: "No Left Turn," "Wrong Way," or "Do Not Enter."

Both systems work, but they communicate differently. American signs read like short sentences. European signs behave more like icons in a visual language.

For someone studying for the Italian patente, this difference becomes clear very quickly. The challenge isn’t memorizing phrases. It’s learning to read a symbolic vocabulary—and once you do, you begin to see the road itself as a kind of text written in shapes, colors, and stacked modifiers.

How Many Signs Are We Talking About?

All of this raises an obvious question: does Italy actually have more road signs than other countries, or does it simply feel that way?

Precise numbers are difficult to find because traffic authorities usually track signs as infrastructure assets rather than reporting them per kilometer of road. Still, transportation studies and municipal inventories give a rough sense of scale.

On urban roads in Europe, you might expect somewhere between 10 and 20 signs per kilometer, depending on the complexity of the street network. Countries such as France and Germany tend to fall within that range. The United States is often somewhat lower, partly because its road networks are newer, wider, and less layered with restrictions.

Italy—especially in historic cities—often pushes toward the upper end of the spectrum. Narrow medieval streets, pedestrian zones, resident parking rules, delivery windows, and vehicle restrictions all require additional signage. Each exception or condition usually appears as another plate attached beneath the main sign.

The result is not necessarily more rules than elsewhere, but rather more visible explanations of those rules. A single intersection in a historic Italian center might display a full stack of signs describing who can enter, when, and under what conditions.

Once you start studying for the patente, these stacks stop looking like bureaucratic noise and start looking like something else entirely: a dense but readable grammar of how the street is supposed to work.

Reading the Street Differently

Studying for the patente has changed how we look at Italian streets. What once felt like visual overload, with poles crowded with signs and small metal plates, now feels oddly reassuring. The system isn’t haphazard. There is logic behind it, and even a bit of European diplomacy.

Those circles, triangles, and pictograms are part of a shared agreement stretching across the continent. The same visual language that guides a driver through Bergamo or Bologna can also guide that driver through Innsbruck or Lyon. It’s a quiet form of European integration, embedded not in speeches or treaties we read about in the news, but in the everyday choreography of traffic.

And the density of signs that once felt excessive starts to look different as well. Each additional plate is a clue about the place you’re in: a narrow street protecting pedestrians, a delivery window negotiated with local shopkeepers, a resident permit that reflects the rhythms of neighborhood life. What looks at first like clutter is often simply the visible record of a city balancing many interests at once.

In that sense, a crowded Italian signpost is a small historical document. It reflects layers of time—medieval streets, modern cars, tourism, and local life—all negotiated through a few shapes, colors, and carefully stacked rules.

Once you begin to read them that way, the signs no longer feel chatty or chaotic. They feel expressive—and, strangely enough, a little elegant.

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.

Street Sign Language Lesson LV - Da non perdere

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In this round of Street Sign Language Lesson, we wander from Bergamo to Brescia and from Iseo to Asolo, discovering how Italian signs can be playful, bureaucratic, or even poetic. 

Bergamo da non perdere
“Bergamo not to be missed”

This tourist map highlights da + infinitive, a classic Italian construction. Da non perdere literally means “to not lose,” but idiomatically it’s “not to be missed.” You’ll see this everywhere: un film da vedere (a film worth seeing), un libro da leggere (a book to read).

160 ANNI DI SÌ PER I NOSTRI TERRITORI. ECCO PERCHÉ ALL'OPS DI UNICREDIT DICIAMO NO
“160 years of yes for our territories. Here’s why we say NO to UniCredit’s offer.”

This is a poster we saw at Banco BPM. The acronym OPS threw us off. OPS is Offerta Pubblica di Scambio, a takeover offer one company makes for another. The background is this: UniCredit withdrew its Public Exchange Offer (OPS) for the acquisition of Banco BPM in July 2025 due to uncertainty over the approval of the Government's Golden Power and the long-time frame to obtain the final resolution of the matter. The offer, launched in November 2024, provided for the exchange of 0.175 UniCredit shares for each Banco BPM share, but was deemed inadequate and at a significant discount to shareholders by Banco BPM.

The Italian language often uses anni di + noun to encapsulate a legacy: anni di lotta (years of struggle), anni di esperienza (years of experience). The phrase—diciamo no—is a classic political slogan structure: subject + verb + emphatic particle.

Bizzi con l'Arrosticino - ti sfizi
“Bizi skewers - indulge yourself” or "Bizzi Arrosticini - the treat that hits the spot"

We saw this jolly kid’s face on a food truck when we pulled into the parking of Spaccio Dolciario Galbusera Tre Marie - Forcola (SO) en route to a hike. (See Val Grosina and Alpe Dosdè Two-Day Hike.)

The verb sfiziarsi comes from sfizio, meaning whim, fancy, or craving. Ti sfizi is second person reflexive: “you treat yourself; you indulge.” It’s playful, colloquial, and Romanesco/Central Italian in flavor. The rhyme between Bizzi (the company name) and sfizi is great marketing sing-song rhyme.

Arrosticini are a traditional dish from Abruzzese cuisine, consisting of small skewers of sheep meat cut into cubes, threaded onto wooden sticks, and grilled. They are prepared with mutton or young lamb, alternating lean pieces with fattier ones, then cooked over charcoal—preferably on a special grill called a fornacella—and eaten with the hands.



È VIETATO DI ABBEVERARE QUADRUPEDI
"Don’t let your dogs drink from this fountain”

È vietato + infinitive is the standard prohibition formula. But here we get di abbeverare instead of the more common abbeverare directly. So, strictly speaking, è vietato abbeverare would be more standard. The addition of di is a regional, bureaucratic flourish, or humorous flourish?

Quadrupedi—literally “four-footed ones”—is a formal, almost zoological term. Instead of cani (dogs) or animali, the sign raises the register, as if the fountain were a Roman law tablet.

We saw this sign in Asolo, in the province of Treviso.



Sono un vaso non un posacenere – grazie
“I’m a vase, not an ashtray – thank you”

In this sign spotted in Brescia, the vase speaks in the first person: sono un vaso. This anthropomorphic use in public notices makes the message more direct and polite. Compare: Non buttare i rifiuti ("don’t throw trash") vs. Io non sono un cestino ("I’m not a trash can"). The latter feels more human, and more shaming.

Also note the lack of punctuation between vaso and non un posacenere. In English we’d expect a comma or dash, but Italian signage often skips it, relying on rhythm.



SPAZIO CALMO
“Calm space”

This accessibility sign designates a refuge area that people with disabilities should use during emergencies. We saw the sign near an elevator in a parking structure in Bergamo.

The phrase is interesting because spazio calmo is not idiomatic everyday Italian, you’d expect phrases like zona di rifugio or area protetta. But spazio calmo is the official technical term in fire-safety regulations (Decreto Ministeriale 3 agosto 2015). It’s a literal borrowing from EU directives, where “calm space” is used in English.



TELO MARE COVERI
“Beach towel by Enrico Coveri”

We instinctively read Coveri as “cover”—but it’s the brand, Enrico Coveri.  Another reminder of how cultural literacy can trip us up in the funniest ways.

Un telo mare is the standard phrase for a beach towel. Notice there’s no preposition: not telo da mare but simply telo mare. This is an example of a “bare compound” construction that Italian allows in set phrases: scarpe tennis (tennis shoes), pantaloni sci (ski pants).




transito consentito alle biciclette solo se condotte a mano

“Please walk your bike”  

This sign was spotted along a pedestrian waterfront path in the town of Iseo, on Lago Iseo. The Italian wording is long and formal: literally, "Transit permitted to bicycles only if walked by hand." It’s the kind of precise and legalistic phrasing you’d expect in a municipal ordinance.

What struck us is that the English version on the same sign is more compact: "please walk your bike." Rather than spelling out the condition ("transit permitted only if…"), it flips the perspective and gives a direct instruction to the cyclist.

Why is this the case? Italian public signage often mirrors the syntax of regulations. The phrase transito consentito… echoes the language of traffic codes, where permissions and restrictions are spelled out in full.  On the other hand, English signage tends to favor brevity and direct imperatives: "Keep off the grass", "Mind the gap", "Walk your bike". The goal is quick comprehension over legal precision. Italian frames the rule from the authority’s point of view ("transit is permitted only if…"). English frames it from the user’s point of view ("you must walk your bike").   

We ran into this cultural sign difference when trying to check ZTL (zona traffico limitato) hours in Bergamo. The rules and hours were frustratingly not written from the perspective of someone simply trying to find out when they can drive into the upper city.

Other examples:

- Accesso consentito ai soli autorizzati* → "Authorized personnel only"

- È vietato fumare → "No smoking"  

- Transito vietato ai veicoli a motore → "No motor vehicles"

In each case, Italian uses a full verbal construction, while English compresses it into a noun phrase or imperative.  

Le uova sode e sopracciglia finte

Microsoft Designer: hard-boiled eggs and eyebrows.

A nonsensical title – hard-boiled eggs and fake eyebrows – to show what we’ll talk about in this post: Italian nouns that are feminine but not ending in E as you might expect. We covered this topic extensively in the post A Rule of Thumb for Predicting the Gender of Italian Language Nouns. Here, we will talk about a few of those nouns and show them in interesting phrases you see in the Italian language. “Interesting” for those of us learning Italian in that they take a few seconds to process as correct.

I’m interested in those moments - call it a cognitive disconnect/reconnect - when learning a language because it means that some concepts are not yet hardwired as much as I’d like. In this case, when I see the E at the end of the adjective modifying one of these feminine nouns or the article with E in front of the noun, it stops me for a fraction of a second to ask, is that correct.

Being in Bergamo, I’ll use some examples we see:

• le mura veneziane di Bergamo
• le valli Bergamasche
• la neve nelle Prealpi Bergamasche

It’s not “le mure” or “le valle” or “le prealpe”.

Other examples:

l'alpe (monte) / le Alpi (catena montuosa europea)

• la neve sulle Alpi
• le cime delle Alpi

il muro (di casa, palazzo, ecc.) / le mura (cinta muraria)

• una passeggiata sulle mura
• le mura veneziane di Bergamo
• i baluardi delle mura di Bergamo

un'ala / le ali

• i biscotti alle ali d'angelo
• sulle ali di un angelo

il dito / le dita

• l'artrite delle dita
• il formicolio alle dita

una frase / le frasi

• le frasi fatte
• le frasi più belle e interessanti

il ginocchio / le ginocchia

• le ginocchia di una persona anziana
• le ginocchia sbucciate - “skinned knees”

un labbro / le labbra

• l'herpes alle labbra
• le labbra cucite - “my lips are sealed”
• le labbra screpolate

una mano / le mani

• a mani nude
• le mani vuote

una nube / le nubi

• le nubi estese
• la classificazione delle nubi

l'osso / le ossa

• le ossa del corpo umano
• il dolore alle ossa

il sopracciglio / le sopracciglia

• le sopracciglia finte nere naturali invisibili per uomo
• il colore delle tue sopracciglia

un uovo / le uova

• la caccia alle uova
• le uova strapazzate
• le uova sode

una valle / le valli

• le valli Bergamasche
• nelle valli Bolognesi

ABILE and IBILE Adjectives in the Italian Language – Which Ending To Use

ABILE and IBILE (ending adjectives) walking down the street.

I was always confused. Is something “doable” in Italian fattabile or fattibile? Or is something “reliable” affidabile or affidibile? Well, in retrospect it’s easy once you know that the ABILE suffix is used for adjectives deriving from verbs ending in ARE and IBILE is used for all other verbs. It’s fattibile and affidabile from fare and affidare. (Trick question because fare does end in ARE but is not considered part of that family of verbs.)

Below is a list of some of the most common ABILE and IBILE adjectives in Italian and the verbs they are derived from.

Some notes before getting to the list:

• I’m just a maker of lists and observer of patterns, so take this grammar advice with a grain of salt.
• The ABILE adjectives in general are easier to trace to the verb they derive from. The IBILE adjectives are trickier to understand where they came from, at least for us.
• Many adjectives derive from ‘obvious’ verbs and can be checked in a tool like wordreference.com. For example, accettabile from accettare.
• Other adjectives - shown with hyperlinks - needed to be checked in Treccani to understand where they came from. These adjectives tended to hark back to a Latin verb form and are marked as “†”.
• The prefixes IN and IR flip the meaning of the adjective but still can be traced to a verb. These are designated below with “*”.

Italian adjectives ending in ABILE and the verbs they derive from

accettabile – accettare
adattabile – adattare
adorabile – adorare
affidabile – affidare
affrontabile – affrontare
ascoltabile – ascoltare
attaccabile – attaccare

confessabile – confessare

consigliabile – consigliare
dominabile – dominare
imitabile – imitare

impensabile – pensare*   

inarrestabile – arrestare*

indomabile – domare*
inevitabile – evitare*

influenciabile – influenzare
inimitabile – imitare*
insospettabile – sospettare*
instabile – stare*
introvabile – trovare*

irrealizzabile – realizzare*    

irrintracciabile – rintracciare*

maneggiabile – maneggiare

mangiabile – mangiare
miserabile – commiserare
navigabile – navigare
negoziable – negoziare
orecchiabile – orecchiare
pensabile – pensare
potabile – potare†
probabile – approvare (probare†)

ravvisabile – ravvisare

realizzabile – realizzare
responsabile – rispondere
rintracciabile – rintracciare

smontabile – smontare

stabile – stare 

trattabile – trattare

trovabile – trovare
urbanizable – urbanizzare
utilizzabile – utilizzare
variabile – variare

Italian adjectives ending in IBILE and the verbs they derive from

accessibile – accedere
agibile – agire

ammissibile – ammettere   

attendibile – attendere
bevibile – bere
commestibile - comedĕre†
compatibile – compitire?
comprensibile – comprendere

concepibile – concepire
correggibile – correggere
credibile – credere

difendibile – defendere   

discutibile – discutere
disponibile – disporre
edibile – edĕre†
fattibile - fare
flessibile – flectĕre†

gestibile – gestire

illeggibile – leggere*

inagibile – agire*
inconcepibile – concepire*
incorreggibile – correggere*
incredibile – credere*

indifendibile – defendere*   

indiscutibile – discutere*
invisibile – vedere*
irraggiungibile – raggiungere*

leggibile – leggere
percorribile - percorrere

possible – potere

raggiungibile – raggiungere

riproducibile – riprodurre

sensibile – sentire

visibile – vedere

Let Possibility Be Your English Language Grammar Guide

The connection between physical possibility and grammar came up recently while playing the NYT Spelling Bee game. The object of the game is to create words using seven letters. While playing the game, we discovered a “category” of words that always caught us off guard. That category contains verbs where you can’t use the prefix “un” but “un” as a prefix makes sense for the adjective derived from the verb. For example, in the puzzle, we would get “uncooked” and then pause for a second wondering why “uncook” wasn’t acceptable. 

In English (and I’m sure there are exceptions!), we don’t use “un” before the following verbs when there is another word that expresses the idea, and when it doesn’t make sense in terms of being physically possible to do the reverse of the verb. Think of the classic physics problem of the cup of coffee smashing to the floor: reversing the process is not possible (or better to say probable).

• bake, unbake (don’t bake), unbaked
• cook, uncook (don’t cook, raw), uncooked
• discover, undiscover, undiscovered
• remember, unremember (forget), unremembered
• break, unbreak, unbroken
• boil, unboil, unboiled
• play, unplay, unplayed
• live, unlive (die), unlived
• sit, unsit (stand)
• Others: break, expect, melt, own seek, smile, sleep.

You can’t uncook, unboil, or unmelt something. These actions would not be physically possible (or again, not very probable). But you could have an uncooked meal, an unboiled egg, or unmelted chocolate. using the adjectives derived from the verbs.

However, you can use “un” as a prefix with verbs when the reverse action makes sense physically.

• freeze, unfreeze, unfrozen
• thaw, unthaw (use thaw), unthawed (use thawed)
• peel, unpeel, unpeeled
• wrap, unwrap, unwrapped
• coil, uncoil, uncoiled
• do, undo, undone
• wrap, unwrap, unwrapped
• screw, unscrew, unscrewed
• fasten, unfasten, unfastened
• mask, unmask, unmasked
• bend, unbend, unbent
• cover, uncover, uncovered
• dress, undress, undressed
• Others: lock, leash, load, plug, tie, wind

Also, there are recent additions from social media:

• follow, unfollow, unfollowed
• like, unlike, unliked
• friend, unfriend, unfriended
• watch, unwatch, unwatched

References:

• adjectives - How productive is the verb prefix "un-"? - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange 
• meaning - Prefixes for the opposite of "perishable": unperishable, non-perishable, imperishable - English Language & Usage Stack Exchange 
• The Un-Believable Un-Verb : Word Routes : Thinkmap Visual Thesaurus
• Static and Dynamic Verbs