Lockdown Day 30

There is hope. Thirty days into lockdown and it looks like we have real progress. The peak was at eleven days in and then it has taken another 18 to 20 to confirm real improvement. We seem to be coming out the other side. Our rigorous reclusion restrictions have been effective. 

Language is a living thing and while we’re all inside there isn’t a whole lot else to do but read or watch films, unless you’re working from home which is a whole new challenge.  

With so much time on my hands and reading a lot, I’m thinking of languages, reading friends’ posts in italian and french, all pretty much the same woes and diversions, and an excellent exercise for language skills. I read anything and everything I can, in Italian in particular, no matter how ridiculous or colorful. I’ve learned a lot.  

Italian is a beautiful language, poetic, descriptive. It is easy to learn to pronounce, as every letter is pronounced, you say it like you see it. Grammar, though complicated, is also very clear in certain ways. Verb endings tell you exactly who, how many, and when, and sometimes even gender, such that you often don’t need a pronoun. Andiamo! Let’s go! 

Adjectives, though often similar to English, sometimes have very different meanings. My husband’s home made pizza was often described as squisita! exquisite? Well that’s one way to put it. It usually applies to food. Whereas we would say delicious, that word in italian has a different application too in that it is not unusual to describe “una donna davvero deliziosa,” a truly delicious woman, lovely in other words.  

Sometimes I use mnemonics to remember words, or some other associative element.

As I read about the pandemic pandemonium elsewhere, I cannot help being reminded of another word association. When our son was in school we’d hear about friends having bocciato, flunked, a test or the year. It comes from the verb bocciare, something that didn’t pass, e.g. a law, or was put off to be done over. In the Tuscan dialect it means failed. Although there seems to be no origin connection, ours comes from old english, I always remembered it by our word: botched.