After reading the Pope’s 10 Driving Commandments and John Kelso’s followup, I’ve taken it a step further and have written my own 10 Commandments of Living in Italy.

1. Thou shalt not stand in lines but instead amass thy selves in reckless mobs.
2. Thou shalt honketh thine horn in abundance against any transgression — real or imagined.
3. Thou shalt attend Sunday mass 10 minutes after it begins and depart 10 minutes before it hath completed.
4. Thou shalt argue about soccer, politics, and religion at great lengths — and always in that order.
5. Thou shalt refer to any food not Italian as unsuitable for human consumption. The lone exception shall be McDonalds.
6. Thou shalt shout at politicians being interviewed on TV during the nightly news. Flinging thine arms in the air will get thine point across better.
7. Thou shalt not use the air conditioning in thy car under any circumstances for it is unnatural evil.
8. Thou shalt use food-related terms to describe real life objects. “As white as panna,” “as long as a salame,” and “as foul as Gorgonzola” are all acceptable combinations.
9. Thou shalt park thine cars in patterns that, from the heavens above, resemble ants scurrying for a crumb of pie.
10. Thou shalt describe women by the size of their breasts through a cupping motion of thine hands and a pursing of thine lips. The size of thy smile should be proportional to the distance of thine hands from thy chest.

In Italian, you’re given a whole slew of ways to make your tall tales sound all the more interesting and believable. Attach these handy dandy suffixes to your favorite noun and really express how you feel.

Itty Bitty Teeny Weenie Things

This is the toughest of the three sections because there are four different suffixes you can use with no rules as to which suffix goes with which word. On the other hand, some words will work with any of the below suffixes. The choice of which one to use is simply based on what sounds right and even after two years of living here, I still get strange looks from Simona when I guess wrong. Here are the four suffixes to describe something smaller than normal and some examples of how to use them:

For example, to describe a small book:

1. First you take the root word libro and drop the last vowel: Libro
2. Then choose the correct prefix above, in this case “etto,” and slap it onto the end of the word: Libretto

That’s all it takes. The word libro is a good example because you can probably figure out which suffix works best just by sounding each one out:

• Librino
• Librello
• Libruccio

Libretto is the only one that sounds right.

Note: Simona just told me that “librello” is the only one that is absolutely wrong. The other two can be used, but “libretto” sounds the best.

Other examples:

• Can’t pay your bills with your monthly stipendio from work? That’s because they’re paying you a stipendino!

• Is your car so small that people think you work for a circus? You’re not driving a macchina, you’re driving a macchinetta!

• Is “it” really as tiny as they say? Then you don’t just have a piccolo pisello, you have a pisellino piccolissimo!

Ginormous Things

This one’s easier because I know of only one suffix to describe something larger than normal.

You can probably figure this one out pretty easily. Using the word libro again, you can describe a large tome by calling it a librone. Not every noun sounds right with this suffix, but here are some other examples:

• Giant mosquitoes, or zanzare, would be called zanzarone!

• Butt too big for those pants? That’s no culo, it’s a culone!

• If you walk out of a bar, you’re an ubriaco. If you crawl out of the bar, you’re an ubriacone!

Horrible, Dastardly Things

Like -one above, this one’s a cinch because there’s only one basic suffix. Adding this to just about any noun will turn it from something good into something bad, but as above, it all depends on come suona, or how it sounds.

Unlike the above examples, I don’t think I’d ever call a bad book a libraccio, so it doesn’t work for everything.

• A bad word, parola, would be a parolaccia!

• A gatto that wakes you up at 5am every morning because he wants to play after meowing for no reason all god damned night would be called a gattaccio!

Conclusione

By now you should have a good handle on how to embellish your tales in Italian. Now go out into the world and use your new exaggerating abilities to make even the most dull of trips to the grocery store sound like the adventure of a lifetime.

Tomorrow’s post: My trip to the storaccio!

“Riuscire“ and “potere“ are two words that I continue to mix up in conversation and none of my Italian books effectively explain the difference. Both verbs basically mean “to be able to do something”, but the usage is very different.

For example:

Riuscire
“Non riesco a venire da te questa sera.” – I can’t come to your house this evening.

Potere
“Non posso venire da te questa sera.” – I can’t come to your house this evening.

They appear to say the same thing, but there is significant difference in their meanings. Riesco, more or less, means that you are or are not physically able to do something. If you’re too tired or injured or there’s some other physical reason that you can’t do something, you’d usually use riuscire.

On the other hand, posso is used to mean that you do or don’t have permission to do something. For instance, if you have other plans or have to watch your kids or your mother won’t let you go out for the evening, you’d use potere.

A “slang” alternative to Riuscire

I had a hell of a time learning to pronouce “riesco” smoothly in a sentence without having to stop and pronounce each syllable. What I learned later on is that

riuscire = farcela or fare ce la

Now, what the hell does that mean? Basically, if you want to say that you are or are not able to do something in a phrase where you’d use riuscire, you can use one of the phrases:

“Ce la faccio” – I can do it
“Ce la fai” – You can do it
“Ce la fa” – He/She/It can do it
“Ce la facciamo” – We can do it
“Ce la fate” – You all can do it
“Ce la fanno” -They can do it

By conjugating fare and adding “ce la“ before it, you express the same sentiment as using riuscire, but in a much easier to pronounce form.

So instead of:
“Non riesco a venire da te questa sera.”

You can simply say:
“Non ce la faccio a venire da te questa sera.”

As a native English speaker, learning to roll my Rs while speaking Italian is still an ongoing battle. Some days they’ll roll out better than a native and some days my tongue simply goes on strike. One of the toughest combinations of words that I’ve encountered is the dreadded N-R tag team. For instance:

“Non ridere!” – “Don’t laugh!”

“Non riesco” – “I’m not able”
Note: “Riesco” is the 1st Person singular present tense of “riuscire”

If you try saying that phrase while rolling the “r”, you’ll probably find it to be more difficult than it looks. Luckily, there are a few tips to help us out.

1. Speak sloooowly – You’ll be surprised at how much more understandable you are when you speak slowly, especially over the N-R words. This would seem obvious to most, but apparently I only think slow and didn’t realize how much it would help until recently.
2. Drop the “N” – If you listen to native Italians speak phrases like those above, they don’t say “Non riesco.” They say, “Noriesco”. When you drop that second “N” the phrase becomes a piece of cake.
3. Roll your tongue when it’s not in use – I find myself in front of my computer, working as normal, and rolling my tongue like a drummer at a circus waiting for the clown to get shot out of the cannon. While you may get odd looks from those around you, after a short while your Rs will come out much more naturally.