| Hi guys, welcome back to ItalianPod101.com. My name is Desy, 'mi chiamo Desy,' and in this video, we're gonna talk about loan words in Italian: 'prestiti linguistici.' |
| Prestiti linguistici |
| We're talking about all those words that are not technically Italian since they come from another language, a foreign language, in this case, English, but they're still in the Italian dictionary because they became normal for Italians too. Even though some of them got Italianized, and we're gonna see how. |
| Let's start with saying that it's really easy to spot them because they don't have the plural form. In fact, let's look, for example, at the most common one, 'computer,' which comes from English: 'computer' in Italian, it's never used as 'computers.' Even when we're talking about more than one computer, it's still 'computer.' So when you see that the word doesn't have a plural form, even if it's just with the 's,' you know that that's a loan, a 'prestito linguistico.' |
| Let's look at the most common ones. For example: |
| Passo molto tempo su internet. "I spend a lot of time on the internet." |
| 'On' becomes 'su internet,' without the article. 'Passo molto tempo su internet.' On the internet. |
| Hai sentito che Marco non è più single? "Did you hear that Marco is not single anymore?" |
| Un incontro tra single. "A single meeting" |
| Doesn't mean that it's one meeting, but it's a meeting between single people. Here you see, too, it's not 'singles,' it's just one because that's the word. |
| Ogni settimana guardo almeno due film in italiano. "Every week, I watch at least two movies in Italian." |
| 'Due film in italiano.' Even though it's two, it doesn't become 'films' or 'movies,' it's just 'film' in Italian. I would suggest to do that, if you're learning Italian, if you have time. |
| Questo weekend andrò al mare. "This weekend I'll go to the sea," seaside, the beach. |
| Andrò al mare questo weekend. |
| Devo trovare una nuova babysitter. "I have to find a new babysitter." |
| Devo trovare una nuova babysitter. 'Babysitter.' |
| Uno dei miei hobby preferiti è fare surf. "One of my favorite hobbies is surfing." You see here, 'hobby' stays 'hobby,' and 'surf' goes together with 'fare surf,' to surf. |
| The problem with loan words in Italian is that the pronunciation is Italian. So that's also a reason why sometimes the Italian accent is really strong in English because we use words that are English as in Italian. So when we actually try to speak English, it's really hard to distinguish, right? Because we're used to the Italian pronunciation. Like the 'h' is always silent in Italian, we tend to do the same with other words too, even though they're not technically Italian. |
| For the very same reason, we adapt the word that comes from another language to Italian, and we transform it into a verb. For example, not only verbs but also adjectives and nouns. For example: |
| Ieri ho chattato con Lucia. |
| 'Chattare', chat, still says the same, but we use that as an Italian verb. So it becomes 'chattare,' and 'io ho chattato' is the past tense, right? |
| Present tense: |
| Io chatto con Lucia. "I chat with Lucia." |
| But that doesn't mean that I'm talking to her. It just really means the act of chatting through an app or the internet. |
| Another really common expression would be: |
| Riesci a zoomare sulla cima della montagna? |
| So from 'zoom', to zoom in, we converted it into an Italian verb. "Can you zoom on the top of the mountain?" |
| Puoi/riesci a zoomare sulla cima della montagna? |
| And this goes for verbs, but as I was saying, it's not only about them, it's also about nouns. For example: |
| Spero di ottenere la sponsorizzazione per quel progetto. "I hope to obtain the sponsorship for that project." |
| From 'sponsor,' we don't use only 'sponsor,' and we don't use 'sponsorship,' but we change it to an Italian one, 'sponsorizzazione.' |
| At least it's really easy to understand, but it may be tricky because sometimes we make up new words, and that's how then they enter, they have a space in the Italian dictionary. It's really interesting. |
| Ho letto la notizia/la news sull'hackeraggio alla banca. "I read the news on hacking at the bank." |
| 'Hackeraggio'. You see, it's not 'hack,' but because the 'h' is always silent in Italian. |
| Also, you may want to know that this is a sensitive topic in Italian because a lot of people are actually against using loan words because they want to keep using the Italian words that we have for them. For example, instead of saying 'weekend,' we could still use 'fine settimana', the end of the week, right? 'Fine settimana.' But of course, a lot of people, young people especially, don't miss a chance to use a new word in their phrases. So I think it's really useful for you to know at least the common ones that I've just talked about. |
| Let me know in the comments if there's some words that you may want to say just in Italian without using loan words, or if there are actually some loan words that you find really useful. |
| Thank you for watching, and if you still haven't done it, remember to go to ItalianPod101.com, sign up for your free lifetime account, and learn Italian in the easiest, fastest, and most fun way possible. And I'll see you soon. 'Ciao ciao.' Bye bye. |
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