Hi, everyone and welcome back to Happy Hour, 歡迎回來酒館. Hi, 安瀾.

Hi, lulu, hi, everyone.

Before we turned this into a foodie episode, again, let's move on to the highbrow stuff.

Yeah, let's talk about music.

Oh yes.

Opera is actually an Italian word.

Yeah. Opera actually just means work in Latin.

Work?

Yeah.

Okay, so I can be...

So it’s like “operate”.

And then it became 歌劇

Yes. So opera started really in Italy. So That's why lots of terms from opera and classical music come from Italian. So for example, like crescendo.

Crescendo is 漸強(qiáng). If you play the piano, you would know all of these words, adagio, crescendo...

Adagio, crescendo, forte, and also the pieces of music as well. So for example sonata.

Sonata是奏鳴曲, and then also what is it, concerto協(xié)奏曲.

So basically it's a musical composition for an orchestra, but with one solo instrument.

The fact that even nowadays in English, when people talk about music, they still use so many Italian words really shows in the course of history the Italian influence in this aspect.

Oh exactly, think about it this way. If you go to a concert and it's really, really good, I think the classical music concert, you wouldn't do it a pop music concert.

You say Bravo or Brava, depending on...

... if they're a man or woman.

Depending on the gender. And that is basically Italian as well.

That is Italian.

It sounds Italian.

It is Italian. And It's just how we say, well done. Really really good.

Yeah, but it is tiny bit pretentious. So you really wouldn't do it when it's not that kind of context.

Yeah. You wouldn't do it at a pop concert.

有點裝.

It is a little bit.

All right. But there are also many Italian loan words in, say, fashion and art.

Oh yeah.

Studio is actually Italian.

Yeah, studio means “study” in Italian.

The other day I found out ... you know those really high heeled shoes?

Stilettos.

就是那種細(xì)高跟 stilettos, really sexy. Do they mean shoes?

No. A stiletto is a dagger.

I suppose you can use stiletto as a dagger to stab someone.

So it's a very very thin dagger. So that's why they call the stiletto.

Mhm. And...

Ballerina.

Oh Ballerina. So like ballet dancer, the thing is when it comes to ballet, I always think they are more French words, but obviously ballerina.

Yeah, lots of words in French have come into English to talk about fashion and art. But also Italy has always been associated with fashion and art. Think about Milan.

Milano.

If you have noticed that a lot of these words coming from Italian language, they're either ending with ‘o’ or ‘a(chǎn)’ this is very interesting. So the Italian names, they're always ‘o’ or ‘a(chǎn)’, not always, but often.

Yeah.

‘o’ for man, ‘a(chǎn)’ for woman. But there are also words in architecture and design.

So the reason for this is that again, the Renaissance, architecture or modern architecture in a way that we think about it now really started in Italy. So that's why lots of architectural features have Italian names such as balcony.

Balcony is Italian?

Balcony is Italian, villa is an Italian word.

Villa is also Italian. ok就是別墅, basically big big house in the countryside usually.

So lots of people translate 別墅 as villa, but it's not. A villa is much much bigger.

Yeah, when Chinese say 別墅we just mean like a detached house, basically.

Yeah, it's a detached house.

But to an English speaker a villa needs to be a country house that's super big.

Very big normally with its own land. But also things like cupola, so when you have like a very small dome on top of a building.

I see, like the Roman style sort of thing. Okay Roman the baroque column thing that's very popular in China as well.

But if I was really, really, really rich, what I would love is a palazzo.

Isn't palazzo palace?

An Italian palace. So in Rome, they got these massive, beautiful, old palazzo overlooking the piazza.

Piazza is just a square.

It's a public square or marketplace.

But very pretentious English people would also use that word.

Yeah, we would say piazza when we're referring to places in Italy, but also piazza has that connotation for somewhere to eat, somewhere to drink, somewhere to shop.

There are so many beautiful piazzas in Italy, that brings me back to time spent in Italy. So for example, the main one in Rome, Piazza Navona.

So when we think about that, we think about fountains, we think about lots of people just hanging around, eating and drinking,walking...

So that's why we can't call Trafalgar Square a piazza for example.

No, because that's where you get all of the bird shit.

Oh yeah, that's where you get pigeons.

All right. We've talked about all these highbrow stuff, all the foodie stuff. And this episode with a few more everyday words, expressions in English that are coming from Italian.

Yeah. For example, you wanna be careful of the mafia.

The organized crime.

The organized crime.

Mafia就是黑手黨.

And also you do not want to be involved in a vendetta.

V for Vendetta. V字仇殺隊, vendetta means revenge.

It means revenge. So a vendetta is a long lasting feud or argument usually deadly.

This is actually quite commonly used in English now.

And also some very random words as well like graffiti.

It is because there are lots of graffiti in Italy.

Well there is, 就是涂鴉, but I don't exactly know why graffiti we use the Italian word.

I know the word quarantine that we've been using for the 3 years of Covid a lot, quarantine is an Italian word, it means, I think 40 days.

Yeah. It just means 40 days because Italian ports had quarantine, you had to stay, if you were going to Venice, for example, you had to stay on a little island for 40 days before you could enter Venice.

So this was, I think, back in the days of the plague, right? black death, they also had that.

Okay. And on that note, we're gonna wrap up here if you want to share any more loan words from Italian into English, leave us a comment in the comment section, or if you want to put in a request for us to talk about any other languages and the loan words into English, leave us comment as well.

Thank you, 安瀾 for coming to the show.

Thanks, Lulu. Thanks, everyone.

We'll see you next time.

Bye bye.