Michael's Italian Language Blog

The New York Knicks, a basketball team in the NBA, have named a new coach, Mike D'Antoni. For speakers of Italian, what's noteworthy about the announcement is that D'Antoni is fluent in Italian and holds dual citizenship. Equally fascinating is that D'Antoni was considered the greatest point guard in Italian league history. "He barely played in the N.B.A., but is now one of its best coaches," according to The New York Times.

Some common Italian basketball vocabulary words include: palleggio (dribble), tiro sospensione (jump shot), la linea del tiro libero (free throw line), schiacciata (dunk), guardia tiratrice (shooting guard), and difesa a zona (zone defense).

A recent interview in Time Out New York with high-profile chef Scott Conant featured this Italian phrase. The former chef of L’Impero and Alto discussed his new book and restaurant, both to be called Scarpetta. As Conant alludes to, the term fare la scarpetta describes the act of mopping up one’s plate with a piece of bread.

You can dip your "heel" at Conant's new restaurant in the meatpacking district this spring.

Last month in Miami Beach, a certain Italian scoundrel won the Rolex Farr 40 Worlds 2008 sailing regatta for the third consecutive year. Mascalzone Latino, an Italian yacht that represents the Reale Yacht Club Canottieri Savoia in Naples, was also one of the racing teams that competed for the Louis Vuitton Cup 2007, the challenger series held prior to the America's Cup.

Mascalzone translates as rascal, scoundrel, or rapscallion.

How many Italian students are there in the U.S.? Since 1958 the Modern Language Association (MLA) has regularly gathered and analyzed information to examine trends in enrollments in languages other than English in U.S. institutions of higher education. The MLA's 2006 survey of enrollments in languages other than English reported that between 2002 (when the last MLA survey was conducted) and 2006, enrollment in Italian showed a strong, steady increase (29.6%, in fact). Specifically, in 2002 there were 63,899 students enrolled, versus 78,368 students in 2006. To offer some context and perspective, Italian ranks fifth (after Spanish, French, German, and American Sign Language) in total number of enrollments in U.S. institutions of higher education. In addition, the overall change for all languages surveyed was 12.9%.

The survey also measured introductory versus advanced undergraduate course enrollments in 2006. There were 69,757 introductory enrollments versus 7,593 advanced enrollments in Italian, for a ratio of 9:1 for introductory to advanced, or 9.8%. That compares to a ratio of 5:1 for all languages surveyed. In other words, students of Italian are much less likely to enroll in advanced courses relative to other languages.

Sometimes a grazie tante just won't work. Sometimes rudeness is best counteracted with a phrase such as: Ma Lei cafone ci è nato, o ci è diventato? (Were you born rude, or did you become rude?). Then there's: "Sparisca!" (Get lost!), or La smetta! La prego di smettere! Stop it!

Learn these assertive Italian phrases, and the next time someone butts in line at la fermata del autobus (bus stop) you can tell them: "Scusi, ma in fila c'ero prima io." (Pardon me, but I was first).

Usually one's tongue becomes tied after drinking wine. Instead, there are Italian wines that produce the same linguistic effect just from ordering them, due to their somewhat intimidating names.

Sergio Esposito writes a fascinating e-mail newsletter every week for Italian Wine Merchants, the store he founded in New York City in 1999 along with Mario Batali and Joe Bastianich. Recently he singled out "two trios of tongue-twisting wines that will positively please your palate." In addition to tasting notes, Esposito even provided a pronunciation guide for distinctive northern Italian red wines such as Marzemino [mah(l)r-tseh-MEE-no] and Schiava [skyAH-vah].

A community member in the About.com Italian Language Forums ponders: "I have the opportunity to visit Italy this summer for the sole purpose of studying Italian. Can anyone recommend a language school in Rome or Florence for a two-week session?"

If you're recently studied Italian in Italy, what school would you suggest, and why?

"Goodbye to mafia extortion" is one way to translate Addiopizzo, a grass-roots organization recently created to combat organized crime. The word pizzo refers to the protection racketeering used by the mafia to extort money from businesses.

The Italian language appears in the most unusual of places—this time, as a nearly massless elementary particle in atoms. An article in Scientific American titled: Carbon Wonderland relates how physicists have only recently isolated graphene, a newly isolated form of carbon. In describing how electric charges in the material travel, the neutrino is cited. The article parenthetically notes that: In Italian, neutrino means "little neutral one."

It turns out that Italian physicist Enrico Fermi coined the term neutrino to contrast it with the name of another neutral particle, the neutron, which is much larger.

Sometimes great ideas are just slightly ahead of their time. Case in point was eDay, a Web site launched in April 2000 that allowed users to customize and print out their very own full–color Italian language daily newspaper as a PDF document. eDay was a real newspaper and had content similar to that of a national daily, including advertisements, and was completely different from every other newspaper, either traditional or online. First, because it was built from scratch with the intention of seamlessly integrating with the Internet, rather than adapting passively to it, and second, because it was designed to be read on paper rather than being seen and read in HTML.

Alas, as luck would have it, the company was launched just as the Internet bubble burst, and eDay: Il quotidiano senza prezzo, succumbed to the same financial pressures that doomed many Internet start-ups. Just a short time after the innovative design and functionality of eDay debuted, the company ceased operations, and users were forced to use the old-fashioned, limited "print this article" function available on other news sites.

Scroll ahead several years, and enter 4minuti, a new Web site that, like eDay, is a free daily Italian-language newspaper specifically designed to be printed out. Like eDay, 4minuti has daily sections such as Cronaca, Esteri, Politica, Economia, Sport, and Cultura, and like eDay, subscribers can even register to have 4minuti e-mailed to them every day.

Like a fine Barolo, sometimes it takes a few years for a great idea to mature!