This video comes from one of my Facebook friends and is advertised as “Shrek Karaoke dance party in Milanese [dialect]! With historic Milanese songs for those fed up with the same old Napoletan karaoke.”

So for an insight into the Italian language, here is a series of Milan dialect songs, with the classic nasal sound of this dialect from Northern Italy; and songs from Giovanni d’Anzi, Enzo Jannacci, Cochi & Renato, Nanni Svampa, Tognella e Alberto, Milly, Valter Valdi, and F.I Gamba de Legn.

The grand finale of the video is the song “E, La Vita, La Vita” by Cochi e Renato. After the jump you can take a look at the English lyrics of the chorus to this traditional Italian song. All thanks to Michele for putting the Shrek video up for us to have a giggle.

Continue reading: Italian karaoke and "la vita è bella": Shrek sings in Milanese dialect

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How do you go about choosing the best rice for your risotto? If you’ve ever been to an Italian supermarket, you will have seen, and most likely been confused by, the great variety of Italian rice at hand.

And one golden rule is never to ask for rice if you want risotto, but never to make risotto with the wrong rice. Often, the various risotto dishes require different rices, with Carnaroli and Arborio being considered the best quality. Here’s a brief guide:

• Originario: for ‘arancini di riso‘
• Vialone nano: ideal for risotto with vegetables and broth-style, more liquid risotto
• Arborio: has large grains and cooks well. It is generally the most common
• Carnaroli: known as one of the best rice for risotto around, it absorbs oil and fat well, and loses its amido characteristics, creating a creamy risotto
• Roma: another super fine rice with large grains, it’s perfect for the famous “risi e pisi” dish (risotto and peas)

Once you’ve got your rice, have a look at the Riso Risotto blog for a complete guide to making risotto.

Photo | Flickr

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The figure of the mother in Italy is almost a religion, venerated to the point where a man, as long as he has a mother in his life, has no need of other women. A “mammone” in Italy is a man attached to the apron strings of his mother, incapable of being independent or creating a life for himself.

A “mammone” is the bane of any young woman’s life, and if you have an Italian mother-in-law you’ll know that your man is losing weight because you don’t feed him enough, and that your polenta will never be as good as his mother’s. A mammone Italian man is generally lazy, helpless and blindingly devoted to his mother.

The word “mamma” in Italian also takes on the form of “mammasantissima” meaning the head of organised crime in Italy. In the video above you can find a scene from the 1979 Italian film “Mammasantissima” with Mario Merola.

The famous film is a cross between a b-grade police flick and napoletan soap opera. In the scene above you will see scenes from Naples life, a male dominated society with only a few images of women, among which we see a statue of the Virgin Mary.

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Recently we spoke about Geri Halliwell’s and Fabrizio Politi’s split, and I mentioned the phrase “Così fan tutte“. The words are the title of Mozart’s famous opera set in Venice, which takes up the theme of “fiancée swapping”.

In a complicated plot, the love of two sister’s for their respective fiancees is the subject of a wager on the infedelity of women. The fiancees, disguised, woo the opposite sister of their original love interest in a test.

The women are ultimate found to be fickle and unfaithful and so the title of the opera, “Così fan tutte” is to be translated as “all women are like that”, with “tutte”, ending in ‘e’, being the plural female subject. In the video above, Cecilia Bartoli sings in the famous seduction duet “Fra Gli amplessi in pochi Stanti” or “In the embraces (in an instant)”.

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If you don’t like raw meat, we suggest you avoid the word “carpaccio” on Italian menus. The original recipe is said to come from either Veneto or Piedmont, depending on which historian you speak to.

The story from Veneto goes that the famous Italian dish of thinly sliced raw meat was created in Venice by Giuseppe Cipriani, founder of Harry’s Bar, for his friend, the countess Amalia Nani Mocenigo. At the time the city was hosting an exhibition of the works of the painter Carpaccio, and the dish was named after him as the red meat reflected the splendid red colours of his canvases.

However, carpaccio also has its origins in Piedmont, where for centuries people have eaten “carne all’albese”. This is traditional carpaccio, served with lemon, garlic, salt and pepper (and maybe a little truffle), whereas the swanky Venetian version included mayonnaise, lemon Worcester sauce.

These days carpaccio is served with lemon and sometimes with grana padano shaved parmesan cheese and rocket lettuce. To be enjoyed with a local Piedmontese wine, for example a Dolcetto from Diano d’Alba. Painters or raw meat, it’s a delicate Italian dish to look out for on your next holiday.

Source | Quinto quarto and Wikipedia

Photo | Flickr

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The word of the day in our learning Italian post today is “fiasco”. In Italy, the word “fiasco” generally means a spectacular flop for any performance in theatre or television. In English we often use it to mean a dramatic mess-up, failure or complete incompetence. But where does the word fiasco actually come from?

The fiasco was the traditional bottle in which Chianti was served, that you will often now see in old Italian trattorias for decoration; they had a straw basket around the base of the squat bottle. It was used from about 1300 until the advent of the more modern and hygienic glass bottle.

The meaning of the phrase “far fiasco” or to create a flop, is uncertain. It seems that Domenico Biancolelli, noted “Arlecchino” or harlequin in the 1600’s had a grand flop on stage with a fiasco as a prop, that he then threw away, saying “it’s your fault if they don’t laugh”.

Photo | Flickr

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For something to cheer up your Saturday, here’s our next Italian lesson online. “Allegro” and “allegria” mean happy and happiness in Italian, with allegria being the first medicine at the Scuola Medica Salernitana in the 12th century. One of the mottos of the school was:

“If there are no doctors,
Let these three things be doctors for you:
a light heart, quiet and a balanced diet.”

“Allegro” we use to describe someone who has had a bit to drink, or with irony to mean people who leave without much protocol, or for things on the limit of being legal. For example, finance in Italian newspapers is often described as “allegra”.

The most famous Allegra, as an Italian name, in Italy is Allegra Agnelli Caracciolo: neice of director Luchino Visconti and wife to industrial magnate Umberto Agnelli.

Image | Flickr

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One of the more unusual streets in Rome for its name, is that of the Via delle Zoccolette. The name appears to have originally derived from the fact that on this street there was an institution for orphans, commonly called “zoccolette”.

There are two interpretations of this name: the first is that “zoccolette” derives from the shoes worn by the orphans. In Italian one meaning of zoccole is “clogs”, so the name would be “little clogs”.

Another, less wholesome use of the word “zoccola” is a vulgar term for a prostitute in the Italian language. It is unclear whether the term for the orphans was meant to be derogatory, or simply to reflect the fact that unless the orphans were adopted by a family or found a husband, they would find themselves on the streets.

In fact, one of the tasks of the orphanage was to teach the girls sewing, embroidery and other household tasks such that they could aspire to marry if lucky enough. Whatever the case, these days saying you live on “via delle zoccolette” could have some amusing consequences!

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After our mini course on cappuccino, espresso, lemons and pizza, today we look at more food. These three cheeses are the golden boys of the Campania region: the three most famous Italian buffalo milk cheeses. Before modern times, a cheese as fresh as mozzarella was impossible to keep and was never destined for commercial use. Home made mozzarella was made exclusively for the family and played second fiddle to the provola - a seasoned and smoked buffalo cheese.

This resulted in the term “mozzarella” being used as a personal attack to criticise a person with no backbone or personality. In the colourful Neapolitan dialect, “provolone” is also used as an insult: “t’a cummann’tu miez e furmagg’ ….Pruvulò!!!”. In Italian, this would be written “te la comandi tu in mezzo ai formaggi …Provolone!!!” with a literal meaning of “you’re the one who commands in the middle of the cheeses, big provola” (I’ll leave it to your imagination to devine what that might mean).

If you want to know more about Italian cheese, especially while travelling, you could try a trip along the “strada della mozzarella”, or mozzarella trail, to discover the places of a 500 year-old tradition, when the first mozzarella appeared on the Pope’s table in Rome.

Photo | Flickr

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Strange but true: in Italian the word “limonare” (to lemon), means to kiss. The etymology is mysterious, but according to some sources the verb derives from “lemon”, used as a synonym for tongue. The use would be something as follows, a conversation between two teenagers:

“Did you give her a lemon in the mouth?”
“Oh yeah, I lemoned her beastly.”

In this case, “beastly” in modern Italian slang means “a lot” or “really” (something “bestiale” is something very cool). In the first part of the above dialogue, “lemon” is used as the synonym for tongue, while in the second it is use of the verb.

In some regions of southern Italy however, particularly Puglia, “lemon” means a person who loves to surround themselves with “cozze”: literally mussels, but meaning ugly girls in this case. The reason is that when lemon is matched with mussels, the lemon stands out as an excellent touch.

If you want to know more on Italian sayings and Italian slang, go to Slangopedia: a collaboration between the Espresso and the Repubblica which explores the culture of young Italians and their language.

Photo | Flickr

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