I decided to write this post because it’s raining a lot\u00a0in Italy. My country is facing difficult times because of terrible\u00a0weather conditions. Rivers are overflowing and many big cities like Milan and Genoa are under water. Again.<\/p>\n
Last time I checked, the\u00a0Italian word for\u00a0describing a “heavy and sudden rainfall” was\u00a0nubifragio,<\/em>\u00a0but apparently it was\u00a0not enough clear or aggressive, according to\u00a0Italian journalists and social media trend-setters. The buzzword now is bomba d’acqua, “<\/em>water-bomb”.<\/p>\n I am not fond of this neologismo<\/em> but that’s a good example of\u00a0how new words are making other Italian terms\u00a0obsolete with a simple #hashtag. Other neologismi<\/em> are really entertaining and fun. I chose a few of them. Italian\u00a0media, and social media in particular, have the tendency to talk about negative events and behaviors, so It’s not my fault, don’t shoot the messenger!<\/p>\n I hope my poor English will be appropriate for translating some poor Italian.<\/p>\n Another neologismo<\/em> related to weather. Afa means muggy weather and sometimes it’s fatal to senior Italian citizens during\u00a0summertime. Of course media like to put a label on things, so a heat wave, which\u00a0comes every year, becomes an unexpected\u00a0killer heat wave.<\/em><\/p>\n The prefix “baby” in Italian media means “premature” rather than baby. So, baby-pensionati<\/em> are people retiring in their 50’s, a baby-soldato<\/em> is a child soldier, baby-inventore<\/em>\u00a0a creative teenager and so on.<\/p>\n This is a very popular new entry. Although pretty vulgar, it’s a viral word in social media and among young people. I\u00a0can’t really translate it literally, not because I don’t want to, but because it wouldn’t make much sense. It means “stupid childish sucker”. No offense!<\/p>\n 20 years ago all the main Italian political parties were involved in a big scandal. Bribery (“tangenti” in Italian), blackmailing, waste of public money, mafia, suicides, politicians fleeing the country. That period went under the name of Tangentopoli<\/em>\u00a0, “the city of bribery”. In 2006 there was a similar outrageous scandal with football (calcio) and Calciopoli<\/em> is now the term for\u00a0describing corruption in football. Since football and corruption are both\u00a0popular sources of entertainment, you will hear this one for sure.<\/p>\n Again, football… DASPO is an acronym (Divieto di Accedere alle manifestazioni SPOrtive): ban from any sports events, against hooligans and violence in sports. Now, the media use\u00a0daspo<\/em>\u00a0for any sort of ban involving violence or other felonies.\u00a0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n It doesn’t mean “clean Mafia” but criminal activities related to environmental crimes, like dumping toxic wastes where it is forbidden and so on.<\/p>\n “Non fare un c….” means “do nothing”. Mind, it’s a bad word. Fancazzista\u00a0<\/em>is used ironically against someone “specialized in doing nothing”. I included it in the list because this word is as widespread as people who deserve it.<\/p>\n “Il Gattopardo”<\/a> is a classic Italian novel about the decadence of the Sicilian aristocracy, desperate to survive and keep privileges during the Italian revolution in 1860. \u00a0The spirit of the adjective gattopardesco<\/em> is in this sentence “Se vogliamo che tutto rimanga come \u00e8, bisogna che tutto cambi”<\/em> if we want to keep everything as it is, we need to change everything. Act as if you want to change but don’t. Typical \u00a0Sicilian and Italian apparent contradiction.<\/p>\n Italianization of the English “hacked” used in the world of internet and computers.<\/p>\n This word comes from the Neapolitan\u00a0dialect but it’s now pretty common everywhere. It means “to conspire\u00a0under one’s breath”, making agreements under the table.<\/p>\n Eat-eat! When powerful people “eat without paying the bill”, or take advantage of their power for stealing money.<\/p>\n Organismo Geneticamente Modificato -> GMO in English<\/p>\n Italianization of “high performing”<\/p>\n Same as in English. It’s used ironically against upper class radical leftists and liberals, philanthropists, philosophers talking about “poor people’s needs”, while they eat\u00a0caviar at exclusive cocktail parties. Right or wrong, you can hear this analogy\u00a0every day on Italian TV. I usually change channel…<\/p>\n \n If you watch Italian TV or read\u00a0popular\u00a0Italian facebook pages every day, you will hear and read a lot of those words. I prefer\u00a0to read books, where I still can find nice and familiar\u00a0words like nubifragio.<\/em>\u00a0Thanks for reading!\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Italian media and social networks are changing our language very rapidly. Here’s a small collection of “neologismi”, new words that are now of common use in spoken and written Italian. I decided to write this post because it’s raining a lot\u00a0in Italy. My country is facing difficult times because of terrible\u00a0weather conditions. Rivers are overflowing … Read more \u226b<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10020,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lingua","no-featured-image-padding","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dante-learning.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dante-learning.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dante-learning.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dante-learning.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10020"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dante-learning.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dante-learning.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dante-learning.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dante-learning.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dante-learning.com\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Afa-killer<\/h4>\n
Baby-pensionato<\/h4>\n
Bimbominkia<\/h4>\n
Calciopoli<\/h4>\n
Daspo<\/h4>\n
Ecomafia<\/h4>\n
Fancazzista<\/h4>\n
Gattopardesco<\/h4>\n
Hackerato<\/h4>\n
Inciucio<\/h4>\n
Magna-magna<\/h4>\n
OGM (ogiemme)<\/h4>\n
Performante<\/h4>\n
Radical-chic<\/h4>\n