Italian Phrases

Categories: People, Philosophy
Phrase: "Amore, rispettere, vivere." --Carlos Romano
Translation: "Love, respect, live."

An old man (86 years old, according to the ID card he would show us time and time again) helped us figure out where to take the bus and proceeded to tell us his life story. Joel and I were supremely excited about using our Spanitalian skills but ended up nodding and smiling throughout most of his monologue in a moderate state of incomprehension. Did his wife die? Was he happy with his life? We're not too sure, but he left us with words of wisdom to pass along: amore, rispettere, vivere. These are the essentials in life.
I'm not even sure rispettere is gramatically correct, but that's what I scribbled down in my journal. (It rhymes.) I'm not positive about vivere either, because to say that living is conditional to life is, well, repetitive. I tried to tell him mangiare was essential to life, too, but he replied that there was no point in it if we couldn't share it with the ones we loved. Thoughts?

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Ugly Pretty Words

Category: Mood, music
Phrase: "Abastanza bene"
Does not mean: "super duper good"
Actually means: Well enough. Good.
Our roommate would walk around the apartment energetically exclaiming this phrase. It was her word; she believed it was a happy response to "how are you?" and it would put a smile to our faces everytime we heard it.
However, the next week in Italian class, we learned that it actually meant the much more tepid and unenthusiastic "good." Let's not make that mistake. Just because a word sounds happy, it does not mean it perpetrates that emotion. The word "diarrhea" was voted the prettiest sounding word in the English language a while back. You get the idea.