One night in Italy as we sat down for dinner, we had a little bit of trouble remembering whose napkin was whose. At the inside dinner table, we all had a different colour of napkin rings, but the night before we had eaten outside using different napkins in different rings and had not necessarily all taken the same colour. As we tried to sort out the situation, my friend and hostess remarked, “Gli italiani amano fare confusione” (“Italians love to create confusion”). As anyone who has lived in Italy will testify, this is absolutely true. Confusion is an excuse for lots of talking and hand gestures, and Italians love those.
Around the same time, I discovered that the Italian word for “to develop”, sviluppare, also means "to untie" or "to extricate." In other words, the complete opposite of fare confusione!
Put these two facts together and you can see how progress in Italy rarely comes quickly. To compensate, however, there are at least plenty of opportunities for social interaction along the way!
1 commento:
never noticed the language connection there. Very interesting. I love these little observations between languages.
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