Re: VMs: I have stunned myself

[Jacques Guy <jguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

9/11/2003 12:51:20 AM, "Larry Roux" <lroux@xxxxxxx> wrote:

>'dico' and 'nel' both appear in this page from Galileo
>http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/Galileo_Prototype/HTML/F044BR/T1.HTM


"dico, nel istesso tempo..."

"I say, in the same time..."

In modern standard Italian: "dico, nello stesso tempo..."

> However, based on my French I would guess "Dico", is "to say" and "nel" I would 
suppose is 'inside' or 'in'....so dico nel could be read as "that is to say, 
in..."

"dico" is "I say". "To say" is "dire". "Nel" is "in the" when followed by
a masculine singular noun not starting with a double consonant (when
the noun starts with a double consonant, it is "nello", when the noun is
feminine singular it is "nella", feminine plural "nelle", when masculine
plural starting with a single consonant it is "nei", with a double consonant
"negli").  "Standard Italian" is in fact the Siennese dialect of the
13th century, the mother tongue of Dante, and became the national standard
precisely because of Dante's choice to write his poems in Italian
rather than in Occitan, which was _the_ literary language back then.
So that even today Italians will tell you that the purest Italian is 
spoken in Sienna. (Well, perhaps not today anymore, but 40 years ago 
certainly).


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