Ciao - Hello in Italian
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Ciao is a common greeting in Italian. We present to you some interesting information about Italy.
In case you are from Italy and wish to report inconsistencies, please reply to this topic.
Italian is considered one of the closest languages to Latin. This is because Latin was the official language of the Roman Empire until the 6th Century. Currently, around 63 million people in the world speak Italian as their first language, and approximately 3 million speak Italian as a second language.
As the majority of Italian speakers reside in Italy, we will unfold some intriguing facts about the Italian language and Italy:
Historically, the standard Italian alphabet has only 21 letters as J, K, W, X and Y aren’t used in Italian words.
Italian is the official and co-official language of many countries other than Italy such as the Republic of San Marino, southern Switzerland, Vatican City, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, and the European Union. And it is recognized as a minority language in three other countries: Slovenia, Croatia, and Brazil.
The oldest language academy in the world was established in 1583 called The Accademia Della Crusca, a Florence-based society of scholars, has two primary missions, i.e., to preserve and maintain the purity, and encourage the study and promotion of the Italian language.
Italian has a great influence on the art of music. The terms of classical music terms like crescendo, soprano, alto, and tempo have Italian origin. It sums up why Italian is the official language of Classical Music.
William Shakespeare, the world-famous English playwriter, had set up 13 of his 38 plays in Italy. For example, Romeo and Juliet is set in the city of Verona; Julius Caesar takes place in Rome; Othello and the Merchant of Venice are set in Venice; Much Ado About Nothing is based in the Sicilian city of Messina.
(Image Courtesy: https://www.abruzzocamping.it/)Italy has a Fountain that flows with free Red Wine 24/7, named the Fontana del Vino. It is in the Abruzzo region.
Rome is famous for its Seven hills that make the place an adventure playground with climbable pinnacles and snowboarding.
(Image Courtesy: https://www.atlasobscura.com/)Every two years in September, the locals gathered doing historic clothing and take their on the real-life chessboard to play human chess in Marostica, just like the Harry Potter.
(Image Courtesy: https://www.tripadvisor.in/)Italian cuisine like any other cuisine throughout the globe has a distinctive characteristic that makes it so special. The most common characteristics of Italian food, that you will instantly notice once you’ve tasted it or seen it being prepared, are fresh ingredients, tradition, and simplicity. You must have known to the popular ones like Lasagna, Pizza, Gelato, Tiramisu, spaghetti, Ossobuco, Risotto, along with that you should try Bottarga, Fiorentina Steak, Ribollita, Polenta, Carbonara etc. And we hate to break it that Spaghetti with meatballs doesn’t exist in Italian cuisine and It is an American invention so please don’t expect that in authentic Italian fine dining.
There are some funny things about the food culture, for example,
It's bad luck to place bread upside down on the table.
In Italy salad is commonly eaten after the main course unlike many other countries where salad acts as an appetizer, this is because the roughage in the salad is thought to aid digestion.
(Image Courtesy: https://ciutravel.com/)For a bit of extra insight and knowledge about your favorite food, it's worth checking out some great food festivals that are dedicated to specific foods, cheese finest wine, and other ingredients. Some of the popular ones are April's Artichoke Festival in Ladispoli; Bologna's annual Potato Festival in September; The Olive Festival, Frontoi Aperti, held in October/November season in Umbria; Tipicita, which is held in Fermo in March, and the Turin festival for people with sweet-tooth held in November.
Hope you like it, if you know any other fascinating facts about Italy, let us all know!
Source: https://www.languageinsight.com/
https://www.thinkinitalian.com/
https://swantutorsonline.com/
https://dailyitalianwords.com/
https://europea.org/ -
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@mistertoad I think all the actual fake/spam accounts on here are more of a problem.
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@mistertoad So this is an interesting and, perhaps, a necessary debate. I can't say I personally get a lot out of the travelogue-y posts, myself; but it feels a little misguided to criticize it as a "private blog" effort, given that it seems to be Lexulous staff and administrators who are creating them. And, from what I can see, citing their sources with embedded links. "Sponsorship" I don't know about... but basically what it looks like we have going on here is an attempt by Lexulous to expand on the "hello" in international languages that we have been seeing for many years without, to my knowledge, anyone complaining. You may have noticed that these posts are all appearing in the "Creative Corner" forum section, which is different from the sections specifically set aside for new feature requests, comments about the game, dictionary words, etc. So, it seems to me that it's part of the effort Lex. has put in to make this more of a social site (with profile pictures, etc.). The effort may be misguided, and may not go anywhere, but they are trying to improve it. It does feel a little intrusive, I'll grant you, since the travel posts appear at the top of the list, being the most recent.
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@agentcarter
I absolutely love these introductions to different languages and countries. Keep it up, Lexulous!
LMurphy -
@agentcarter very nice article...I have read Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice which was set in Venice but also he created an imaginary place in Italy known as Belmont and linked with Venice to show the richness of merchants in these two cities...
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@agentcarter The fountain of red wine is so unique.
