Buondì.

Next week we have our Autumn Sale, but this week there’s a half-price Ebook of the Week offer. So I’ve been setting that up this morning, and while doing so I noticed that back in 2016 Joan reviewed the ebook thus:

Really enjoyed reading the book. The reading is much too fast. One would not read a novel this quickly and certainly one wouldn’t have a continuous conversation at this pace for the said time.

Now normally I ignore people moaning about the speed of listening texts, the problem invariably being the people themselves having close to zero comprehension skills (“Why do Italians speak so quickly?” – “Um actually? They don’t. It just sounds that way to you because you’re not used to it.”)

However, I was copying the link to the free online audio anyway (you’ll find it below somewhere, when I’ve written that far) and good writing/editing requires that links are checked, so I had a quick listen. And, yes, Joan was absolutely right! Natalia, who recorded the story for us, must have been on something that day, because it really does crack along!

Nevertheless, if you have both the audio (which is free) and the text (only the first chapter of which is free) then listening and reading at the same time should at least provide some basis for understanding, even if only partially, even if not at the first attempt.

Since you ask, I could understand ‘everything’, yes, but then I’m familiar with Natalia’s voice and also knew the story well, as I was involved in editing it, way back when, and have since formatted and checked multiple versions, in different languages.

Without further ado, then, let me post the free sample chapter text here, along with the link to the online audio, so you can form your own opinion. N.b. If you’re reading this article on a smartphone, it’s possible that the audio will open in the same window, so making it impossible to view the text. Opening your email on a computer would solve that problem. Or look for the free sample chapter .pdf (down below someplace) and download the .pdf file. Then open it. Then click the link.

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Segreti e polpette
di Emanuele Stefanori e Michela Guida
A simplified book for learners of Italian from OnlineItalianClub.com

1. Da Ettore

Listen to this story at: https://soundcloud.com/onlineitalianclub/sets/segreti-e-polpette

Nel cuore del paese a forma di stivale, in cima a una collina ricca di boschi e splendidi vigneti, si trova un delizioso borgo medievale.

All’interno delle sue alte mura, un labirinto di strade e vicoli in salita circonda tante piccole case dai tetti rossi. Sulla via principale, le antiche botteghe espongono all’esterno i prodotti tipici del territorio e oggetti di artigianato locale. Ogni martedì, in una delle piazze principali, le bancarelle del mercato attirano tutte le signore del paese con i loro carrelli della spesa. La domenica, invece, ai tavolini del bar accanto al municipio, gli uomini bevono il caffè, leggono il giornale, fumano una sigaretta e passano le ore a giocare a carte o a parlare di politica e a commentare l’ultima giornata del campionato di calcio.

Per il resto, tra quelle alte mura la vita scorre tranquilla, animata soprattutto nei fine settimana da piccoli gruppi di turisti che fotografano gli splendidi panorami e riempiono le trattorie.

All’ombra del vecchio campanile con l’orologio, in una stradina un po’ nascosta, da una porta di legno si entra nel ristorante “Da Ettore”.

Le due sale del locale hanno uno stile rustico e tradizionale.

Sulle pareti di pietra ci sono grandi pentole di rame e antichi quadri a olio che ritraggono scene di vita nei campi. Tra alti scaffali pieni di bottiglie di vino e vecchie botti di legno, una decina di tavoli sono apparecchiati in modo semplice ma elegante. Accanto a un bellissimo camino, adesso solo ornamentale, si trova un piccolo bancone bar e un tavolino con la cassa. Lì dietro, osservando con attenzione, si può vedere una foto in bianco e nero attaccata al muro: un uomo di circa quarant’anni, con un folto paio di baffi e un cappello, posa davanti all’ingresso del ristorante insieme a tutta la famiglia. È vestito in modo elegante, perché il signor Ettore Agnolotti amava essere impeccabile in ogni occasione.

Insieme alla moglie Lucia, il signor Ettore aveva aperto il ristorante qualche anno prima di quella foto. Figlio di contadini, dopo la guerra si era trasferito in paese per cercare un lavoro. Aveva iniziato come cameriere e lavapiatti in un’osteria vicino al mercato, immaginando in futuro di poter avere un ristorante tutto suo. Infatti, mentre passavano i giorni, raccoglieva su un quaderno le ricette della madre, tramandate di generazione in generazione.

La tradizione di queste ricette aveva spinto Ettore a cercare di realizzare il suo sogno e trovare la sua strada. Un giorno, infatti, gli era stata proposta l’occasione della vita, cioè diventare capo cuoco nella cucina di quell’osteria. Dopo aver fatto un po’ di esperienza davanti ai fornelli, il signor Ettore aveva comprato un locale tutto suo, dove proporre finalmente le ricette della madre, conservate gelosamente sul suo quaderno.

Ben presto la qualità della cucina e la gentilezza della famiglia Agnolotti erano diventate famose in tutta la zona.

Oreste, il figlio del signor Ettore, aveva iniziato ad aiutare il padre fin da bambino, imparando il mestiere di cuoco e portando avanti la tradizione di famiglia. Raggiunta la maggiore età, Oreste ha ereditato il ristorante senza cambiare né il nome né la splendida atmosfera.

Ancora oggi, chi va a mangiare “Da Ettore” può notare un vecchio quaderno con la copertina nera, appoggiato sulla mensola del camino.

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So, yup, pretty fast, right? But life is fast, and then you die. So better get used to it.

HOWEVER, besides the ‘easy reader’ version of this story, we also published a ‘parallel text’ version, which actually has no audio at all and so is much more appropriate for people who like to ponder the meanings of words, glory in the conjugations of verbs, or bitch about other people’s transations (the translation was done by a British woman, a foreign language teacher who, I assure you, knows Italian well, but more importantly had the needs of learners in mind while she was doing it…)

One feature of a ‘parallel text ebook is that the lines are numbered, so that you can look at the first sentence of the Italian original:

Nel cuore del paese a forma di stivale, in cima a una collina ricca di boschi e splendidi vigneti, si trova un delizioso borgo medievale.

And compare it with the English translation:

In the heart of a boot-shaped country, at the top of a hill thick with trees and vines, stands a delightful mediaeval village.

Doing so, you’ll see the decisions the translator made as she was working (‘thick with’ rather than ‘rich with’ for example, ‘delightful’ rather than ‘delicious’).

Chapter 1 continues like this:

Within its high walls, a labyrinth of streets and alleyways wind upwards around the many little red-roofed houses. On the main street, old workshops display local crafts and products typical of the region. Every Tuesday, the market stalls in one of the main squares attract all the women of the village with their shopping trolleys. On Sundays, men gather at the small tables outside the bar next to the town hall to drink coffee, read the newspapers, smoke cigarettes and pass the hours playing cards or talking politics and commenting on the latest football news.

Otherwise, life inside those high walls passes uneventfully, enlivened mainly at weekends by little groups of tourists taking photographs of the magnificent views and filling the trattorie.

In the shadow of the old bell-tower and its clock, in a little half hidden side street, a wooden door leads into the restaurant ‘Da Ettore’.

And there’s more. But don’t waste your time comparing the English (above) with the Italian (further above), because the Italian is from chapter 1 of the ‘easy reader’ – the one with audio, remember – and the English here is from chapter 1 of the ‘parallel text’ which was done later and by a different team. There may well be differences, as they are two separate products. It’s not intended that people buy both of them, even if they are both half-price all this week.

I’ll give you the links in a bit, so you can download the free sample chapters for each of the two formats, and so discover which one best suits your preferred learning-style. But before I do, a word about how to view parallel text ebooks, for if you can’t easily compare the Italian and English versions, ideally side by side, then much of the point is lost, right?

So we have the following text on all of the ‘parallel text’ product pages in our online shop:

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Parallel Texts – How To View The Chapters Side-By-Side!

Viewing the chapters of your parallel text ebook side by side (so as to compare the different languages) is not hard, but probably won’t happen automatically. There are a few simple, free things you’ll need to do first.

The file is a .pdf so will open with whatever the default .pdf reader on your device is. These can vary and will probably NOT show the chapters side-by-side, as intended. For this reason, we recommend the free Adobe Reader, which is installed on many computers in any case.

If you don’t have it, download it here (though I’d strongly suggest un-checking the ‘Optional Offers’…) Once you have Adobe Reader installed, this is what you do:

– Download the file
– Don’t just click on it or it will open in a browser, which probably works differently
– Instead, view it in your device’s downloads file
– Open with Adobe Reader (right click on the file, choose ‘Open with’, select Adobe Reader)
– In Adobe Reader…
– Look in the menu (at the top) for ‘View’, then choose ‘Page display’
– Choose ‘two page view’ (for the parallel text) or ‘single page view’ for normal documents
– Use ‘View’ / ‘Read mode’ to make the text larger or smaller so that it fits your screen
– Use the ‘zoom’ and ‘page up/down’ buttons to navigate through the book
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Or you could print the whole thing and match up the pages on your desk… But anyway, I think that’s more or less all I have to say about this week’s Ebook of the Week offer, other than reminding you that there are two different versions (careful to buy the right one!) and that they’re both half-price until Sunday night, so just £3.99 rather than the usual £7.99.

The ‘easy reader’ version (red/green cover) – has audio, exercises, glossaries, NO TRANSLATION! Buy it here | Free sample chapter (.pdf)

The ‘parallel text’ version (blue-grey cover) – has translation into English, so NO AUDIO, EXERCISES, GLOSSARIES! Buy it here | Free sample chapter (.pdf)

Both ebooks can be found on the Catalog page of our online shop, along with many other great options!

A mercoledì.

P.S.

Saturday’s bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news is slower than the audio for the ebook, I promise. It’s also totally free to read and listen to. Why not take a look?

And subscribing is also free. Just enter your email address on this page to get each thrice-weekly bulletin emailed to you, as soon as it is published! The are no costs, no catches, and you can unsubscribe with just a click or two when your Italian reading/listening skills are so great that you no longer need us to hold your hand (which takes a year or so for most people…)

OnlineItalianClub.com | EasyItalianNews.com | Shop

Buondì.

A while back, over at EasyItalianNews.com, we had a couple of people moaning about our writers’ use of the term ‘ragazzo nero’ (literally ‘black boy’ but better translated as ‘black guy’) to describe the unfortunate recipient of a rather generous number of police bullets.

The commentors separately made the point that the use of the term ‘boy’ to describe a black ‘man’ is entirely inappropriate in English, which we totally accept. Except that the text was not written in English, but in Italian, where the use of the term ‘ragazzo’ is meant much more kindly (and has no racial connotation), as in ‘not some decrepit old geezer but someone in the prime of life’.

I’m fifty-three years of age, and so mostly past the ‘ragazzo’ stage, in my own mind at least. Elderly neighbours still use the term to me, but my teenage kids would laugh if they heard.

Languages are more complicated than you might imagine: a good rule of thumb is not to assume that what something means in the language you’re not yet totally proficient in is the same as what it means in your own language. It might be, or it might not. Or it might sometimes be, but othertimes not.

So today I moderated another comment, on another breaking news story from the USA, this time about the death of, and political turmoil surrounding, a Supreme Court justice. Here’s what we wrote:

“Prima di morire avrebbe espresso il desiderio
di essere rimpiazzata
solo dopo le elezioni,
ma è probabile che il presidente Trump
cercherà di far nominare
un giudice conservatore
spostando così gli equilibri della Corte
che si ritroverebbe
con 6 giudici conservatori
e 3 democratici.”

https://easyitaliannews.com/easyitaliannews-com-22-settembre-2020/

Karen wrote:

“The US Supreme Court Justices are referred to in the article as “conservative and democratic”( my translation for “conservatori e democratici”), but the term democratic is not correct for the judges because that implies they belong to the democratic political party. A better term would be liberal. Thus the judges in the court may be considered conservative or liberal in their views and court judgements.”

There’s more in this than is first apparent, and reading Karen’s comment again I see that if we were writing this in English we might capitalise the word ‘democatic’, or maybe use the noun, Democrat, were we intending to refer to party affiliation. But also that, using the two terms to indicate different political persuasions, without the capital, does rather seem to suggest that conservative judges are not also democratic in their outlook, which they would surely disagree with.

However, in my reply to Karen’s comment, I tried to focus on the Italian side of things:

“Of course, you’re absolutely correct, Karen. But the word ‘liberal’ would mean something entirely different to someone reading in Italian, or at least it should – something more like ‘free market capitalist’, which is the opposite of what is intended. In Italian, the word has a pretty negative connotation.”

“I haven’t looked at the source articles (in the ‘real’ Italian press) for this piece, but it’s likely you would find that the Italian journalists are using the terms in a similar way that we did. And probably journalists writing in French or Spanish about the US Supreme Court too. Appointed by a democrat = democratic!”

Well yes and no. Approving comments (and occasionaly replying to them) is a job that gets squeezed in between other, bigger tasks. But when I had a moment free later, I did actually take a look at the two source articles to see if the pros had handled the situation better than we did:

Here are some extracts from the first source article:

“Ginsburg, seconda donna a diventare giudice della Corte Suprema, fu nominata nel 1993 dall’allora presidente Bill Clinton ed era considerata una giudice progressista…”

“…Donald Trump e il Senato potrebbero nominare un nuovo giudice e scegliere qualcuno con posizioni e idee molto più conservatrici…”

“…ci sono otto giudici, cinque considerati conservatori e tre progressisti…”

https://www.ilpost.it/2020/09/19/ruth-bader-ginsburg-morta/

As you see, the journalist solves the ‘liberal = exploitative bastard’ connotation problem by using ‘progressive’ instead. Conservative/progressive seems reasonable, and unlikely to offend either party.

However, in the second article, things are rather more confused:

“Usa, addio a Ruth Bader Ginsburg, giudice icona liberal della Corte Suprema”

“…Donald Trump, c’è da giurarci, farà di tutto per eleggere un ennesimo conservatore…”

“…che potrebbe spostare definitivamente a destra quella Corte Suprema attualmente formata da 5 giudici repubblicani su nove”

“…nel 2015 Barack Obama l’aveva invitata con discrezione a dimettersi, per via dell’età avanzata, sperando di farle lasciare il posto a un collega più giovane e di provata fede democratica.”

https://www.repubblica.it/esteri/2020/09/19/news/morta_giudice_della_corte_suprema_ruth_bader_ginsburg-267794423/

This time we have liberal/conservative, as Karen suggested, but also republican and, if not exactly democrat or democratic, at least ‘of proven democratic faith’.

So, yes, in theory, judges are not chosen for their affiliation to a particular political party, but in practice? There’s certainly something very tribal about the current situation: one of ours or one of theirs, pro-life or pro-choice, likely to favour this party or that party in a disputed presidential election? It obviously matters to all concerned.

Conservative and progressive works in English and in Italian, but what is actually meant is Republican and Democratic, both capitalised. It’s unsurprising, to me at least, that we foreigners get mixed up!

Learning tip: reading news articles in the language you’re learning about your own country, or a country that you know well, is a good way to build your reading skills and vocabulary, certainly better than just selecting an article at random. When I read in French or Spanish these days, I avoid articles about the politics of either country (so far, utterly incomprehensible) in favour of anything with ‘Boris’ or ‘Trump’ in the headline, on the basis that I’ll already know what’s being written about. Articles about science and technology, or internationally famous people, are good for the same reason. Smartphone reviews, sex tips, stock market crashes – you get the idea.

And the more you read, the more you pick up – not just about the language you’re learning, but about how those writing in that language (and presumably their readers) perceive your country, which sometimes turns out to be much more kindly, and in a less-partisan way, that you might expect!

A lunedì, allora.

Final Reminder!

Here’s a final reminder about this week’s two new ‘easy Italian reader ebooks’, ‘Tumulto a Firenze‘ and ‘La storia di Roma‘, both 25% off the usual easy reader ebook price, but only until Sunday night!

‘Tumulto a Firenze‘, just £5.99 | free sample chapter (.pdf)

‘La storia di Roma‘, just £5.99 | free sample chapters (.pdf)

Both ebooks are intended for fairly advanced students, so lower-level students of Italian should visit our online shop to find something that better fits their level.

Our Catalog page has links to each of our many ebooks, in approximate level order, and to the free sample chapters for each one. Why not take a look?

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