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Italian grammar and etiquette

Bear in mind, too, that most Italians do not speak "good" Italian,

As a former language teacher, I've often wondered if Europeans are as incorrect in their writing and orally as is widespread here. I have discussed this in the past with one or two students but they never had the concept of poor local linguistic grammar etc. However, most were from uni's. Regional accents and argot excepted, of course.
 
As a former language teacher, I've often wondered if Europeans are as incorrect in their writing and orally as is widespread here. I have discussed this in the past with one or two students but they never had the concept of poor local linguistic grammar etc. However, most were from uni's. Regional accents and argot excepted, of course.
Someone (English, learning German for work) once told me that a lot of Germans don't follow the letter of the law with their language, with the declension and strong/weak nouns. It seemed plausible to me, but I don't know if it's actually true.
 
I have a house in the North of Italy and my experience is that most trades who work on the house and shopkeepers etc still use “lei” and I wouldn’t dream of addressing anyone over the age of 30 any other way until invited to do so but maybe I’m overly formal. I have lived in France and probably picked up the habit there.

My wife, who speaks Italian fluently, is more relaxed about the “tu”-ing but it jars with me when she uses it with older people she doesn’t know that well.
 
We have an electrician here in Rome, known him for about 25 years. He and my wife address each other as "tu", but he insists on the "lei" with me. This, I assume, is because my wife is an architect and they have worked together, so they are both "in the trade" as it were. Unless there is something else...but as they say in Italian, "Occhio non vede, cuore non duole," The eye does not see, the heart does not hurt.
I'm reminded of Belle Epoque Frenchmen who addressed their mistresses as "vous." And I read in a biography of Alma Mahler that old Gustav suddenly realised she was having it off with Kokoshca because he overheard her addressing him as "Du" on the telephone.
 
Regulars here will be aware that I recently had a holiday in Italy in an attempt to learn the language. I did that, and had a great time. I can now carry out basic conversations and I have some idea as to how it works. Great. I know there are a few Italian born/resident people here and I need a bit of guidance on the tu/lei thing.
For the benefit of others here, Italian, like French, has 2 forms of "you". Familiar and formal. You use "tu" for people you know and "lei" (like "vous" in French) for formal situations. Turn up at a hotel and they will call you "lei" because this is respectful. It's like the English "How can I help you, Sir?"
French is very clear. I'm very familiar with the language and the customs around it. I know the tu/vous thing very well and they even have an expression where you ask someone you have only recently met "On peut tutoier?" which is permission to shift to the informal (tu/toi) and usually coindides with exchanging names. There's a general rule of thumb that if you don't know somepone's first name and you are not addressing a child then you use "vous". To do otherwise is like walking into a pub and having the barman call you "buddy" or your wife "darlin'". You might easily take offence.
Back to Italian: they don't have the same rule, or they interpret it differently. It is acceptable to say to someone you don't know "di dove sei?" (Where are you from?) and this is the informal "tu" form. Likewise you can walk into a shop and say "Avete arancia, per favori?" (Have you any oranges, please?" and again this is the "voi" (plural of "tu") form. You would never, ever do this in France. It's "vous" all the way in shops, bars, hotels etc. Even at work unless you know the person well and they are a peer.
So have I got the wrong end of the stick here or is there a slightly different interpretation in Italian?
I’ve lived in Italy for the last decade or more, it’s pretty much as PaulMB said. “Tu” is fine with most younger people most of the time. The older the person, the more formal the context, the more appropriate “Lei” is, and it’s particularly sensible to address ladies of shall we say a certain age as “lei”, they will be impressed. Also note that if someone in a formal context,a policeman or official, addresses you as “tu” they are probably being rude in a snide way. Voi is confusing for English people, it’s like “youse” in Scotland, or “y’all” in America, a plural. Confused by the fact that in some forms of historic Italian, and often in opera, “voi” is also the respectful singular “you”. You think this is confusing. You wait till you get to the pronouns.
 
You think this is confusing. You wait till you get to the pronouns.

Personal pronouns, maybe but can't see how relative pronouns would be more complex than in English. It's always baffled me that Latin based languages (and others) need gender to function yet English has never adopted this a.f.a.I.k. Inanimate objects don't need identifying by gender, but there must be a historical reason for this seemingly unnecessary part of language.
 
Old English (pre-1066) did have noun gender, and just like its relative, German, it had three: feminine, neuter and masculine. This feature disappeared when English became dramatically simplified during the Middle English period. My uneducated guess as to why that simplification happened is that the arrival of a French-speaking overclass in the 11th Century pretty much ended the highly-educated use of English.

But, to reuse a slogan from elsewhere: gender is not sex. Nouns are called “masculine” or “feminine” only because they are seen to behave the same way as the words for “man” or “woman” in a language. And I do mean just “man” and “woman”, not other words for male or female humans: the Irish word for “girl” (cailín /colleen/) is masculine, because it has to be by other grammatical rules in the language. For similar reasons, the German word for girl, Mädchen, is neuter, because words ending in -chen just are.

If your language treats both of the words for man and woman in the same grammatical way, then you can still have genders, but they’re just are not called “masculine” or “feminine” - for example, in Swedish: “en kvinna och en man ägde ett hus” (“a woman and a man owned a house”) you can see that woman (kvinne) and man are of the same gender (“common”, using the indefinite article en) while house is the other gender (neuter, using the article ett). As an aside, you can also see that the English word “queen” is of Scandinavian origin.

But English isn’t the only European language without gender: the Finnish language has no noun gender at all, and unlike English, that also applies to pronouns: hän is how you refer to anyone or anything in the third person in Finnish.
 
First off, "Avete...?" is plural and so is neither "Tu" nor "Lei."
Yes, it is. According to my notes it is the conjugation for "voi" which is the plural of the familiar "tu".

However, in southern Italy it is sometimes used as a respectful form of address towards a single person.
Worth knowing, thanks.

But I think you can forget about the "Voi" to all intents and purposes, unless of course you are addressing more than one person, in your arancia example (that actually sounds odd, did you mean a "spremuta d'arancia" or "una arancia" or "arance" or "aranci," the last two both plural for orange.
I meant "una arancia" or "aranci" that I was buying in corner shops and greengrocers 1 or 2 at a time. Only once did someone misunderstand and offer me Fanta. "Non, non, *una* arancia..."

Strangers of the same age and circumstances will often use the "Tu" if they feel matey.
This fits, rather like the French.

But these days, particularly since your interlocutor will realise you are a foreigner, nobody is lightly to be offended by "Tu." But will be impressed if you construct a sentence using "Lei."
I'll do my best. It's easy enough though, if you want to use "lei" it's just a case of finding the 3rd person singular conjugation of the verb (mutters parlo-parli-parla under his breath) and bingo, that's you.

The thing I can't stack up is why in a shops it's "avete XYZ?" which is like saying "hi, have y'all got XYZ?" when my French knowledge would lead me to use "lei" which, correct me if I'm wrong, would come out as "ha XYZ?" and you never hear this.

The particular thing about "Lei," is that it actually introduces distance in grammatical terms. So a sentence using "Lei" is built as if one is talking about some third party rather than directly to the person you are actually talking to. This is different from French, where the person simply becomes plural.
So, "Tu sei bello," you are beautiful, becomes "Lei e' bello," or "You/she IS beautiful." Because "Lei" also happens to means she or her.
It is a bit like if in English you address someone as "Your honour" or "your eminence." "Will Your Eminence have a cup of tea?"
That's interesting. It's like the French use of "on", this being close to "one" as in "I think if one lives in a hot country then it's only reasonable to to drink tea in the aft6ernoon" and they often use it as a vague "we" or "they" in the same way that you will hear at work "I think that we should be doing XYZ" or "I think they should be doing XYZ", the clear implication being that the speaker is being totally nonspecific about who exactly WILL be doing it but you know bloody well that it's not going to be them.

If indeed these formal/informal addresses are still widely practised in Italy and France (and maybe Spain, Portugal and Romania, having Latin derived languages), I salute them.
It very much is, more so in France in my experience.

Hat off to you, Steve 67 and keep up the progress.
Thanks! Fun so far.

I lived/worked in Milan for six months and loved it but shamefully failed to pick up more than a smattering of Italian.

In my defence, working in IT the correct response to 98% of enquiries was apparently a regretful shrug and "mi dispiace non è possibile..."
Did you not have to learn the Italian for "have you tried turning it off and then on again?"
(No idea, I can do this in French, it involves "extinguishing" and "relighting" the machine, which I especially like, but not in Italian.)

Taxi drivers, shop assistants, receptionists, bank clerks, restaurant waiters, policemen, formal work contacts, the plumber or house painter, the dentist or doctor, will invariably address you as Lei and expect the same.
That's the thing, I didn't get this. Other than the pointed "Grazie a *lei*" response in shops and bars and the hotel reception formalities I didn't hear much "lei" at all.


Among young people it is usual to start straight from Tu.
This fits.

You have to sort of play it by ear, sometimes.
For sure.

Bear in mind, too, that most Italians do not speak "good" Italian, just as most Brits do not use "good" English. So is you are studying the language aim for the best possible quality of classic Italian, don't try to imitate jargon, slang, regional differences or just the plain ignorance of correct Italian among the people you run into. If you want to be "matey" just smile a lot as you masterfully deliver a perfectly constructed sentence chock full of subjunctives and conditionals.
Steady on, I'm only just getting into past imperfect.

Friends who live in France tell me the whole tu versus vou thing is still observed more rigidly there than the equivalent in Italy and Spain. Is this true I wonder?
Yes it is on the basis of my recent experience. That's precisely why I started this thread.

As a former language teacher, I've often wondered if Europeans are as incorrect in their writing and orally as is widespread here.
Oh god yes, in French in my first hand experience and second hand via fluent Spanish speakers who say the Spanish are incredibly sloppy and a fluent speaker can sit and listen and say "Oh, dropped the subjunctive there and decided to go with the present indicative instead, sloppy."

I’ve lived in Italy for the last decade or more, it’s pretty much as PaulMB said. “Tu” is fine with most younger people most of the time. The older the person, the more formal the context, the more appropriate “Lei” is, and it’s particularly sensible to address ladies of shall we say a certain age as “lei”, they will be impressed.
Makes sense.

Also note that if someone in a formal context,a policeman or official, addresses you as “tu” they are probably being rude in a snide way.
Very much so in France, you can see in films that it often generates the angry response of "Toi? Toi? C'est quoi, mon prenom?" I once had cause to say something similar to this in France to a barman who I thought was being excessively matey and "tutoi" ing me in a rather excessively chummy and I felt patronisiong way. I have enough French to pick this up, but not Italian.

Voi is confusing for English people, it’s like “youse” in Scotland, or “y’all” in America, a plural.
I get this, I worked it out over the last couple of weeks in italy and it makes sense. I do like the analogy of "youse or "Y'all" though, I'll remember that.

Confused by the fact that in some forms of historic Italian, and often in opera, “voi” is also the respectful singular “you”.
Paul MB said this, it's interesting.

You think this is confusing. You wait till you get to the pronouns.
It can't be worse than French. I *STILL* haven't got a definitive understanding of the "il" vs "lui" thing even with what I consider to be a mastery of the language and I am still utterly vague as to how to carry on when the object pronoun is a woman.
 
On asking for things in shops, I found many years ago it is much easier simply to use c'e as in 'c'e arance?' The same for asking for someone by name on the phone.
 
On asking for things in shops, I found many years ago it is much easier simply to use c'e as in 'c'e arance?' The same for asking for someone by name on the phone.
"Ci sono arance" would be better, since arance is plural. ('scuse the pedantry).
 
Because the "youse" refers to the shop rather than the person serving you. Indeed you might get a reply "non li abbiamo" - "we don't have them".
Thanks, yes I get this. We don't have them, you (collectively, the group of people in the shop) don't have them, etc. But I still don't see why I am using the familiar "voi" to a group of strangers. Does "lei" not work for groups of people? I was under the impression that it did. In French I would be using "vous" as a generic formal "you" where I am not specifying how many people are involved but I am formally addressing them, but not apparently in Italian.
 
There’s no formal second-person plural in modern Italian: to a group of people, voi is for everyone, regardless of politeness. (Okay, technically, you could use loro, but as Italy no longer has a king, you’re unlikely to ever need to...)

There’s none in French either, as the plural use of vous covers both formal and informal address; the confusion is that the same word is used for polite-you-singular as general-you-plural.
 
If you want to tie your brain in knots, try and figure out how pairs of indirect and direct object pronouns work. “Gliel’ho mandato” could mean I sent it to him, to her, to you (formal) or to them.
 
If you want to tie your brain in knots, try and figure out how pairs of indirect and direct object pronouns work. “Gliel’ho mandato” could mean I sent it to him, to her, to you (formal) or to them.
Hmm, I've got enough on with the 3 verb forms and getting beyond your basic present indicative and perfect past for now.
 
There’s no formal second-person plural in modern Italian: to a group of people, voi is for everyone, regardless of politeness. (Okay, technically, you could use loro, but as Italy no longer has a king, you’re unlikely to ever need to...)

There’s none in French either, as the plural use of vous covers both formal and informal address; the confusion is that the same word is used for polite-you-singular as general-you-plural.

But there is, usually implied. Two people walk into a restaurant. The head waiter approaches. They ask for a table for two. The HW might say "Se (loro, or i signori can be used or omitted but is implied)) vogliono aspettare un momento al bar, faccio preparare il tavolo." So it is the plural of Lei, third person plural, respectfully distant. Like "If the gentlemen would like to wait a moment at the bar, I'll have a table prepared."
 


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