{"id":3977,"date":"2017-08-22T01:47:33","date_gmt":"2017-08-22T05:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/?p=3977"},"modified":"2017-08-22T02:56:47","modified_gmt":"2017-08-22T06:56:47","slug":"pilgrimages-and-slang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/2017\/08\/22\/pilgrimages-and-slang\/","title":{"rendered":"Pilgrimages and Slang"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last weekend I had the wonderful and completely unexpected opportunity to go on a pilgrimage with my new Italian friends. We walked all night from Macerata to Loreto, about 30 kilometers, praying and singing in Italian. I finally cemented the Italian Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be in my brain (how could I not after saying 100,000 rosaries?). It was a beautiful experience. Before the walk, thousands of people met at a stadium in Macerata for Mass, at the end of which Pope Francis called and gave us his blessing, telling us to meditate on the question Jesus posed to Peter: \u201cMi ami tu?\u201d \u201cDo you love me?\u201d and encouraging us to always keep walking, to never stop moving forward.<\/p>\n

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I am happy to note that I understood 95% of what was said during the pilgrimage. It has been tremendously helpful to spend time talking with Italian students that are my age. I do still struggle forming sentences quickly and expressing my thoughts with precision, but I trust that with more time, even that will improve.<\/p>\n

The other day in one of my tutoring sessions, I asked my instructor, Andrea, if he had any tips to help me become more comfortable and natural in holding conversations. He said that one of the biggest problems he noticed I had was with self-confidence. I have been rather quiet the last few weeks in class, and I have noticed that I speak very deliberately in order to avoid making mistakes, but this slows me down and impedes my ability to hold a fluent conversation. My goal now is to just talk. Don\u2019t think too much. Just talk.<\/p>\n

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One of my favorite parts of learning Italian in Italy is the slang that you don\u2019t learn at Notre Dame. My friend Giacomo taught me several slang terms in exchange for some American slang. (His favorites were \u201cSo sick! and \u201cYou\u2019re bananas,\u201d which I thereafter heard a lot.) Here are a few of the things I learned:<\/p>\n

\u201cBella zio\/a!\u201d can be translated as \u201cBro!\u201d For example, I see my friend and to greet him say \u201cBella zio!\u201d with a sort of exaggerated hand gesture and an excited tone of voice. Apparently it\u2019s what the cool kids are saying these days.<\/p>\n

\u201cTanta roba!\u201d is a favorite of mine. It\u2019s one of the many ways to say \u201cSo cool!\u201d For example, if I see a really beautiful mountain or some guy do a cool backflip, I can (and should) say \u201cTanta roba!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cCavolo!\u201d literally means cabbage. However, it is used as an interjection to express surprise, usually about something negative. For example, I realize I forgot to turn in my homework, so I exclaim, \u201cCavolo!\u201d It\u2019s almost like saying \u201cdarn it!\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last weekend I had the wonderful and completely unexpected opportunity to go on a pilgrimage with my new Italian friends. We walked all night from Macerata to Loreto, about 30 kilometers, praying and singing in Italian. I finally cemented the Italian Our Father, Hail Mary, and Glory Be in my brain (how could I not … Continue reading Pilgrimages and Slang<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2510,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63995],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3977","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-italy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2510"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3977"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3982,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3977\/revisions\/3982"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}