Parsley is an aromatic cooking herb, used in many recipes of Neapolitan cuisine. In Neapolitan language it is called Petrusino and comes from the ancient Greek petrosélinon and from the archaic Latin petroselinum.
O’ petrusino (the parsley) looks good everywhere. In sauces, soups, meat and even pasta. You can find it here every day at the table, both at lunch and dinner. In Naples it is used above all to season hot soups, the ones that feed Neapolitans throughout the winter.
From this culinary logic one of the most famous proverbs of the Neapolitan originates:“petrusino ogni mmenesta” (petrusino in every soup). What does it mean and why is it said so? Well when a person is really intrusive, always present in your life, you can call him precisely o’ petrusino and tell him that he is just a petrusino ogni mmenesta.
Obviously this idiom can also be used in a context of friendship and family. For example, when a person is really curious and wants to know everything about events and conversations, he will behave like a petrusino. He mostly meddles in conversations that don’t concern him. This happens especially to Neapolitan children who want to immediately enter the speeches of adults. Parents and grandparents usually scold them with a loving tone saying: “Here, petrusino every mmenesta has arrived!”.
The children of Naples love to be called in this way because it means that they are already behaving like they grow up and that, in some way, they are getting into the good graces of adults who appreciate their precocious curiosity.
Over time, children who heard themselves called petrusino when they were young should learn to be more reserved with strangers as they continue to behave excessively curious within the walls of their home.
When the great Neapolitan families get together, those who had been a petrusino as children continue to be a petrusino even as adults. They do this mainly to carry on a family tradition and make their grandmothers and mothers laugh, remembering the sweet times of their childhood.
A slang invented to deceive the prison guards, a reverse dialect that comes from the other side of the ocean. Lunfardo is a dialect spoken in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, particularly in the port area.
In the book “Aproximación al lunfardo“, José Gobello says that the Lunfardo is neither a language, nor a dialect. According to its definition, Lunfardo is a vocabulario compuesto por voces de diverso origen que el hablante de Buenos Aires emplea en oposición al habla general. A vocabulary made up of voices of various origins that the people use instead of the general idiom.
And the desire to rebellion against the imposed society, activated through the use of a new and unwritten language, could have been born there in Argentina around the twentieth century.
A historical moment in which Argentina had recently gained its independence and had seen hundreds of Italian immigrants arrive in its land, mainly from Southern Italy.
In fact, the linguists affirm that Lunfardo is very similar to the Neapolitan dialect, especially in the musicality of the language. Obviously it also contains nuances of other spoken languages such as Genoese, Piedmontese and some words of the archaic Castilian.
Its use is very frequent, especially in the songs of the typical dance of these cities, the tango. Colloquially, it is called lunfa.
Today, some words of the Lunfardo have been incorporated into the common Spanish of the city of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, while many have fallen into disuse, or have a very infrequent use or limited to certain particular contexts. With the word lunfardo, many now tend to indicate all the slang of Buenos Aires and its surroundings, regardless of whether the origin of the term or of the neologism is linked to the real origin of the lunfardo or not.
The words that compose the Lunfardo are essentially verbs, nouns and adjectives. It is not possible to speak completely in Lunfardo, but at most it can be used terms that compose it.
The choice of a Lunfardism reflects a rebellion against linguistic standards and it is for this reason that it can be considered a unique phenomenon, which expresses a relationship with the world in an ironic, critical and contemptuous way.
Lunfardo is a 5,000-word argot (linguistic register of a social group, whose purpose is to exclude strangers from communication, encrypting the messages exchanged), rich in Italian and Neapolitan words, which is spoken in the cities of the Rio de la Plata.
The French domination has released many traces of its memory in the Neapolitan dialect. One of these traces is the way to say“sciuè sciuè”.
According to some linguists, the expression derives from the French past participle ‘Echouè which means “to fail, not to succeed”. And in fact in Neapolitan Sciuè Sciuè means precisely “to do something in a hurry”, “to do something superficially”. But this play on words does not have a negative meaning, on the contrary, it replaces negative thinking with a smile.
If in Naples you say Sciuè Sciuè surely you are not talking about something unfinished, but you are saying that something has been completed, in an approximate way. The positive side of the expression lies precisely in the fact that the work was carried out to the end, even if the smallest details were not taken care of.
Life runs fast and we all know that it’s impossible to take care of all the things we would like to do. Here, therefore, that the Neapolitan promises himself to do what he set out to do and also superficially, in order to obtain a result. The negativity of the French verb is therefore overcome on the positive side. From an optimistic point of view.
Was it impossible to do that thing? Well, I did it quickly, but I still did it. And perhaps it has done even better than planning actions.
Because things done quickly can be better than those done in time.
The will to achieve a goal make everything more special.
When is it that Neapolitans use sciuè sciuè? Let’s make 3 examples…
First of all when they have to cook. Sciuè sciuèis mainly used when cooking spaghetti with garlic and oil “aggio fatto ‘e spaghetti aglio e uoglio sciuè sciuè”. Or when we are late and have to get dressed quickly. The Neapolitan says: Don’t look at my clothing ‘cause this morning I dressed sciuè sciuè. And even when we have an important appointment, but first we have to clean athome, then we Neapolitans say “Aggio fatto ‘na passata ‘nterra e ‘ngopp ‘mobili sciùe sciuè ” : I washed the floor and the furniture quickly.
How many times French kings have commanded in Naples?
Many and their presence in the Neapolitan city has not only brought politics, monuments and dominant influences. It has above all enriched the Neapolitan dialect with new words. The words that made up the Neapolitan language, as we have already said, are almost all from other languages. One of these passing languages is French. It has left many memories in our dialect. Among these we find the verb Arranger which in Neapolitan becomes Arrangiare (or Arrangiammoce) which means: to manage a difficult situation.
What meaning does this verb take in the Neapolitan? Arrangiammoce it is above all a way of life, a lifestyle that every Neapolitan citizen got from birth. If you have nothing to live with, you need to get by, if you are faced with a difficulty, everyone must be able to get by, if the fate becomes mocking, we must not break down but get by or learn to manage as best we can.
Have you invited many friends to dinner but don’t have enough food to feed them? Here it is enough that a single member of your group utters the word “arrangiammoce” so as to exhort all his friends not to regret the eventuality but to take the moment with the right spirit, so as to make the evening succeed, better than as it should have been in the initial idea. The Neapolitans, in fact, have more fun when they manage than when they organize everything perfectly. Indeed, in reality, the established organization bores the Neapolitan who loves to surprise and surprise.
This way of doing can also fight poverty and even the sense of desolation that surrounds you when you think you don’t have enough resources to be able to continue living. The meaning of this philosophy of life is perfectly explained in the lyrics of the song Arrangiàmmoce from the soundtrack of the Neapolitan theater show C’era Una volta Scugnizzi:
Arrangiàmmoce…
E si ‘a musica è bbòna And if the Music is goo
Ce facìmmo purtà We will be brought
Ce astrignìmmo ‘o cazóne we tighten our trousers
E tirammo a campà and we keep going
E cammina cammina and walk on, walk on
Pecché ‘a rròbba ce sta because the stuff is there
E sta pure vicino and it’s also close to you
E se trova si ‘a saje truvà And you will find it only if you can
There are so many words of the Neapolitan language that even the Neapolitans themselves cannot pronounce correctly. One of these is the word “sanfasò”. In reality sanfasò is not a real word, it is above all a way of doing a thing, an expression that indicates the sloppy way in which something is performed. A synonym of sanfasò in the Neapolitan language is the verb “arronzare” which means performing a task without obligation.
Sanfasò comes from the French phrase Sans Façon which in Italian means “alla buona” or “alla meglio”.
As we said before, many words of the Neapolitan dialect are incorrectly pronounced even by the Neapolitans. Most citizens of Naples say sanfasò like this: “sonfrasò”, or “alla sonfrasò”. This happens because often the speaker of the dialect does not know what certain words refer to, does not know where they derive from and above all cannot write them.
But when is it that the Neapolitans pronounce the word sanfasò? Especially when something is not done well. In every Neapolitan house, for example, every time you have to make a bed in the morning, a battle arises between mothers and children. If the son volunteers to make his own bed, or worse, he wants to make his parents’ bed, it is more than obvious that the mother on duty will reproach him for not having made the bed well and will tell him: “look what you’ve done, you always do things ‘alla sanfasò'”.
A typical bed done at sanfasò
If, on the other hand, we are hanging out with our friends, it may happen that a friend of our crew is made fun of for being a guy who does things without particular attention. It therefore happens that if on a Saturday night it is up to him to drive the car to take friends around, he can be told this phrase: “As usually you do things without sense. You parked alla sanfasò”.
Parking at sanfasò
And more. If at home we find ourselves having to cook, we who know nothing about cooking, it is almost certain that the classic Neapolitan grandmother will make fun of us by saying: “Today you cook? Then we certainly eat at Sanfasò”.
In Italian it means giù (Down There). In the neapolitan language it comes from many languages like Spanish, Catalan, French and Portuguese. Abbascio is the product of the words abajo, a baix and en bas.
In Napoli Abbascio is a word that can be used in different contexts. It mainly means down, that down to the building where you live. “Corri, ce sta ‘o pustino abbascio (run, there is the postman down)”. This is the typical phrase that your mother yells at you when the postman arrives at your house and you must also go down in your pajamas to go and sign a letter.
But abbascio also means the place of an appointment. “Ce vedimm abbascio addu te domani (see you down to your place tomorrow)”. Abbascio is therefore also that typical place, the usual place where you meet with friends. And it can be either the door of the palace of a friend, or a square, a street, a wall where everyone passes and it is easy to be able to make an appointment.
Dante plaza, the most common place to meet with friends in Napoli.
Naples is a city divided by neighborhoods, by traditions and ways of living. It contains many cities within one city. Citizens of the upper part of the city usually say the word abbascio when they want to talk about the neighborhoods that are located in the flat area. I’m talking about the neighborhoods of the historic center, the most famous ones. A citizen of the upper districts of Naples often says “vaco abbascio Napoli” to say that he is traveling (by funicular or subway) to the districts of the historic center of Naples. Sometimes abbascio can also be used in a derogatory way since the neighborhoods of the historic center are among the poorest in the city. And so an inhabitant of Vomero (the richest and highest Neighborhood of Naples) quietly says “Sto andando abbascio Napoli” to say: “I’m going to that area that I despise but where I am forced to go for work”.
Vomero neighboorhood.
We have seen in previous articles that the Neapolitan language is able to transform the meaning of a foreign word. Now we have been able to observe that a word that derives from different European languages takes on multiple meanings in the same Neapolitan dialect.
The culture and the freedom of speech of the Neapolitan are still evolving. They constantly change, defying time and traditions, the canons of language and the barriers of perception.
I don’t remember what was the day I realized that Napoli was invaded by tourists.
When I was young walked in the little streets of my town and watched groups of foreigners in the churches and museums. They were always from the same nationalities: germans, french, japanese, maybe spanish. Then one day I decided to go eating in one of the most notorious pizza’s restaurant of Napoli. I was alone, back in town after a trip in Denmark and I craved for some good food from my country. I sat at the “singles table”. Soon after a pizza was served at the table next to me, where a turkish woman and a portoguese man were chatting. The two of them asked me if I was from Napoli and I quickly confirm their doubts. They started to ask me many questions about the city, its history and the language that we speak. I smiled and told them that we neapolitans have a language of our own, like Catalans, and we refuse to speak italian, in some ways.
“Why?” a guy sitting behind me asked.
“Because we have a strong bond with our culture – I answered.
“Where are you from?” the pizza chef asked as he serve the pizza.
“From Australia” answered the tourist.
“Did you get it?” the chef told me. “I’ve never seen an australian guy who asks something about neapolitan language!” (Io nun aggio mai visto n’australiano che se domanda coccos sulla lingua napoletana!”)
While I was waiting to be served the portoguese man asked me about my family, if they spoke neapolitan too. I remember that he told me this: “Can you tell me something in neapolitan and then translate it for me?” I answered that I could have done it but the meaning of the words would have been lost in this way, like when you translate a Shakespeare’s sonata in italian. Then I remember that I told him something not so nice like: “Only neapolitan can understand neapolitan.” At that point the turkish woman said: “I can understand it! I came here eight times now. Listen, I know how to say: jamm, uè uagliò, and even: cumm site bellella. They explain to me that this is a compliment.”
“Yes, it is. It means that you are beautiful outside and inside. A nice person.” I answered.
“Cool! Oh, I love being here – she adds – but the day after tomorrow I have to leave.”
The smiles of that day filled my heart with joy and my mind with ideas. Speaking neapolitan is so natural for me and for the people borned and raised in this city but we have always thought that this language is personal, not so intriguing for a foreigner. Then why those tourists asked me so many questions? Maybe I found out the answer before in my trip in Denmark. One rainy sunday of september I invited some friends from Copenhagen to my house there and cooked them some traditional neapolitan dishes. Some eggplants with tomato sauce and a “mozzarella in carrozza”. While we were eating in the living room we’ve put some classic neapolitan music on, sung by Carosone. All of my friends told me that they knew this musician and his music, that it was one of the most famous in Denmark and in Europe in general so I decided to put something different as Liberato, 9 Maggio. “I bet you don’t know this one!” I told them, laughing.
Everyone liked it but the general opinion was: “”A little bit ugly in the language but really warm in the communication”.
Maybe this is the secret of neapolitan language… Sending emotions and warmth when you hear it. But how is this possible? How an English, a French, a German or an American person can feel emotions in hearing words they don’t comprehend? I’ve been trying for weeks to answer this question and even now I still don’t have a clear explanation but I think I came up with a meaning behind it.
When I say that a neapolitan almost refuses to speak Italian I mean that, in assuming this position, there’s a strong sense of indentity (as well as belonging). Speaking in neapolitan means remember costantly. Remember an event, a little story from its town, a tradition, a funny story, a sad situation which we try to light up a bit. Every word, every sentence, every neapolitan way of saying is a costant celebration of memories and the more we speak it the more we remember. This is the way that we have chosen to not lose our selves, to not betraying our identity, to not leave our History behind.
Neapolitan Dialect Of The World 