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25 unusual facts about Italian language


1941–42 Serie C

The Lega Italiana Calcio Professionistico (Italian for Italian Professional Football League), commonly known as Lega Pro (Pro League), is the governing body that runs the third and fourth highest football divisions in Italy, the Prima Divisione and Seconda Divisione respectively.

Coppa Italia Serie D

Coppa Italia Serie D (Italian for Serie D Italian Cup) is a straight knock-out based competition involving teams from Serie D in Italian football.

Festoon

A Festoon (from French feston, Italian festone, from a Late Latin festo, originally a festal garland, Latin festum, feast), is a wreath or garland, and in architecture typically a carved ornament depicting conventional arrangement of flowers, foliage or fruit bound together and suspended by ribbons.

Genova Piazza Principe railway station

The station derives its name from the adjacent Piazza del Principe (In Italian literally "plaza of the prince"), located next to the Palazzo del Principe (literally "palace of the prince") adjacent to the street called Via Andrea Doria in the Fassolo neighbourhood.

In pectore

The Italian language version of the phrase – in petto – is also commonly used.

Irregularities and exceptions in Interlingua

Most of these irregularities also exist in Interlingua's source languages; English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and to a lesser extent German and Russian.

Itanglese

Itanglese, also known as Anglitaliano, refers to the blend (at different degrees) of Italian and English, in the speech of people who speak parts of two languages, or whose normal language is different from that of the country where they live.

Joseph Moskowitz

When Moskowitz appeared at a cafe in New York City in 1908, the New York Times reported that, "posters in Yiddish, Italian, Hungarian, and Roumanian (sic) announce his presence throughout the length of East Houston Street."

Kenneth Setton

He claimed that knowledge of languages is the basis of knowledge of historical science, and he spoke Italian, French, German and Catalan, besides his favorites Latin and classical Greek.

Leopolda railway

The Leopolda railway (Italian: Ferrovia Leopolda) is a line built in the 1840s connecting the Tuscan cities of Florence, Pisa and Livorno via Empoli.

MacArthur Study Bible

Initially only available in the New King James Version, the MacArthur Study Bible is now also published using the New American Standard Bible text and the English Standard Version text, and the New International Version text as well as in Spanish, German, French, Italian and Portuguese.

Mastrantonio

Mastrantonio is a surname of Italian origin.

Milan Passante railway

"Passante" is the Italian for "passing" and is used to describe a railway built through a major city, connecting suburban lines, modelled on the underground junctions built in West Germany in the 1970s.

Monte Forato

It is formed by two peaks of similar altitude, connected by a natural arch which has given the group its name (meaning "Holed Mountain" in Italian).

O Malli

Trailers and still speculates that the movie is inspired from the 2000 Italian film Malèna.

Piano nobile

The piano nobile (Italian, "noble floor" or "noble level", also sometimes referred to by the corresponding French term, bel étage) is the principal floor of a large house, usually built in one of the styles of classical renaissance architecture.

Pisa–Lucca railway

The Pisa–Lucca railway (Italian: Ferrovia Pisa-Lucca) is a line that was built in 1846 connecting the Tuscan cities of Pisa and Lucca.

Polkan

Polkan or Palkan (Russian: Полка́н or Палкан, from the Italian Pulicane) is a half-human, half-horse (in some variants, half-dog) creature from Russian folktales which possesses enormous power and speed.

Sulphatara

Sulphatara or Solfatara is an Italian term for a volcanic vent that releases gaseous substances containing sulfur.

The Jesuit Relations

Originally written in French, Latin, and Italian, The Jesuit Relations were reports from Jesuit missionaries in the field that were sent to their superiors to update them as to the missionaries’ progress in the conversion of various Native American tribes.

The Last of the Red Hat Mamas

She tries to convince Principal Skinner that she speaks fluent Italian, but the principal is skeptical.

Three letter rule

This has resulted in short words such as the notes of the solfege scale (do, re, mi, etc.; from Latin via Italian) or the Greek alphabet (pi, nu, etc.) and miscellaneous others such as bo, qi, ka.

Trenta

Trenta means "thirty" in some of the Romance languages, including Italian and Catalan.

Vext

After cancellation by DC, the series was reprinted in Italian by Press Play Publishing as a back-up in the Italian Lobo series, issues 29–34 (January through June, 2000.)

Yolanda Vadiz

Vadiz released her only album, Amor en Mil Idiomas (Love in a Thousand Languages), in 1986, produced by her mother, in Spanish, English and Italian.


1503 in Italy

The Challenge of Barletta (Italian: Disfida di Barletta) was a battle fought near Barletta, southern Italy, on February 13, 1503, on the plains between Corato and Andria.

2012–13 Coppa Italia Serie D

Coppa Italia Serie D (Italian for Serie D Italian Cup) is a straight knock-out based competition involving teams from Serie D in Italian football.

Bardera Polytechnic

Juba Valley Agricultural Institute (Italian: Juba Valle Istituto Agrario)is part of the college system and the focus is developing the economic sectors of the district and region which was neglected for close to two decades.

Bianca Maria

Bianca Maria is a feminine given name, a combination of the Italian name Bianca, which means "white" and is a cognate of the medieval name Blanche and of Maria, a Latin form of the Greek name Μαριαμ or Mariam or Maria, found in the New Testament.

Big Nazo

Big Nazo, which derives its name from "big nose" in Italian, made an appearance at the 2010 Winter Olympics.

Bilingual sign

Another example is the German-speaking South Tyrol, which was annexed to Italy during World War I and eventually became the focus of assimilation policies (the conversion of toponyms into Italian by Ettore Tolomei, for example).

Canton of Bellinzona

The canton was founded in 1798 with the slogan Liberi e svizzeri (Italian for Freemen and Swiss) as a means of remaining a part of Switzerland, rather than being annexed to the Cisalpine client republic.

Christian Mathias Schröder

Low Saxon, like many other Brazilian minority languages (such as Riograndenser Hunsrückisch, Talian (Italian) and Japanese), is still spoken by some in the old colonial zones.

Corps of Naval Engineering

The Corps of Naval Engineering (Italian language: Corpo del genio navale) is part of the Italian Navy under the control of the Ministry of Defence.

Demarest Hall

In the late 1990s and early 2000s a number of language studies sections were among the officially funded special interest sections of the dormitory including: French; Spanish; and Italian.

Demographics of the Bronx

Other languages or groups of languages spoken at home by more than 0.25% of the population of the Bronx include Italian (1.36%), Kru, Ibo, or Yoruba (3.07%), French/French Creole (2.72%), and Albanian (2.54%).

Detachment of wall paintings

There are three main methods, typically referred to by their Italian terms, namely stacco a massello, involving detachment and removal of painting, render, and some or all of the mural support; stacco or detachment of the painting with render alone; and strappo, lit. "tearing", lifting of only the paint layer, attached to a facing with adhesive.

Diritto Municipale

The Municipal Law' (Diritto Municipale in the original Italian) was a compilation of the knight's and Malta's laws during their stay on the Island.

Fernanda

Fernanda (pronounced fer-NAHN-dah) is a Portuguese, Spanish and Italian feminine equivalent of Fernando, a male given name of Germanic origin, with an original meaning of "adventurous, bold journey".

Francesco Angiolini

Francesco Angiolini (1750–1788) was a Jesuit scholar who translated a number of classical works into both Polish and Italian for the first time.

Gerolamo Araolla

Araolla was an important poet, authoring verses in Italian, Sardinian and Spanish, the three dominate languages in Sardinia in the period.

Giovanni di Bernardo Rucellai

Both were completed by early in 1516, and are often cited together with the Sophonisba (1515) of Gian Giorgio Trissino as being the first classical tragedies in the vernacular language that would later be called Italian; they are also the earliest works to be written in blank (unrhymed) hendecasyllables.

ICN Radio

ICN Radio is an Italian-language radio in the New York metropolitan area, owned by America Oggi the only Italian daily newspaper in the USA.

Insieme: 1992

"Insieme: 1992" (English translation: "Together: 1992") was the winner of the Eurovision Song Contest 1990, in Zagreb, Yugoslavia, performed in Italian by Toto Cutugno for Italy, that country's second victory in the Contest.

Linguatec

:The Voice Reader text-to-speech program reads in twelve languages: German, British English, American English, French, Quebec French, Spanish, Mexican Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Portuguese, Czech, Chinese.

Luis de Ávila y Zuniga

The book, first published in 1548, was very popular in its time, and was translated into French, Dutch, German, Italian, and Latin.

Magna Graecia

Griko is the name of a language combining ancient Doric, Byzantine Greek, and Italian elements, spoken by few people in some villages in the Province of Reggio Calabria and Salento.

Marco Valerio Editore

The company has a particular interest in producing texts for visually impaired people, including large print books in Italian, English and French.

Mòcheno language

Mòcheno is an Upper German variety spoken in three towns of the Mocheni Valley (German: Fersental, Italian: Valle del Fersina, Mòcheno: Bersntol), in Trentino, northeastern Italy.

Mountains classification in the Giro d'Italia

The classification was first calculated in 1933; from 1974 to 2011, the leader of the mountains classification in the Giro d'Italia wore the maglia verde (from Italian: "green jersey"): in 2012, as part of a sponsorship deal, the jersey colour was changed to blue (maglia azzurra).

Porrettana railway

It is also known in Italian as the Transappenninica ("trans-Apennines").

Princess Maria Annunciata of Bourbon-Two Sicilies

Princess Maria Annunciata Isabella Filomena Sabasia of Bourbon-Two Sicilies, full Italian name: Maria Annunziata Isabella Filomena Sabasia, Principessa di Borbone delle Due Sicilie (24 March 1843 – 4 May 1871) was the mother of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the archduke whose assassination in Sarajevo in 1914 precipitated the start of World War I.

Robert Naunton

It has also been printed in several collections and has been translated into French and Italian.

Sant'Onofrio

Sant'Onofrio is the Italian name of St. Onuphrius.

Second Municipality of Naples

The Second Municipality (In Italian: Seconda Municipalità or Municipalità 2) is one of the ten boroughs in which the Italian city of Naples is divided.

Superhiks

The band got its name after Superhik (in Italian: Superciuk), a fictitious anti-Robin Hood character who steals from the poor and gives to the rich from the Italian comic book Alan Ford that had and still has a cult status in the former Yugoslav countries.

Tenebrism

Tenebrism, from the Italian, tenebroso (murky), also called dramatic illumination, is a style of painting using very pronounced chiaroscuro, where there are violent contrasts of light and dark and where darkness becomes a dominating feature of the image.

Thomas North

His next work was The Morall Philosophie of Doni (1570), a translation of an Italian collection of eastern fables, popularly known as The Fables of Bidpai.

Tiara of Pope John XXIII

The Tiara of Pope John XXIII was the personal Papal Tiara (triregnum in Latin, triregno in Italian) presented by the region of Bergamo to Angelo Roncalli, who was born there, following his election as Pope John XXIII in 1958.

Treviso Marathon

The Treviso Marathon (Italian: Maratona di Treviso) is an annual road running event which is held in March in the area around the Province of Treviso in Italy.

Tuplet

The most common tuplet (Schonbrun 2007, 8) is the triplet (Ger. Triole, Fr. triolet, It. terzina or tripletta, Sp. tresillo), shown at right.

Umberto Bossi

Bossi gave his last two sons unusual, politically charged names: "Roberto Libertà" (libertà means freedom, and it is a feminine noun in Italian) and "Eridano Sirio" (Eridano being the name of an ancient god of the Po river).

Verrucole Castle

Verrucole Castle (Italian: Fortezza delle Verrucole) is a ruined Medieval fortress located in the Garfagnana region of Tuscany, in San Romano in Garfagnana comune, near the city of Lucca.

Vivione Pass

Vivione Pass Passo (Italian Passo del Vivione) is a mountain pass that links Schilpario in Val di Scalve with Paisco Loveno in Val Camonica.