The Library of Lost Books

Hoorah! Something interesting to blog about. Over at Me and my big mouth Scott Pack is revealing his brilliant new venture. Never having ordered a print-0n-demand (POD) book, I am going to order Krabat and read it to my daughters (or perhaps I'll just keep it to myself). It will be interesting to see how a POD compares to a normal paperback and it will give me something to report back on.

I am suffering from GAT (sorry for all these acronyms!) - guilty all the time. Apparently it is something we are becoming overburdened with, especially women. I discovered the syndrome in the free magazine Stylist which is a really good read. I fear blogging (or not blogging) is a great cause of GAT for me.

Fingers and toes

In Italian a number of words associated with the body have irregular plurals. I am not quite sure why and it probably merits a bit of investigation.

Language learners are often thrown when one word is used for two distinct items. In this case, fingers and toes (il dito). However, remember that language is not words in isolation, they are used against a backdrop and this backdrop is known as context. If you are talking to someone or reading something you will know immediately whether dito is referring to a finger or toe.

And Italian is very logical when you think about it. Your fingers, which are your basic tool for counting, are very much bound up with the number 10 dieci (ten). And ten applies to both fingers and toes. Look at all the English "ten" words that can be connected to this: digit, decimal, decibel, decathlon, decade and so on.

Non ho l'età

The posting before from YouTube is Gigliola Cinquetti singing the song that won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1964. She was only 16 so the title (I'm not old enough - literally 'I don't have the age') is apt.

Listen to it a few times and then read the words. The vocab is really useful and her voice is so clear.

Non ho l'età
Non ho l'età per amarti
Non ho l'età per uscire sola con te

E non avrei
Non avrei
Nulla da dirti
Perché, tu sai
Molte più cose di me

Lascia che io viva
Un amore romantico
Nell' attesa
Che venga quel giorno
Ma ora no

Non ho l'età
Non ho l'età per amarti
Non ho l'età per uscire sola con te

Se tu vorrai
Se tu vorrai
Aspettarmi
Quel giorno avrai
Tutto il mio amore per te

Lascia che io viva
Un amore romantico
Nell' attesa
Che venga quel giorno
Ma ora no

Non ho l'età
Non ho l'età per amarti
Non ho l'età per uscire sola con te

Se tu vorrai
Se tu vorrai
Aspettarmi
Quel giorno avrai
Tutto il mio amore per te

Written by Mario Panzeri / Nicola Salerno

A beautiful Italian song from 1964 - more info on next blog

facebook

Proably lots of you are already on facebook but yesterday I signed up properly. Before you could say PublishingCupboard a good friend from University days had put up pictures of us from about 1981 and there I was staring at my thin young self.

Once I had gotten over that shock I went onto a niece's page to find myself displayed in a picture from last summer wearing a swimsuit and looking remarkably like Michelin woman.

That, my friends, is why I find facebook rather scary.