After 22 pages of carefully writing out cute little sentences in Italian in the imperfetto dell'indicativo, imperfetto progressivo, and trapassato prossimo tenses, back in the day tenses, I was seeing crosseyed.
Guarda (lookie:)
Da bambina non mi piacevo il sushi. (When I was a little girl, I didn't like sushi. Or: Back in the day, when I was a little girl, the sushi did not please me.)
Mi e` piaciuto il sushi che ho mangiato ieri. (I liked the sushi Isnarfed ate yesterday. Or: The sushi pleased me which I ate yesterday.)
I finished a final exercise and a crossword puzzle filling in the missing forms of they had eaten, you have arrived, they had done, and we have arrived. After acing them both (and understanding what I was doing!) I gave myself a star and smiley face respectively for each activity.
"I'm such a good little student," I thought ... even if I'm at about the 3rd grade level.
Yet, I couldn't go another page. The next lesson is passato remoto (past absolute or distant past), the profuse application of which I remember distinctly from the pages of Luigi Pirandello's Sicilian Seduction nearly 6 months ago. I also refer to this as the "Waaay back in the day, like, before America was discovered" tense.
Chi invento` il sushi? (Way back in the day, before America was discovered, who invented the sushi?)
This lesson on expressing way the hell back in the past will have to wait until tomorrow. I may even skip it and move on to something a little more conversationally useful. I may even play hookie.
Therefore, after class today,just like 30 years ago I snuck out behind the school into the garage to drink Boone's farm Chilean Cab Sauv and played spin the bottle shredded more of the past where I encountered even more back in the day.
Let's talk about DRINKING AND SHREDDING for just a minute. It's a strange place (somewhere between the 2nd glass of vino going down way too easily and snorted shredder dust) where your logic is faulty, your paranoia is high, and between strains of Don McLean's American Pie on the iPod on shuffle you truly believe that everything must be destroyed in the name of national security.
Your documented weight room activities, for example, from 11 years ago are most certainly a national security threat or an invitation to identity theft. I mean, who couldn't use a page with the words "Quads: Squats, Decline Press; Pull-ups (back when I could do, like, 4); Lats, Pecs, and Hams" against you?
Or evidence of:
- a vehicle (you no longer own) shipped to (and then from) a country (you lived in 20 years ago) with a husband (you would have shredded had he fit in the slot),
- airline shipping documents for pets (dearly departed years ago) from a country in which you no longer reside
- bills of lading for the shipment of furniture (you no longer have)
- buying and selling paperwork (from 5 homes you no longer own, including one you started building 15 years ago, but had to back out because the military changed their mind about your future location 3 times)
The Franklin-Covey planner pages - important stuff in here:
- teach a 5AM step aerobics class
- take dog to the vet at 1045
- 0630 sub Chelsea's kickboxing (note: Civil Engineers - they like push-ups, they just don't know it yet)
- 6 June - get wisdom teeth pulled
- dinner at a A's - bring wine (A if you're reading this, it was 1700, 5 March - your hubby made pork chops; the wine was a Gewurztraminer.)
Good times. OK - they were good - but good enough to keep calendars, road tax stickers, inventories, and vet records (! I know !) from 10-20+ years ago? Yet - now, it seems like just merely throwing this stuff away would be a bad plan. It must be destroyed. And the more you drink, the more you rationalize EVERYTHING must be obliterated. Or Red Dawn could happen or something.
Seriously. Why? Why do I have this stuff? Not any mooo-ooore. After overheating the my monster (really awesome!) Fellowes power shredder three more times I hauled it back in, typed this out, and now?
Marcello Mastroianni in Divorce, Italian Style (1961) - another classic from - you guessed it - back in the day...
STOP! MOVIE TIME!
(Oh god, that just took cheddar fest to a whole new level, didn't it?)
Guarda (lookie:)
Da bambina non mi piacevo il sushi. (When I was a little girl, I didn't like sushi. Or: Back in the day, when I was a little girl, the sushi did not please me.)
Mi e` piaciuto il sushi che ho mangiato ieri. (I liked the sushi I
I finished a final exercise and a crossword puzzle filling in the missing forms of they had eaten, you have arrived, they had done, and we have arrived. After acing them both (and understanding what I was doing!) I gave myself a star and smiley face respectively for each activity.
"I'm such a good little student," I thought ... even if I'm at about the 3rd grade level.
Yet, I couldn't go another page. The next lesson is passato remoto (past absolute or distant past), the profuse application of which I remember distinctly from the pages of Luigi Pirandello's Sicilian Seduction nearly 6 months ago. I also refer to this as the "Waaay back in the day, like, before America was discovered" tense.Chi invento` il sushi? (Way back in the day, before America was discovered, who invented the sushi?)
This lesson on expressing way the hell back in the past will have to wait until tomorrow. I may even skip it and move on to something a little more conversationally useful. I may even play hookie.
Therefore, after class today,
Let's talk about DRINKING AND SHREDDING for just a minute. It's a strange place (somewhere between the 2nd glass of vino going down way too easily and snorted shredder dust) where your logic is faulty, your paranoia is high, and between strains of Don McLean's American Pie on the iPod on shuffle you truly believe that everything must be destroyed in the name of national security.
Your documented weight room activities, for example, from 11 years ago are most certainly a national security threat or an invitation to identity theft. I mean, who couldn't use a page with the words "Quads: Squats, Decline Press; Pull-ups (back when I could do, like, 4); Lats, Pecs, and Hams" against you?
Or evidence of:
- a vehicle (you no longer own) shipped to (and then from) a country (you lived in 20 years ago) with a husband (you would have shredded had he fit in the slot),
- airline shipping documents for pets (dearly departed years ago) from a country in which you no longer reside
- bills of lading for the shipment of furniture (you no longer have)
- buying and selling paperwork (from 5 homes you no longer own, including one you started building 15 years ago, but had to back out because the military changed their mind about your future location 3 times)
The Franklin-Covey planner pages - important stuff in here:
- teach a 5AM step aerobics class
- take dog to the vet at 1045
- 0630 sub Chelsea's kickboxing (note: Civil Engineers - they like push-ups, they just don't know it yet)
- 6 June - get wisdom teeth pulled
- dinner at a A's - bring wine (A if you're reading this, it was 1700, 5 March - your hubby made pork chops; the wine was a Gewurztraminer.)
Good times. OK - they were good - but good enough to keep calendars, road tax stickers, inventories, and vet records (! I know !) from 10-20+ years ago? Yet - now, it seems like just merely throwing this stuff away would be a bad plan. It must be destroyed. And the more you drink, the more you rationalize EVERYTHING must be obliterated. Or Red Dawn could happen or something.
Seriously. Why? Why do I have this stuff? Not any mooo-ooore. After overheating the my monster (really awesome!) Fellowes power shredder three more times I hauled it back in, typed this out, and now?
Marcello Mastroianni in Divorce, Italian Style (1961) - another classic from - you guessed it - back in the day...
STOP! MOVIE TIME!
(Oh god, that just took cheddar fest to a whole new level, didn't it?)
I feel for you and your past tenses....
ReplyDeleteback in the day I was in school the rules were simple:
future is tomorrow,
present is now,
passato prossimo is in a past that is still present [oggi ho mangiato... today is not finished yet],
imperfetto something in the past which has a time span and you are referring or what to put an accent on the time span
past when the time it refers to is gone be it 5 minutes ago or jurassic era
so you would say "stamattina mangiavo una mela quando ha suoonato il campanello" o "ieri mangiavo una mela quando suono` il campanello" if you want to refer to the time of the eating and the action of the door bell ringing
trapassato remoto ... that is another story: it is an art not a tense!
where things get complicated is that in the intervening years the passato remoto has become less and less used, at time I wonder when we used it now: we even say : "sono nata..." which last time I checked is an action that should have finished a long time ago.
Buy and large the passato remoto seems to have become the tense of fables ["E vissero felici a contenti."] and the passato prossimo can be used safely whenever the imperfetto does not apply, unless ....
... unless you are in Sicily where il passato remoto is used for anything that is not in the future - a political incorrect observation but it is always amazing how correct politically incorrect observations are ;-).
See - and here I keep thinking I'm making this harder than it should be - or am just really, really stupid. I liken this to trying to nail jello to the ceiling.
ReplyDeleteI was once told use of ero/eri/era, ecc. was for an action that was completed long ago. Not sure about that explanation yet. But I can't say "Ero nata" because even though I was born, as far as I know, I'm still around - not dead - so technically, that action is not complete? Come?)
Sono nata, then would mean "I was born and still currently engaged in living operations?" Yet, sono adata a Venezia = I went to Venice, but I'm obviously not still there. Here it comes: boh? As you said, that action is complete - in the past - I was born, I went - doesn't matter where I am now.
Then the imperfect indicative made sense; "used to be" for nailing down a time in history (as a child, per esampio)
"Ero molto studiosa" or "Bevevo il latte ogni giorno"
I think I got that.
Then along came imperfect progressive which could be used in lieu of the imperfect indicative. (And I KNEW there was a way to use gerunds in the past, but couldn't express this earlier this summer.)
WHILE I was going, she was sleeping.
Mentre stavo andando lei dormiva OR
Mentre andavo lei dormiva
I think I got that.
Then the pluperfect - Ero arrivata
"I had arrived"
to distinguish from the passato prossimo - Sono arrivata "I have arrived" - all in the past.
Mama mia - ho bisogno di piu` caffe.
Finally, you validated my instincts about the "Fable" tense - which I will always associate with reading Sicilian (the little I've read) authors. I like that reference. And no worries - I'm the queen of politically incorrect observations. Hence, this blog. :)
Thank you, as always, for your comments - they really do help. There are days when I only start to wonder, "What the hell are you doing, Val? Why bother?" But then I realize, it's one of those weird, geeky things that I enjoy doing - and finally have the time.
I will be driving my Italian teachers crazy this October, I'm sure.