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Lesson Introduction
One of the great mysteries for visitors to Italy involves buses. Specifically knowing when and where to buy bus tickets. In today's podcast join us as we listen to a conversation between a potential bus passenger and a not-so-friendly bus driver! You'll be learning some great phrases for asking how to do things.
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missworldtraveler says
June 23, 2008
Another great lesson italianPod!
Whenever I travel in Europe, I like to get on a bus and ride the entire route. I find public transportation a great way to see the city and to save money. However, I didn't ride any buses in Rome because my italian friend insisted the best way to see Rome was on foot. Now that I know how impatient some bus drivers can be, I'm so glad I listened to her.
My only bad experience with a bus driver was in Spain. After I entered the bus, I held out a handful of change and told the bus driver to take what he needed. Instead, he pointed to the door and told me to get off!!
michele says
June 23, 2008
...and my only bad experience with a bus driver was in China!
Does anyone of you know that crazy one, driving five years ago on a bus of the line number... well I don't remember, going from the Pudong airport to centre of Shanghai?
The most astonishing thing was that nobody but me seemed to care at all of the speed and the continuous giant slalom among the cars and trucks.. And, from the horrible rolling and yaw, I think the tyres were completely flat too... Everybody were quietly speaking on their mobiles!
billkaulitzlover says
June 23, 2008
what's the name of the song in the beginning of the podcast?
michele says
June 23, 2008
hi eruworld@
is one of the most famous songs by Renato Carosone, and these are words and music (you should be able to listen to it).
lunetta says
June 23, 2008
Hi Eruworld. The song is called 'Tu vuo fa l'americano'. You can find it on youtube here.
michele says
June 23, 2008
Brava Lunetta, it's incredible... but you were able to find it on youtube! Its really "juicy"
...but, are you able to understand the words?
lunetta says
June 23, 2008
:-)
More or less. It's always more difficult for me to understand when people speak in dialect or with a heavy regional accent. On the other hand I speak Italian with a Sicilian accent (cioè con i vocali molto aperti...) so I usually have more difficulties with the northern dialects and accents.
michele says
June 23, 2008
..trying to guess how it sounds your accent.. it must be funny, in a positive, and totally respectful sense, I mean, of course!
ciao
lunetta says
June 23, 2008
You should hear the impression I do of my Sicilian father-in-law, il palermitano d.o.p. ;-)
And I was typing a bit too fast in my previous comment. It's not i vocali aperti but le vocali aperte.
michele says
June 23, 2008
..now it occurs to me that you should be the perfect readear of Andrea Camilleri!
My wife is the fan in the family of his many books, but she was able to convince me to read one of his latest ones. So I've just read "Il tailleur grigio".
It is not belonging to his main stream about Commissario Montalbano, it's a story that, in a way, remembers me George Simenon (the other most favourite one of my wife) in his darkest novels, but Camilleri is a little bit.. lighter? At any rate, a good book to read, if you are talented for il dialetto Siciliano, like I guess you are!
Cornelia says
June 23, 2008
Great topic, haha! You could reuse it in a similar way for future GermanPod: let's take Berlin. Here you buy your tickets from vending machines with a user interface and tariff logic that confuse older people completely. But then there is the next challenge: where or how to validate the ticket - there are are other machines for it. So when you think you ought to show your ticket to the bus driver he might yell at you as charmingly as his Italian colleague: "soll ick da rinbißen oder watt?!" (Should I bite into it or what else?!) Move to the machine and get a stamp on it...
billkaulitzlover says
June 23, 2008
Grazie Mille Michele e Lunetta! :)
auntie68 says
June 24, 2008
Regarding the "Sundays" question: E magari possibile comprare i biglietti in anticipo della domenica? Just a wild guess.
In Ravello, the tabaccheria which sells the bus tickets is right next to the town piazza. And my friend's Zio Ignazio has a permanent seat, not on the UN Security Council, but just outside the tobacconist's. So when I go to Atrani, or Amalfi (or Salerno or wherever), the ENTIRE TOWN knows where I went -- and even with whom I went --, because I bought the bus tickets. The Italian Small Town Radar Tracking System is very powerful!
On one trip to Ravello, my friend and I tried to sneak off the radar. Every restaurant in Ravello proper had already been covered by my hosts, not one single place would accept my money. So I decided we would trek discreetly all the way to the Villa Amore to eat, halfway to the Villa Cimbrone.
At Villa Amore, I did not recognize the waiter, and we had a great meal. Too great; at one point I asked myself, "Wow, did we go for the really fancy wine after all?" "Why are there so many prawns in this dish?", but didn't linger on the topic.
When the time came to pay the bill, the waiter, Giorgio, said, "Non. Va bene", with a huge grin. I asked (groaning inwardly), "Fabrizio?" The waiter said, "Non Fabrizio.Dario! Dario, il cugino, il cugino!"
Later that day, I learned from Zia Giulia (who heard it from Zia Tina) that the waiter, Giorgio, had realized that he had "le Giapponese di Dario" in his place. He telephoned Dario's office, but Dario was at home having lunch at home with his Mamma, so Giorgio called Dario's Mum and received firm instructions to let him pick up the tab. Dario loved it when my friend and I told and re-told to everybody the story of how his network had tracked us down! We went back the next day to tease the waiter and give him a present from Asia (=Asian revenge).
Sorry for another super-long post, part of me wanted to share a side of Italy that is incredibly gracious and generous with its time and hospitality.
michele says
June 25, 2008
ciao Auntie, you wrote a real tasty... short novel! I like it. I just want to say a couple of words about your usage of "magari". It's really interesting, and it's funny that, just in my previuos post I mentioned Andrea Camilleri.
Well, the fact is that in all his novels, magari is used in the same identical way you've done here. I was used to think, up to this moment, this was one of his well known literary expedient to give a strong dialectal colour. I'm saying so because, in my experience, to use magari to say anche give me a sense, even not of an explicit error, of a little tripping(?) into the flow of the speech. Of course, having read some by Camilleri I was trained to get its meaning in this sense, but I was thinking that it was a merely peculiar usage of dialetto Siciliano (it would be interesting to know this: Lunetta do you say magari in this meaning?).
The simple fact that you use it in the same way give me a strong hint that it's a wider area to make this usage, at least Campania and Sicilia.
So I took my Dizionario Garzanti della Lingua Italiana, and i've found this:
1 inter. interjection (che) esprime vivo interesse; anche con senso rafforzativo: "Ti piacerebbe fare un bel viaggio?" "Magari!" Would you like to have a nice journey? Yes I would! (my English transaltion are always merely, rough, approximate ones) And that's the main usage I've always known and practiced.
2 cong. quand' anche, anche se, con valore concessivo: Lo aspetterò, magari dovessi restare qui un giorno intero! I'll be waiting for him, even though I should stay all the day along! And this is the closest usage to Camilleri's and yours. But it seems to me that it is not exactly the same one.
3 avv. forse anche, persino: magari riuscirà a farcela; magari dirà di non saperne niente maybe he will be able to make the grade(?), even he'll say he doesn't know anything about it. This is very common for me too
Well, Auntie I want to thank you, because you've just gave me a good opportunity to get a deeper and more clear understanding of my own language!! BTW, please don't change anything in your Italian, specialmente magari!!
ciao a tutti Michele.
auntie68 says
June 25, 2008
!!! Truth is (and you are too nice to say this), my Italian is the Italian of una zia proprio provinciale, right? I'm a Singaporean zia (Hakka dialect + Hokkien dialect). Aaarghhhh!!!! Thanks for the interesting research!
Btw, I bet that your Dizionario Garzanti della Lingua Italiana weighs at least 1.5 kg!!!!
P/s: Michele, thanks for being so gracious and supportive to learners like me, always!
michele says
June 25, 2008
even worse.. 2.33 Kg!!
fabrizio says
June 25, 2008
Io lo vedo come una via di mezzo tra il primo e il terzo significato. Esprime un dubbio e al tempo stesso una speranza: "Non è che magari hai trovato il mio portafoglio...?"
michele says
June 25, 2008
Fabrizio, are you from Rome? In that case your sentence would be an interesting one. Perhaps it could show the arising of a.. "shift" in its usage and meaning, already showing a more southern sounding taste . Isn't it?
ciao Michele.
catherinem says
June 25, 2008
This is a really interesting word because it has so many meanings. Some of them, in the end, really depend on context and inflection.
One meaning is just about the equivalent of "I wish!" It usually comes as a response to a statement.
-Ma, l'Italia ha vinto la partita?
-Magari!
(Did Italy win the game? / I wish [they had]!)
(In this case, it's an expression of a wish or desire. The first person sets up a situation and the second person responds "I'd love to," or "I wish!")
As Michele and Fabrizio have described above, the other meaning is more like forse (maybe).
-Magari un'altra volta.
(Maybe another time)
To translate Fabrizio's good example of the third use of this word:
Non è che magari hai trovato il mio portafoglio...?
You haven't, by chance, found my wallet...?
auntie68 says
June 25, 2008
oh no, Catherine, what have I started, inadvertently (I swear, it was inadvertent, it's more my poor Italian, than anything...)? My intended meaning was actually pretty much what fabrizio understood by my words. Sort of: doubt mixed with hopefulness. Thanks.And so sorry!!! Aarghhhh!!!!
fabrizio says
June 25, 2008
Yes, Michele, I'm from Rome. Besides, I don't think it's a regional usage. "Magari" comes from the greek expression "makari", that more or less means "I would be happy if it were true", so it's a way to express a hope or a wish. It's true that it can have a more "neutral" meaning, just to express uncertainty, as for other expressions like "per caso", "tante volte", but I think that this second meaning is the derived one.
raedalsaleh says
July 13, 2008
I would like to talk about where could you find the bus ticket on Sunday... I live in Italy and every Sunday I am used to go to another city to visit my uncle and I always buy the ticket on the Bus..
marcod says
July 13, 2008
@raedalsaleh. Where do you live in Italy? In Trentino Alto Adige I have never been able to buy them on the bus and I know Catherine had the same experience in Parma. I am quite positive that Tuscany shares the same problem.
Everyone please share your experiences and let's solve the mystery. Where can you buy tickets on the bus in Italy??
ps: I found an italian blog called noticketonthebus where the focus everything related to this matter. ["...discussioni su controllori, bigliettai, autisti e abusivi nella estenuante ricerca della verità di chi deve fare il biglietto, chi lo deve controllare e soprattutto chi lo deve pagare!"]
neverstop.marco. :)
raedalsaleh says
July 15, 2008
I live in Pavia and I have been going almost every Sunday to Vigevano by bus for the past 5 months. And every time I did this, I bought the ticket on the bus from the bus driver.
godcape says
February 8, 2010
My Italian friend said to me, buy a lot of ticket if you know you take bus on Sunday.
But this means not for tourist.