Tuesday 25 June 1661

Annotations

• N A. De Araujo on Fri 25 Jun 2004, 11:44pm

  “La cruda la bella” If my italian serves me right cruda means raw;bella of course means beautiful(feminine).is he talking about vegetables:salsa cruda? or perhaps apples,like beautiful raw apples?If the song is about women,which I think it is most likely, then I would have trouble translating it.

• N dirk on Sat 26 Jun 2004, 12:51am

  Tu mi lasci, o cruda, o bella (canzonetta)

  “Tu mi lasci, o cruda, o bella!
  Ah, dove vai,
  O fatal mia cara stella?
  Ohim

• N dirk on Sat 26 Jun 2004, 01:07am

  Italian

  Does anybody know if Sam spoke Italian? Did he understand the text of the song he was learning, or was he just fascinated by the sweet sounds of the Italian language - as many opera lovers today?
  

• N daniel on Sat 26 Jun 2004, 02:34am

  Italian

  as we will find out later in this diary, Sam is familiar with Latin, French and Spanish as he forms his own code out of it when he needs to be extra discreet. His Italian skills might have been less developed.

• N vicente on Sat 26 Jun 2004, 02:53am

  “…brother Tom comes, with whom I made even with my father and the two drapers for the cloths I sent to sea lately…” Splitting the Commission, I wonder? 8 percent??? not telling now his extras. Must be using his other little black book[receipt book for keeping tally of his financial transactions.].

• N Ruben on Sat 26 Jun 2004, 07:02am

  Dirk:
  Thank you for the wonderful song and the site.
  When you speak Latin and some Spanish and French you understand most Italian, believe me…

• N Xjy on Sat 26 Jun 2004, 09:24am

  Understanding Italian
  Very close to Spanish, not to mention Latin. I’ve watched Spanish speakers (not only Argentines :-) conversing directly in Spanish with Italians speaking Italian. Almost as close as Swedish, Norwegian and Danish. Finnish-Estonian?? Bulgarian-Russian? That sort of thing. Probably not quite the same for non-native speakers, mind.

• N Pedro. on Sat 26 Jun 2004, 09:46am

  When you speak Latin

  Sam’s great knowledge of Latin would help him understand all the Romance Languages quite quickly.
  One interesting point, as I have been led to believe, is that Spanish speakers can understand written Portuguese, but are flummoxed by the pronunciation.

• N language hat on Sat 26 Jun 2004, 09:09pm

  “not only Argentines”

  Heh. I used to live in Argentina and it’s quite true that Buenos Aires is like one huge Little Italy (best pizza I ever had, too). We had a plumber who’d immigrated from Italy years before and forgotten Italian without really learning Spanish; I was the only one in the family who could understand him.
  

• N language hat on Sat 26 Jun 2004, 09:11pm

  “Spanish speakers can understand written Portuguese, but are flummoxed by the pronunciation”

  This too is quite true. I have little problem reading Portuguese, but hearing it spoken is mind-boggling (either variety) — especially with the version of the mother country, I have to hear it for a couple of minutes before I even realize it’s Portuguese. Weirdest vowels I’ve ever heard.

• N dirk on Sat 26 Jun 2004, 11:56pm

  Spanish, Italian etc

  One Romance language was overlooked here: Catalan - which *is* a language, not a dialect of Spanish. Actually Catalan of all the Romance languages is the closest to the original popular Latin.
  

• N Australian Susan on Sun 27 Jun 2004, 12:04am

  Overloked Romance Languages
  Isn’t there also a language spoken in Switzerland by Italians, which is a language in its own right? (and not like Swisserdeutsch)

• N Jenny Doughty on Sun 27 Jun 2004, 12:26am

  There is Romansh, but less than 1% of Swiss people speak it.

  http://www.admin.ch/ch/e/lang.html

• N vicente on Sun 27 Jun 2004, 02:39am

  LH shoosh

• N Australian Susan on Sun 27 Jun 2004, 08:05am

  Romansh
  Thanks, Jenny! Is it also spoken in northern Italy and/or south west Austria? Is it like Italian? And is Brazilian Portuguese different from that spoken in Portugal? I used to work with someone from Portugal. He reckoned the *Spanish* had funny vowel sounds, and couldn’t play football as well as the Portuguese. [On that latter point, and going off topic, sorry, he’s probably feeling very top-of-the-heap now]!
  Will courtiers be learning Portuguese in England at this time of the diary? Or was it just expected that Catherine would learn English - sink or swim. ??

• N Pedro. on Sun 27 Jun 2004, 09:16am

  Conversing in different languages.

  Catarina could speak Spanish, and Charles could also speak a little, and so initially they would converse in Spanish. I don

• N Ruben on Sun 27 Jun 2004, 04:44pm

  Conversing in different languages.
  I see almost all the languages derived from Latin were mentioned, so we cannot forget Romanian, and then the list is complete.

• N Harry on Sun 27 Jun 2004, 07:13pm

  Conversing in different languages

  and then the list is complete.

  How about special versions of French spoken in the New World: in Quebec (not only is the accent different, but the vocabulary can vary)and Haiti, and more generally Creole?

• N Ruben on Sun 27 Jun 2004, 07:33pm

  Conversing in different languages
  Harry: those you cite are more local variants than languages. I would say more grandchildren of Latin than children.
  They are more than a dozen such dialects.
  Creole languages instead are composed of French or English words and an African or other (depends on the country) local grammar.
  You cannot say that they are direct children of Latin.
  If not so, then English itself contains a lot ot Latin and still I think it is more Germanic than Latin.
  What do English experts think ot this?

• N Mary on Sun 27 Jun 2004, 07:54pm

  Yet another kind of Portuguese

  is that language (Cristao) spoken in the Portuguese Colony of Malacca, Malaysia. Speakers of Cristao say that they have great difficulty understanding the ‘deep Portuguese’ of Portugal, but they anxiously keep all possible elements of their European heritage alive.

• N vicente on Sun 27 Jun 2004, 08:14pm

  English: is it latin based or Germanic ?: My [non macadamia]view is that the basic single or 2 syllable tend to be Germanic, where Latin-French tend to higher inscrutable officious or officiary for specialised documatary communication: ‘tis great, to be able to tell someone that they are procrastinating or they B***** L*** ———

• N dirk on Sun 27 Jun 2004, 10:29pm

  Is English a Germanic language?

  Definitely. The origin of languages is determined by structural similarities, and not the origin of individual words or phrases. And the syntax of English is definitely Germanic. (Think for instance of the common feature of Germanic languages to form compound words by simply “adding them up” instead of connecting them by a preposition, e.g. English: dining + room = dining room - French: salle + manger = salle

• N Grahamt on Mon 28 Jun 2004, 09:23am

  English is a Nordic Language as much as Germanic.
  Beowolf, the oldest known Anglo Saxon poem, is much closer to Scandinavian than to German. Of course now it is a hybrid of Anglo-saxon-jute-nordic-latin-norman-gaellic-indo-sino-franco-judo-afro-everything. All the early invasions and the breadth of the British empire (that includes North America) ensured that it became a unique melting pot of languages. Sentence structure is not Germanic; we do not at the end of sentences secondary verbs put. We also do not capitalise all Nouns. You could find examples showing English was descended from almost any language group: no split infinitives (latin), adjective before noun (Germanic) -son suffix on names (nordic), etc.
  In reality it descended from them all, but became a language in its own right with its own grammer and structure long before Pepys and Shakespeare.

• N Phil on Mon 28 Jun 2004, 10:22am

  As interesting as this is, can we try snd keep on-topic please - we were originally disucssing Sam’s ability to speak Italian. Please use the discussion group http://www.smartgroups.com/groups/pepysdiary for stuff like this. Many thanks.

• N dirk on Tue 29 Jun 2004, 12:58am

  Sam’s knowledge of Italian

  Browsing through the entire diary, I found several passages that seem to suggest that Sam’s knowledge of the Italian language was very limited - he certainly had difficulty understanding people who spoke it (but then again that may have been due to the accent of the speaker).

  Some examples:
  (I don’t think these are spoilers, as the are given here without the context.)

  “the Italian Signor Baptista, who hath composed a play in Italian for the Opera (…) The words I did not understand, and so know not how they are fitted”
  12 February 1666/1667

  “though it may be pleasing to an Italian, or one that understands the tongue, yet to me it did not”
  16 February 1666/1667

  Still, when he starts using his own variety of lingua franca, it will contain some Italian words - but he may have picked them up here and there without really mastering the language.
  

• N tjcarr on Tue 29 Jun 2004, 04:34pm

  20s. entrance fee
  Its interesting to note that such “sign up” fees are nothing new. It will be interesting to see how his vocal talent develops.

• N A. De Araujo on Fri 2 Jul 2004, 12:07am

  “Brazilian Portuguese” Aussie Susan, the Portuguese spoken in Brazil has many African and Indigenous words, also the pronunciation is different from Portugal since they tend not pronounce the vowels the way Brazilians do.

• N tom on Thu 27 Jul 2006, 02:42am

  Portuguese and Spanish are without question the closest romance languages having an 89% similar vocabulary. Italian and Spanish may sound more alike, but a deep and meaningful conversation between speakers of these two languages gets muddled in no time.

• N Juan Pablo on Tue 2 Oct 2007, 07:18pm

  I am from Colombia and I agree with you completely Tom. I can converse with any Portuguese speakers almost perfectly, but with the italian speakers the meanings and context get mixed up.