hetalia | A Short Lesson in Italian

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A Short Lesson in Italian

Greetings~ After a chat or two with

jjblue1 I learned quite a lot about the word 'capisci'. It's that word we often hear in Mafia movies, the one that sounds like 'capeesh' XD So I'm here to share with you what I learned, with lots of quoting from jj~

Title: A Short Lesson in Italian
Quoting

jjblue1
Art and random yapping by kaya
Characters: Veneziano and Romano
Summary: The usage of the Italian word 'capisci'

Quotes from jj are written in italics.

So it all started when I used 'capisce' while imitating Romano...

You see, through watching Mafia shows (and Full House) I vaguely understood that 'capeesh' meant something like 'understand?' so thinking that the definition is so simple, I google 'understand in Italian' and came up with 'capisce'. Turns out 'capisce' is the super polite version.

It's 'capisci', not 'capisce'... unless you want to be really polite.

lol, I made Romano polite *pff*

Next is the complexity of the word. 'capisci' is informal but it's still not a word you can just throw around. You see, the usage of the word implies you have an...ulterior motive...

For example in your sentence 'It's just you and me, capisci?' adding the 'capisci' implies Veneziano expects this will lead to some consequences of this fact. For example, since it'll be just you and him, you'll bring him to eat pasta.
If it was your boyfriend speaking he was probably telling you in an allusive way he wanted to have sex with you.

...oh my gosh, Romano, what were you trying to imply? You cute little thing:

You find this used in movie mafia threats... when they say something like 'I don't know, if you don't stop doing it, someone might get hurt, capisce?'. Meaning 'do this and I'll beat/kill you' but told in a polite, concerned way so they can't be accused of threatening you... even if that's what they're doing. Though I don't know if it's a stereotypeout Mafia or their real behaviour.

Oh...whew, maybe you were just trying to talk like a Mafioso~! ...wait...that means you plan to kill me...politely? D:

As you might have noticed so far, the meaning changes depending on who is using the word. The best way to convey this is to task the Italian brothers:

Let's pretend you're Veneziano and say...

the 'capisci' implies 'can you understand how happy, delighted, overjoyed I am?'. It turns a fact (Germany hugged me) into a request to understand and possibly share his feelings.

Aww, that's so cute! Yes, Veneziano, I capisci! (will this lead to another correction on how I used this incorrectly again, jj? XD)

Of course if Romano were to say the same thing...

...the 'capisci' would mean 'can you understand how disgusted, revolted, angry I am?' different meaning but same request.

lol, don't get your panties in a bunch Romano. I'm sure Boss Spain can make it all better for you. And no, I don't capisci because who wouldn't want a hug from Germany? :3

And if Veneziano says 'I don't know how to do it, capisci?' he's asking for help or, at least, emotional comfort if you can't help him or understanding.

D'awww

In short the 'capisci' implies the sentence have an extra meaning you should catch. The extra meaning can be nice or... not so nice, according to who's using it. Basically is an 'are you getting what I mean with my words?'

And some food for thought:

I think it can have interesting potentialities in Hetalia... because I guess if Veneziano uses it with Germany to imply something I fear Germany would take him in the litteral sense... frustrating him.

Like Veneziano doesn't frustrate him already~

Not too sure if this would work with Spain though... because I think he has something similar...

So that means I can't throw around 'comprende' either? ;_;

(BTW, Germany might have something similar as well. I don't really know German...)

Any German speakers? :D

And that is all. Thanks for reading! Here's an extra fun fact as a reward:

Did you know the castle 'Castello Sforzesco' at the center of Milan is home to over 60 homeless kitties? (I saw them frolicking about in the castle's moat, which is overgrown with soft green grass =w=) They are taken care of by volunteers and the mayor of the city is lovingly nicknamed 'papà dei gatti' (cats' daddy)

So...Greece, looks like you're not the only one with a cat army ;)

Thanks jj for letting me quote you and for all the lessons!

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I wonder if it's a New York thing, but I've heard this tagged onto sentences since childhood and I always understood "capisci" -- though I admit, I thought it was spelled "capisce" -- to have some hidden meaning to it ~~or maybe everyone's parents were just threatening their kids all the time. lol~~. Either way, very enlightening! I will try to use these words correctly in the future!

Edit: AHHHH resizing tag fail.

I kind of remember my teachers saying it to us too XD ~~I'm sure that was the intent~~ Yeah, I'll think twice too before using it next time. Don't want to imply anything I didn't mean >_>

OMG XD I knew of 'capiche',which is Italo-American dialect of 'capisci' , or so wiki says (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/capiche). But it seems it's also spelled as 'coppish', 'kabish', 'capeesh', etc. I wonder if it's really so used in dialect! Maybe films like "The Untouchable" have affected Americans too much (?) xD
Anyway,your post is awesome XD I laughed all time! Romano trying to hug Germany is something I can't picture *cringes*
Ah, when you say 'I capisci!', the correct way is 'capisco' (first person,singular present).
I love these drawing! Roma-chan is so cute *ç* I too want that plush ! *cuddles Romano*

That must be the one I wanted to use, 'capiche' it sounds just like 'capeesh' :D I bet it's Italian-American. When I mentioned 'capeesh' jj said it sounds off. I think all Mafia shows have played a big part in shaping how we view Italians ^^; Great to hear it gave you a good laugh! It's the other way around. Germany gave Romano a hug ;) Now stop cringing~? Crap! You are right. I had Spanish before so I know exactly what you are talking about. All I can say is dohdohdoh. Oh you like~? I'm going to take a pic of his and his bro's hair curl (to make a ♥) Get ready to die from the cuteness.

I'm not sure capiche would sound right either.
Basically capisce/capisci sounds more or less like capeesh + the ending letter (e or i).
Since in English the ending vocal is often left unsaid an English speaker might fail to hear it when an Italian speaks (also it might be someone tried to make more English sounding the word capisce/i cutting the last letter... when I went to school English wasn't so popular so when we had to speak in English and didn't know how to translate a world we tried to use the Italian version minus the ending letter. Sometimes it worked! ^_- [Milano=Milan, divano=divan])
Google translate now let you hear how a word sound so if you want to hear how capisci and capisce sound try to use it. Pay close attention because you might miss the ending letters (the speaker says them rather quickly).

That makes sense. Now we even know where capeesh came from. I feel like I've learned a lot more about the word than I need to know XD You and your classmates were so cute~ Or rather I should say you guys were clever.

LOL Sorry for the overabundance of info! ^_^
Well, to us learning English was rather troublesome. While new generations are introduced early to it, in my times we started learning in middle or even high school, we had few lessons each week and totally not enough real life contact with the language (basically at the time the only thing for which you would find knowing English useful was to translate songs... unless you were someone who had the chance to travel out of Italy).
So the number of words we managed to learn and remember was really low... (and the teacher really evil...) so we tried to solve the problem the best we could. ^_-

Haha (the evil teachers are usually the best teachers, cause you end up learning ;). You ended up learning English quite well!

LOL, in many cases that's true... the problem with her however was she hated students in general and was sure many of us were a fail and a waste of her time. -_-
*blushes* Thank you! (though I fear I still make horrible English mistakes... -_-)

Oh well, looks like those teachers exist everywhere :/ (no way. It's mostly nearly perfect!)

Sadly you're right... ;_;
(*blushes even more* THANK YOU A LOT!)

Aaaah~! Thank you for enlightening me! That really had been a gap in knowledge. XD~

Oh, and as a german native speaker: There isn't anything like 'capisci' or 'comprende'. I guess there's no need for. German is a very straight forward language, with only a few semantic double layers. Guess that's why other people think us impolite and humorless. ;P

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Hmmmm~ Honey, if you use 'kapiert?' in your sentence, it would be a direct THREAT - and not polite or double-layerish at all. And in the combo with "Germany hugged me~~~" it would absolutely make no sense at all. XDDDD
Even the kind and polite version of 'verstehst du?' would simply be strange. No German would use a sentence like that.

Maybe it's a knack solely reserved for romanic languages...

Any french speakers out there? Would be interesting to see whether there's an analogy in that language, too.

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LOL Super, und wir fachsimpeln hier auf englisch. Glorious. XDDDD~ *lach*

Wow, so adding 'kapiert' makes a direct threat? *saves that to memory* :D

English is also a Germanic language so we don't have anything like it either. Maybe that's why we're so wordy, since we need to spell everything out :/ Really...? Impolite and humorless...? I wonder if that's how Italian and Spanish speakers view us ;_;

But Veneziano can demand, "Hug me, Germany, kapiert?!" right...? :3

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Yes, I'm joking. I can't imagine him threatening Germany ever :p

Let's switch that scenario to Romano instead: He could say "Hug me, Spain, kapiert?!" - and this would perfectly make sense, even and especially character-wise! (...only that Spain probably doesn't speak German...lol)

Yeah...wrong characters :D

LOL so as I guessed Germany would be confused if Veneziano were to use it with him?

I'm not sure where I heard this, but I believe in Italy they use 'capito', as capisce is usually a strictly Italian-American thing. I use capito now when I write for Romano, if/when it's ever appropriate to do so. But I'm still nowhere near fluent enough in Italian to verify this. xD; I'm still researching the language, myself.

It's true, they usually use 'capito?', but I think I remember reading somewhere that 'capisci?' is pretty common in Sicily.

"Capito?" works for the informal past in the second person singular ("Hai capito?" aka "Did you get it?"), and even the informal past in the second person plural ("Avete capito?" aka "Did you guys get it?") Meanwhile, "Capisci?" is an informal way to ask "Are you getting it (right now)?", and "capisce?" is the formal way of the same.

Forgot to say, both "capisci" and "capisce" are only used while talking in singular, to individuals, aka second person singular. It's wrong to use those words for the second person plural.
("you" is such an imprecise word, guys!) :)

Thanks for the lesson~ Now I know the past form of it too! I'm starting to understand where the phrase "all of yous" came from. It must have been a concoction of either an Italian or Spanish speaker XD

Here there's an easy guideline:

capisce?: with people Romano wants/needs to be polite with or it's not close with. If you're trying to use a realistic Romano and not just an Hetalia Romano he'll be much more polite than you're used to see him be in Hetalia, especially if your fic is placed back in the past.

capisci?: with people Romano is close, deems his equal or even inferior to him.

capito?: it's usually a short form of 'hai capito?' (have you understood?/did you understood?/do you understand?) or of 'ho capito' (I have understood/I understood/understand) [sometimes English and Italian differ slightly in how to use moods and tenses so, even if the direct translation is the first I wrote for an English speaker it might be more fitting to use the second one or the third one] and generally it's more popular in north Italy that south Italy (north Italy loves to use the present perfect... south Italy favours simple past or, in this case, present). However it might also depends from which zone of south Italy you're trying to portray. LOL using Italian for Romano and Veneziano is pretty complicate because, although Italian has its own rules, according to the city you come from when speaking you might end using a not quite standard Italian way to speak. That because nearly each Italian city had its own language (now we call them dialects here in Italy but English speakers would define them languages) and this influence the way people use Italian...

Anything else you'd like to know about Italian?

Nice~! I knew of the variations but never realized how many different ways it could be used (nor of the ulterior motives)!! I'll be sure to use the word correctly from now on.

As for "comprende" ...I always understood that to be more like slang, since a lot of movies with the Token Spanish Character will more than likely bust out the Spanglish. But "comprender" and "entender" are both used to ask if something is understood... they carry different connotations, but I can't tell you what they are, since I'm neither sure what they are nor am I a native speaker. My guess is that comprender is more informal while entender is formal.

The visuals were a nice touch, by the way~.

My goodness...why doesn't Alfred research the languages before making his movies?!

Well, looks like we have a native Spanish speaker right below you. As you have said, they're used differently.

Thanks! Those are the pictures that came to mind when jj gave me those examples XD

I'm from Spain, and yes, we do have something like 'capisci', I guess ^^
But 'Comprende' sounds really weird, since it uses the formal form of 'you', which is usted. In Latin America this form is used whenever you talk to anyone besides family and friends, while in Spain we only use it when talking to elderly people and in formal situations. We just prefer to stick with 'tú' for everything :P
Also, both comprender and entender mean understand, though literally speaking, 'entender' is closer to understanding and comprender is closer to comprehend. However, comprender can also mean to empathize/agree/grasp. Example:

Entiendo lo que me dices pero no te comprendo.

I understand what you are telling me but I cannot grasp it.

Comprender is more formal, so we use entender a lot more, except when talking about someone's inner feelings, for example.

So yeah, after that useless rant, I think 'capisci' would translate to something like '¿entiendes?', but to be able to imply an extra meaning you'd have to say '¿lo entiendes?' (do you understand it?), just to make sure the other person gets that you're trying to imply something else :P Example:
Spain: Italy hugged me, ¿entiendes? >> Romano: I just heard you, idiot!
Spain: Italy hugged me, ¿lo entiendes? >> Romano: So? Stop being so damn happy, you bastard!

I guess we just don't have that kind of extra-meaning-thingy in Spanish, but we can get close. Also, I think something like 'got it?' could work in English too ^^

Now I really wonder why 'comprende' was chosen. Maybe America had more influence from Latin America since it's closer?

Thanks for the explanation! Aww, your examples are just as cute. I'm tempted to draw them XD

I thought that too, making 'got it?' or 'do you understand?' the English equivalent, but from the way jj explained it, 'capisci' sounded a lot more complex :/

Hum... accordig to the situations I think you might translate 'capisci' both with '¿comprendes?' or with '¿lo entiendes?'... but my knowledge of Spanish is scaringly low... -_-

I think you got it just right ^^

Thank you!

Yayyyy, language lesson! :D

...M...my band director always threatened us with "Capisce?!" I knew he was out to kill us...

Yes and he was threatening you politely :D

LOL
Well, he might have been using capisce/capisci without the extra threatening meaning... but in that case I would get the feeling he was telling me I was being a little too dense for not getting it.
Asking 'capisce?' would mean to ask for confirmation you understood what the other said. If it wasn't a really complicate explanation the fact he needs you to confirm you got it, implies he thinks you're dumb (it's perfectly fine however to ask for confirmation if you're explaining somethig complex or if you're explaining something to a person that doesn't speak your language... I guess foreigners that come in Italy might get to hear 'capisce' more often than normal Italians because we're trying to make sure you understood our explanation).
Here in the north you also ask 'capito' when you're slightly irritated and not willing to repat yourself twice of to have your statement discussed.

Example: 'We go there, capito?' (End of the discussion and do what I said)

I'm not sure if it'll work for south also. It might be, it might be not...

lol, I made Romano polite *pff*
Well, Romano's not polite but there are some places in south were people is very polite... so you're not completely wrong...

...oh my gosh, Romano, what were you trying to imply? You cute little thing:
Probably that you must pay him attention? The poor thing looks always like he's feeling like no one cares about him...

Oh...whew, maybe you were just trying to talk like a Mafioso~! ...wait...that means you plan to kill me...politely? D:

LOL
Actually it's Mafia guys who try to talk like Romano... for their own gain of course, though people tends to forget it.
Before Italian unity south cities had their own language (in Italy we call it dialect but, in truth, it's really a language with its own dictionary and grammar rules that, although similar, are different from Italian).
Of course Mafia spoke that language.
After Italian unity, Italy tried to spread the usage of Italian. For assorted reasons it worked better on north than on south but it seems expecially Mafia clung to the old language because it was harder to understand it for whatever didn't speak it.
Due to this mafia movies have mafia characters using it.
(also, since many southerns moved to USA, USA ended up thinking the southern language is the Italian language...)

I swear, I'm sure poor Romano didn't mean anything bad... *hugs Romano*

Yes, Veneziano, I capisci! (will this lead to another correction on how I used this incorrectly again, jj? XD)

LOL yes and no.
Differently from English in which you say:

I understand
you understand
He/she/it understands
We understand
You understand
They understand

and so on in Italian 'to understand', 'capire' becomes:

Io capisco
Tu capisci
Lui/lei capisce (In Italian using the third person when speaking to someone is considered polite... that's why I told you 'capisce' was the polite way to say 'do you understand?')
Noi capiamo
Voi capite
Essi capiscono

This is because we conjugate the verb. So you use the verb 'capire' in the correct context but with the wrong conjugation. Since the person is I 'capisci' becomes 'capisco' and, due to the fact the verb changes according to the subject, you can cut I (the most common problem Italian speakers hve when speaking in English is we're not used to put the subject in front of the verb... because in Italian is completely unnecessary... while English speakers when trying to speak in Italian insist on using the subject... which to us sounds a bit redundant...)
LOL Sorry for the grammar lesson but I can't resist to this sort of temptations! :P

So...Greece, looks like you're not the only one with a cat army ;)
There's a reaon why Veneziano is so fond of cats! ^_-

Though I'll warn you, there's also a city in Veneto, Vicenza, whose citizens are nicknamed magnagatti (cats eaters)... There are various legends about why this happened... the most popular one is it seems it's due to what the doge of Venezia said back in a far, far past when Vicenza asked a huge amount of cats to Venezia to chase away the mices that had invaded their city... but Venezia was so impressed by the request they thought they wanted to EAT the cats... though another version said that before giving the cats Venezia offered some food to the people of Vicenza. They gave them bunnies but, to make fun of them said them they were cats. When they asked to Vicenza to have back the cats Vicenza returned the joke saying they had eaten them.

Truth to be told the Vicentini (the citizens of Vicenza) love cats very much and consider them their mascot.

Anyway the nick, magnagatti, still lives... and to use it fully the people of Vicenza has invented a cake named 'La gata' (http://www.lagata.it/index.html) (the female cat), which of course isn't made with cats... but that allows them to keep on joking on the fact they eat cats...

And with this I end the odd stories from Italy about cats... ^_-

Thanks jj for letting me quote you and for all the lessons!
You're welcome!

This is completely not 'capisci/capisce' related... but can I say I love the way youdraw Veneziano and Romano? They're just perfect!

I'm glad you like them~ :)

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A Short Lesson in Italian

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Completely not 'capisci/capisce' related...

Re: Completely not 'capisci/capisce' related...