Buono = Good (Italian)
Kugelshreiber = Ballpoint Pen (German)

Many Japanese know the word Kugelschreiber because it is a "cool" sounding German word. It'd be like pretending to know Japanese by shouting "Karate".

Nein, nein Erwinchen, this is the line you should be saying instead, "Krieg ohne Haß!"

NNescio said:

Nein, nein Erwinchen, this is the line you should be saying instead, "Krieg ohne Haß!"

War without hate. Fits GuP quite well, really.

Agreed when if you exclude Erika that is

BrokenEagle98 said:

Buono = Good (Italian)
Kugelshreiber = Ballpoint Pen (German)

Many Japanese know the word Kugelschreiber because it is a "cool" sounding German word. It'd be like pretending to know Japanese by shouting "Karate".

Precisely. "Buono" means "good", mainly as an adjective nowadays (for example, "Buon giorno" for "good day"); while to say "well" we use "bene".

I'm saying this because sometimes the two words are confused. In fact, perhaps it would be better if Carpaccio in this situation said "Bene"... In Italian, to say "Bene, bene" is a way to express approval or satisfaction.

Historynerd said:

Precisely. "Buono" means "good", mainly as an adjective nowadays (for example, "Buon giorno" for "good day"); while to say "well" we use "bene".

I'm saying this because sometimes the two words are confused. In fact, perhaps it would be better if Carpaccio in this situation said "Bene"... In Italian, to say "Bene, bene" is a way to express approval or satisfaction.

Yeah, but it's forgivable since the artist probably only understands Italian at a bare minimum.

Spoken Italian is pretty hard to master, by the way. Lots of different ways you can use this language.

Painiac said:

Spoken Italian is pretty hard to master, by the way. Lots of different ways you can use this language.

Spoken Anything is pretty hard to master. Lots of things they don't teach you in books or class after all.

Painiac said:

Spoken Italian is pretty hard to master, by the way. Lots of different ways you can use this language.

Is it like Latin ?
Only experienced it through that graffiti sketch in Life of Brian, sounds awfully complicated

Seika said:

Is it like Latin ?
Only experienced it through that graffiti sketch in Life of Brian, sounds awfully complicated

The vocabulary (and the pronunciation of the words) share many similarities with Latin, but Italian grammar is far simpler compared to Latin. Generally, only pronouns are inflected ('modified') by case (the nominative/accusative/dative/locative thingy you hear in the Monty Python sketch). Nouns and adjectives are usually only inflected by gender and number (plural/singular). Verbs can be somewhat complicated (which is also the case in English), but they don't inflect by case either.

So, yeah, not too different from English, aside from gendered nouns and adjectives. Oh and the imperative mood, as verbs have their own conjugation for that.

But yeah, Spoken Italian (like Spoken Anything, as I mentioned earlier) is remarkably harder, as people don't strictly follow the 'grammatical rules' all the time, and there are colloquial versions of words that you won't find in an ordinary textbook. Or even in a decent chunk of reputable dictionaries. It's sort of the same in English; there's a wide gap between acing an ESL (English as a second language) paper and being able to actually pass as a native.

Spoken Latin, eh, nobody really knows how to speak it, since it's a dead language. The closest you can get is Ecclesiastical Latin in the Catholic church, but that's more or less a formal, ritualized setting.

As for uses of Latin by scientists, logicians, and philosophers, well, most of us tend to muck up the pronunciation. I gave up pronouncing scientific names with a 'classical Latin' pronunciation in the workplace since no one can get what I mean.

Seika said:

Is it like Latin ?

The Italian language is a direct descendant of Latin.

Tapper said:

The Italian language is a direct descendant of Latin.

Yes, but as mentioned, Italian grammar is far simplified compared to Latin, so it wouldn't end up as complicated as the graffiti sketch in the Life of Brian movie.

(Disclaimer: To simplify things somewhat I've neglected the long vowels for Latin)

In that scene, Brian is writing graffiti with the intended message of "Romans, go home!". Since he's calling out, or addressing the Romans, he has to use the vocative (a form used to address someone) plural for Roman. As the message is a demand, the verb must be in the imperative(used to give commands) plural form. As the verb is "to go", it indicates direct motion towards a location, and there is only one home for each person being addressed, so we use the accusative singular case for "home".

Combining all these, we get, "Romani ite domum!". Romani is the vocative plural of romanus ("Roman"). Ite is the second-person plural active imperative of eo ("to go"). Domum is the accusative singular of domus ("home").

In most cases when we indicate direct motion towards a location, we need to use the preposition "ad" ("to") before the accusative, but "domus" is one of the special cases where it is not necessary (So "Romani ite ad domum" would be sound strange, if not incorrect). Compare English "I went home" vs "I went to school". Home doesn't need the preposition "to" in front.

Now, in the graffiti scene, both the centurion and Brian actually made a mistake as they identify "domum" as the locative case, which it is not (the locative case for domus is domi). The locative cases indicates an action "performed at some place". In some respects it is similar to the use of the Japanese particle 「で」.

[Furthermore the locative case is mostly vestigial in Latin anyway. Generally, most nouns would use the dative instead as an indirect object, and the locative is only present for old (relative for the Romans) place names and the three words domus (home), humus(ground), and rus(farm/village)]

As the Monty Python crew went to prestigious schools and universities at a time when learning Latin was a requirement, this mistake is likely intentional, placed in there as a joke for Grammar Nazis who would actually pay attention (as they say, taking a joke apart ruins the fun unless there's another joke hidden inside it). They're basically pointing fun at Latin teachers who can write correct Latin (due to practice) but don't give the correct explanations as their Latin, well, isn't top-notch either.

In Italian, we don't care about cases for nouns (and adjectives for that matter). So the above statement becomes:

"Romani andate a casa!"

Romani is the plural for Romano (Roman), and casa is the singular for house. Unlike Latin (and English), we have to use the preposition "a" ("to") before casa. We do need to pay attention to imperatives for verbs in Italian though. Andate is the second-person plural imperative of andare ("to go").

Note that this explanation is much shorter than the previous one for Latin.

Speaking about going home...

Hoppo: Puellae navium ite domum! Ragazze-navi andate a casa!

BrokenEagle98 said:

Buono = Good (Italian)
Kugelshreiber = Ballpoint Pen (German)

Many Japanese know the word Kugelschreiber because it is a "cool" sounding German word. It'd be like pretending to know Japanese by shouting "Karate".

My hovercraft is full of eels!

From observation, Spoken Italian is only two-thirds the trick. The last third is gestural.