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Si Dice
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I have become nostalgic about Italy lately. Actually "homesick" would be a better word. Not that I ever lived in Italy but I did visit there several times a year and I learned to love the country and the people. I do not speak Italian but when I frequently traveled there I had reached the point that I could understand the gist of most conversations going on about me which incidentally considering the now current street slang ,jargon, cant and newly invented profanity is about all I can do in an English conversation these days. I did try to learn Italian and could make myself understood on a very basic level. Si dice however that speaking idiomatic Italian is a long way away from speaking textbook Italian and I never even reached the latter..
Si dice is an Italian expression that translates into English pretty well as "they say". It is very frequently used in almost all Italian conversations. You mustn’t take the expression too literally however. "They" may never have said it and both parties to the Italian conversation are aware of that. For instance si dice may be used by the speaker to indicate that the information he is imparting he "thinks" is true, or perhaps that it "should be" true, maybe that "it used to be" true or even perhaps that he "wishes" that it was true. There are probably four different gestures in the Italian gesture lexicon to go with each of those possibilities but they are more secret from we non-Italians than the Da Vinci code. The phrase is very handy in Italy. It adds credibility to the statement it precedes. In Chicago we might well question the speaker with "who said?". No fellow Italian would ever be so rude or unsociable as to question who "they" were, much less that "they" said it. Si dice is almost the Italian equivalent of reference to the encyclopedia and does away with carrying those heavy books about. I must stress that the listening party to the use of si dice must be Italian also. The listener puts his own home grown windage on the conversation the minute he hears the si dice spoken and he knows very well that there was no "they" and that they didn’t "say " it.
The French with a kindred language may well use the expression. I simply don’t know enough French to have picked up its use if it is current in France. I rather think however that the Gallic personality is such that your average Frenchman would just not be impressed that "they" said anything at all. I’ll have to query my French friends to see about that.
I am not aware that the German language has a comparably useful form. Sie sagen means the same thing in German but I have never heard a German use the expression in the same sense that the Italians use it. A German would just not be impressed with what "they" said whoever "they" might be. The German would like to see fifteen volumes of data as well as the laboratory routine and certification that describes how the data was collected and the mathematics that expressed all variations from the mean and would also like to see the University diplomas and the syllabi of all courses that the researcher took at University. I just don’t think that the Germans would make use of the same expression or one that had the "nominative uncertainty" of si dice.
Of course in English we have "they say" which literally means the same thing as si dice and we use the expression in conversation quite often but I don’t believe that it comes close to carrying the meaning and authority in Kansas City that the Italian expression carries in Milano or Napoli.
A good part of that difference is the listener. Like the German we might commit that conversational sin of asking "who is they".
Next time you are in Italy tune your ear to pick it up.Looking for it you will have a somewhat clearer understanding when an Italian confronts you with si dice, but don’t play the ugly American and ask "who said?". I found that the Italian expression ma certo ( pronounced "Ma chair toe") was a very useful expression to throw into the conversation at any time any where and you don’t even have to wait for the other speaker to stop talking. It means "I agree" and you will be accorded the reputation of speaking perfect Italian if you make frequent use of it.
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