This year's Sanremo Festival is by now in the books...but I'd still like to focus on a couple of the songs I found interesting. Simone Cristicchi had an interesting entry entitled Meno Male ("It's a good thing") that is a sarcastic look at Italian mass media and pop culture. Here is the song and the lyrics:
(You can also read the lyrics from angolotesti.it here.)
The chorus of the song is:
Meno male che c’è Carla BruniAs you can guess, the whole premise of the song is that as long as we think of Carla Bruni (supermodel and now wife of French President Sarkosy), then all is well.
Siamo fatti così - Sarkonò Sarkosì
Che bella Carla Bruni
se si parla di te il problema non c’è
io rido… io rido…
It's a good thing that there's Carla Bruni,
We're so spaced out: Sarko-NO, Sarko-YES
How beautiful (you are), Carla Bruni,
If we talk about you, then there are no more problems!
I laugh...I laugh...
In the song we also hear:
C’è la crisi mondiale che avanzaAmong the interesting grammatical constructions we find:
e i terremotati ancora in vacanza
...
C’è l’Italia dei video ricatti
c’è la nonna coi seni rifatti
e vissero tutti felici e contenti
ma disinformati sui fatti
Osama è ancora latitante
l’ho visto ieri al ristorante!
Lo so che voi non mi credete
se sbaglio mi corigerete
There's the world financial crisis that's looming,
and the earthquake victims (of L'Aquila) that are still displaced
...
Here is the Italy of the blackmail video
Here is the grandmother with the breast implants
And they lived happy and content
but uninformed about the facts.
Osama is still on the run,
yesterday I saw him in a restaurant!
I know that you don't believe me,
If I'm wrong then correct me!
- meno male: Literally it means "a less bad thing", which is equivalent to "a good thing".
- si parla: The impersonal. Literally "one talks", but you can render this into English as "you talk", "we talk", "they talk", etc.
- siamo fatti: The word fatti can mean "deeds", but this is an idiomatic usage which means spaced out, zonked out, high
- coi: Contraction for con i. You don't see this too often in conversation nowadays but you will tend to see this more in literature. You also see this in poetry and music, where fitting the text into a certain number of syllables is important. You will also see the contraction col = con il in some settings as well.
- The passato remoto (vissero = they lived), which indicates an action that took place in a time period that is long before today.
- latitante: adjective which means "on the run"
- l'ho visto: An example of euphony changing spelling. The lo is the direct object pronoun, referring to Osama, so it's masculine. Normally this would be lo ho visto but it sounds more pleasing to the ear if we run the lo and the ho together.
- Lo so che ... (I know that ...). As mentioned in a previous post, in Italian you don't just KNOW, you KNOW IT. Thus you need the direct object pronoun.
Io me la prendo con qualcunoWe'll save double pronoun verbs for another day. The best way to think of them is that they kind of act like reflexive verbs, but take a direct object as well. And also the spelling is always changed in double pronouns (mi -> me, ti -> te, si -> se, ci -> ce, vi -> ve, etc.)
tu te la prendi con qualcuno
lui se la prende con qualcuno
E sbatte la testa contro il muro
Io me la prendo con qualcuno
tu te la prendi con qualcuno
lui se la prende con qualcuno
noi ce la prendiamo...
I take it to heart with someone
You take it to heart with someone
He (she) takes it to heart seriously with someone
And smashes his (her) head against the wall
I take it to heart with someone
You take it to heart with someone
He (she) takes it to heart with someone
We take ourselves seriously ...
Meno male si trova i brani di Sanremo sulla rete!
(It's a good thing you can find the videos from Sanremo on the net!)
