My Italian Word of the Week - Ghiaccio

DVD - Frozen - Amazon.it - Walt Disney Pictures (C) 

Ghiaccio (n.m.)

n. ice
adj. ice-cold, frigid

definitions Corriere.it ; WordReference.com

Welcome to this week's installment of IWOW.

It seemed only fair after my post on fuoco (n.m. fire) to do a post on ghiaccio (n.m. ice), which is somewhat related to my post on freddo (adj. cold). I was inspired by the recent tempesta di ghiaccio (n.f. ice storm) that somehow arrived in Washington, D.C. even though it's the end of March and technically the official beginning of primavera (n.f. Spring). It doesn't feel like inverno (n.m. Winter) is over since it's freddo come il ghiaccio (adj. ice-cold, frigid) right now.

On that note, check out the Italian trailer of Disney's Frozen, aka Il Regno di Ghiaccio. Not only is it a good learning tool, it's funnier in Italian than in English. 

Since ghiaccio is a pretty straightforward masculine noun meaning "ice," I decided to do something different today and attempt to translate the first 20 seconds of the video above. It has quite a few useful weather-related words, and for an Italian student with only 6 months of formal lessons under her belt, understanding it is no simple task. See if you can follow along. 

L'estate nella citta di Arundel non potrebbe essere piu calda o piu soleggiata, ma tutto sta per cambiare per sempre.

So let's pick out a few useful words. I gave away primavera (Spring) and inverno (Winter), and now you can add estate (Summer) to your list of seasons. While we're at it, I might as well mention autunno (Fall/Autumn). On the topic of weather, caldo/calda means hot, and soleggiato/soleggiata means cold. Without getting into the verbs, I'll give you the literal translation: Summer in the city of Arundel can not be more hot or sunny, but everything is about to change for always.

Ready for the next line? It's really short.

Arundel ... e completamente ghiacciata. 

You can probably guess at this point that ghiacciato/a is the adjective derivative of ghiaccio, and it means frozen. e is the third person present tense form of the irregular verb essere (to be), and completamente (adv.) is a cognate meaning completely. On a side note, "-mente" in Italian is used to form adverbs in very much the same way "-ly" is used in English.

Freddo, freddo,  freddo, freddo, freddo, freddo, freddo, freddo, freddo...

The above is my reaction whenever I step outside lately, and I'm not wearing a ball gown with no shoulder coverage. Freddo is the singular masculine form of the adjective "Cold"

Una bufera di neve a luglio, sì?

Dulcis in fundo (last but not least), una bufera (n.f.) means "storm, blizzard or squall" and can also be used figuratively to mean an "upheaval or distubance." Neve (n.f.) means "snow," luglio (n.m) means "July," and sì means "yes." Put that all together, and you get: A snow storm in July, Yes?

And thus concludes my attempt this week to keep my Italian fresh. 

Ciao, tutti! Ci si vede il giovedì prossimo. (Good-bye all! See you again next Thursday.)

Disclaimer: I am writing this as a student of Italian. If there is anyone out there who would like to add to or correct my posts, please leave a comment.