The Petrini Family from Capannori
  • Home
  • Research Blog
  • Capannori
  • Family Charts and Reports
    • Sources
  • Family Photos
  • Branches
  • Contact Me!

Italian Vocabulary - part 1

27/10/2015

0 Comments

 
When I started this a few months ago, I had very little knowledge of the Italian language. I had taken a semester of Italian back in college many decades ago, but I quit after one semester. Because I'd taken German in high school and junior high, as well as 2 summers of intensive study at a language 'camp', I was pretty conditioned to speaking in German. Unfortunately, once I started taking Italian, I quickly realized that even though I might start speaking a sentence in Italian, by the time I finished, I was going to be speaking German! For example, when I was asked 'come stai' (how are you) my answer always seemed to come out 'bene grazia, wie geht es dir'! (thanks, and how are you) I quit trying after one semester and most of what I learned has since faded away.

With my very, very limited knowledge of Italian, I really was pretty pessimistic about my ability to research Italian records. But I had a lot of help from the Italian Genealogy Facebook group and found some sources online, which I'll share here another time. I was pleasantly surprised by how easily I picked up a 'working knowledge' of the vocabulary I need to read genealogy records; things like numbers, occupations, relationships. I really have to say that I have more trouble deciphering the handwriting than I do understanding the words!

I don't know how often I will do this, but today I'm going to list a few of the words I learned this week.
  • agricoltrice - farmer
  • colono - tenant farmer, share cropper
  • possidente - farmer who own his land
  • pastore - pastor
  • massaia - housewife
  • gemelle/gemella - twin
  • decudata - deceased

Hopefully, recording them here will help me retain these words. And MAYBE they will help someone else, too!
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    I am researching the PETRINI family; specifically the descendants of Bartolomeo Petrini and Eufrosina Pineschi. This research was begun by Irene Petrini Wichmann in the early 1970s. I picked it up about two years again when I began my quest to have my Italian citizenship recognized.

    Archives

    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    July 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    October 2015

    Categories

    All
    52 Weeks
    Census
    Death
    Gallacci
    Orsi
    Petrini
    Pineschi
    Questions
    Software
    Vocabulary
    Websites
    What I Know About

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.