Dacci oggi il nostro pane quotidiano,

Padre nostro, che sei nei cieli,
sia santificato il tuo nome,
venga il tuo regno, sia fatta la tua volontà,
come in cielo così in terra.
Dacci oggi il nostro pane quotidiano,

Dacci

'Dacci' is actually two words contracted. The first comes from 'dare', yet another common irregular verb:

dare	(to) give, giving
(io) do	I give
(tu) dai	you give
(lui/lei/Lei) dà	he/she/it gives (you give)
(noi) diamo	we give
(voi) date	you give (plural)
(loro) danno	they give

'da'!' or 'dai!' is the imperative form for 'dare' in 'tu' (the familiar you). That is to say, it's how you tell, or ask, someone you're on familiar terms with to give something. 'dai' is pronounced fairly similarly to 'die' in English, and can be used to mean 'come on!', so during the world cup, when it sounded like Monica was urging death upon the Italian team, she was really egging them on.

You may have noticed I put the personal pronouns (I, you, he, she, it) back on the Italian side above. There's a reason for that:
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Subject Pronouns	Unstressed Indirect Object Pronouns
io	mi
tu	ti
lui	gli
lei	le
Lei	Le
noi	ci
voi	vi
loro	gli

"Unstressed Indirect Object Pronouns" just spells "fun", right? I'm honestly trying to make this as painless as possible. Don't worry about the "Unstressed" part anyway. And for what it's worth, German, Koine Greek and (if I'm not mistaken) Latin are far worse when it comes to this part of grammar.

It's called case. Italian here is a bit like English in that you don't usually have to worry about case, but you do when it comes to pronouns. Have another table:

I	me
you	you
he	him
she	her
it	it
we	us
they	them

That's essentially the English equivalent of the above. With any luck it'll make what I'm about to say make a little more sense. Take a look at this:

'He threw it to us.'

Who's doing the throwing? - He is.
What's being thrown? - It is.
Who's it being thrown to? - To us.

The first is called the subject - it's the thing or person that performs the action of the verb.
The second is a direct object - it's the thing that the verb is acting on.
The third is an indirect object - there isn't a direct connection to the action of the verb itself.

Each takes into account the function of the word within the sentence, and if you get it wrong you sound like a caveman:

'Him threw it to we.'

It's the same deal with Italian. 'we' would be translated 'noi', and 'to us' would be translated 'ci'

So, you put 'da'!' and 'ci' together, and you (finally) get 'dacci' - 'give us'

oggi

'oggi' means 'today'.

quotidiano

'quotidiano' means 'quotidian'.

The Befana

Well, it's nearly Epiphany, which means the Befana will be setting out shortly:

The Befana comes by night
With her shoes all tattered and torn
She comes dressed in the Roman way
Long life to the Befana!

Here comes, here comes the Befana
she comes from the mountains in the deep of the night
snow and frost surround her
snow and frost and the West wind
here comes, here comes the Befana!

"And just who the hell is the Befana?" you might well ask. Well, wikipedia exists so that I don't have to exert myself too much: La Befana.

Now that's what I call the interpenetration of pagan worship with the cult of the Great Whore of Babylon^TM - woohah!

When I was talking about her with Monica and said that the Befana was a witch, she strenuously denied this, saying that she didn't do magic. When I pointed out that she flies on a broomstick she retorted that Santa Claus has a flying sleigh - which is a fair point.

come in cielo così in terra.

Padre nostro, che sei nei cieli,
sia santificato il tuo nome,
venga il tuo regno, sia fatta la tua volontà,
come in cielo così in terra.

come

'come' means 'like' or 'as'.

così

'così' is a very handy word which means 'like this', 'like that', 'thus', 'so' or 'like so'.

in terra

As I've said before, prepositions are rather unpredictable. Whereas it looks as though this means 'in earth', obviously it means 'on earth'. Best not to worry about it too much.

Origami & Biscuits

Mum and Dad got me an origami kit for Christmas, and I made the first one. I haven't managed to make any of the others, the instructions being quite, quite bewildering. Monica said the other day that it doesn't look much like what it's meant to look like. I don't think it's that bad, it looks about as much like it as paper can. I'd be interested to know what you thought this, quite blurry, photo represents.
Jaffa Cakes! Quite pleased with that. Italians have different biscuits to us, and they tend to come in fairly large bags, so you don't like to take the plunge and buy a large bag of unknown biscuits in case they're rotten. Neither do they seem to want to make a Teatime Selection type deal. So, German-made Jaffa Cake clones it is.

venga il tuo regno, sia fatta la tua volontà,

Padre nostro, che sei nei cieli,
sia santificato il tuo nome,
venga il tuo regno, sia fatta la tua volontà,

venga

'venga' comes from the verb 'venire', which is quite a handy verb, though irregular:

venire	(to) come, coming
vengo	I come
vieni	you come
viene	he/she/it comes (you come)
veniamo	we come
venite	you come (plural)
vengono	they come

'venga' is a subjunctive form of 'venire', like 'sia', so here it means '(may it) come'.

fatta

'fatta' comes from the verb 'fare', which is an even handier irregular verb:

fare	(to) do/make, doing/making
faccio	I do/make
fai	you do/make
fa	he/she/it does/makes (you do/make)
facciamo	we do/make
fate	you do/make (plural)
fanno	they do/make

'fatto' is the past participle of 'fare', like 'santificato'. That is, it means 'done' or 'made'. Here it's used as an adjective, so it's 'fatta' to agree with 'volontà'.

Sunday

I rate Radio 4's Sunday program quite highly, as a round up of the week's religious/ethical/spiritual news.

I just wanted to reccomend this weeks's special on children in the UK. I'm not sure whether it's on both iPlayer and the podcast, but I found it very interesting.

That is all.

Misprint

One of my favourites from a little book Mum and Dad got me for Christmas:

The England spinner [Ashley Giles] had just played the best Test series of his career and helped England to beat the West Indies and, as a result, he got the nickname 'King of Spin'. [H]is county Warwickshire decided to put the legend on commemorative mugs that they ordered for his testimonial year ... only for them to arrive with the word 'King of Spain'. He rapidly became known as 'El Gilo' and crowds have been known to sing 'Y Viva Espana' when he came on to bowl.
- A Steroid Hit The Earth: A Celebration of Misprints, Typos and Other Howlers, Martin Toseland.

sia santificato il tuo nome, #2

santificato

'santificare' is a verb from the Latin 'sanctus', meaning 'holy'. We get the word 'saint' from there too. In Italian 'santo' means holy and 'il santo' means 'the holy person' - that is, saint. Because, as far as I know, 'santificare' is a regular verb (and not because you'll find a lot of use for it in everyday life) I'll give you the conjugation:

santificare	(to) sanctify, sanctifying
santifico	I sanctify
santifichi	you sanctify
santifica	he/she/it sanctifies (+ you sanctify)
santifichiamo	we sanctify
santificate	you (plural) sanctify
santificano	they sanctify

The regular endings are clearly in bold, but you may have noticed that I added an 'h' in before the endings that start with 'i'. That's because, in Italian 'ci' and 'ce' are both pronounced with the soft 'c' of 'cherry', but we want the pronunciation of the 'c' to stay the same. 'chi' and 'che' are pronounced with the hard 'c' of 'car', so we fix it with an 'h'.

From 'santificare' you get the word 'santificato' which means 'sanctified'. As in English, you can consider this in a couple of ways:

1. Adjective

il nome santificato - the sanctified name
i nomi santificati - the sanctified names

la volontà santificata - the sanctified will
le volontà santificate - the sanctified wills

Again, the adjective form has to agree with the noun, as above.

2. Past Participle

That is to say the form of the verb that you use for forming the perfect (past) tense, as follows:

ho santificato il tuo nome - I have sanctified your name

It's pretty close to the English for most verbs, in that Italian uses the verb '(to) have' for forming the past though it also means '(to) possess' and '(to) own'

Finished uploading my music.

I've just finished making all the MP3s I intend to available for download:

www.gordonroad8.plus.com

Just to re-iterate - if anyone at 8 Gordon Road actually does want this web-space, I'll get off it, just let me know. In the meantime - waste not want not. Or possibly the other way round.

Enjoy.

More Music

I've just put more music to download on the page. Again, it's here:

www.gordonroad8.plus.com

sia santificato il tuo nome,

Line 2!

MP3.

sia

Hmm. Well, this is 'essere' in a subjunctive form. Let's skip to the end and say that it can be translated "(may it) be".

I think that it warrants perhaps a little more explanation, because the subjunctive is used a few times in the prayer, but I suppose you can skip ahead if you're not interested, because it's not really everyday language. The subjunctive just about survives in English. Have a look at these:

Fee! Fie! Foe! Fum!
I smell the blood of an Englishman.
Be he 'live, or be he dead,
I'll grind his bones to make my bread.

If I were you...

He be? I were?

Normally, of course, 'he is', and 'I was', but these are subjunctive forms. In Italian, as in English, the subjunctive is used to express wishes, thoughts and beliefs. The giant says 'be he' because he's supposing, first, the situation that Jack's alive, second, that he's dead, but he doesn't know in either case. The giant has remarkably correct grammar. He could have said "whether he's alive or dead" but that would have ruined the scansion, so it seems that we're dealing with a rather poetic giant. "If I were you" is another conjecture. In fact, the Italians say much the same thing using the subjunctive, "If I were in you", which I suppose means "in your shoes", "in your place".

The normal form of verbs, past present and future, is called the indicative because it indicates. So if I were were to re-write the second line of the Our Father, using the indicative, it would indicate a fact, rather than express a desire. Thus:

'your will is done' - indicative
'your will be done', 'may your will be done' - subjunctive

My Music

Well, I've finished converting my music to mp3. Now all that's left is a bit of administration really, to let you listen to it. I've decided to put a few tracks on now, and I'll add the rest later. It's here:

www.gordonroad8.plus.com

If anyone's put out by the fact that I'm using webspace that I'm not paying for, do let me know, but I'd appreciate a bit of time to allow people to download my stuff. I mean, as it's there, and no-one was using it...