Goats, cabbages, and other wordplay

Although I'm still painfully far from fluent, my Italian is coming along. I'm able to make conversation that's comprehensible, if not entirely grammatical, and I even successfully make jokes now and then.

However, understanding Italians when they speak at their normal clip is still way beyond me. I've realized that I have the same problems understanding Italian that my very hard-of-hearing husband does with English. If there's background noise, or the person is facing away from me, or if a regional accent is involved, I'm lost. I don't know the language well enough to fill in the blanks, the way I can in English. I need every bit of information I can get to even halfway understand what an Italian speaker is saying.

Eavesdropping is one of my favorite activities, and Italy should be paradise for eavesdropping, since Italians talk everywhere, all the time. Unfortunately, I can get only a random word now and then, never the gist of what other people are talking about.

I am, however, starting to learn the kinds of idioms that make a new language so much fun. Herewith a few of them:

Tocca ferro! "Touch iron," a phrase similar to our "Knock wood," except Italians seem to use it to ward off something bad rather than encourage something good. Like us, they will say it and tap their own head.

In bocca al lupo! A dialect phrase that means "in the wolf's mouth" is the way you wish someone good luck. A cruder version is In culo alla balena!--"in the whale's ass."

Lei ha fetta di salame sugli occhi. "She has slices of salame on her eyes," meaning that she is refusing to see something obvious. Prosciutto sometimes fills in for the salame.

La goccia che ha fatto traboccare il vaso. The Italian version of "the straw that broke the camel's back" literally means "the drop that made the vase overflow."

Terza giovanezza. "Third youth" is a polite euphemism for old age, similar to our "golden years." Although it sounds amusingly similar, it does not mean the same thing as "second childhood."

A cavallo by the sea.

A cavallo del secolo. "Astride the century," the Italian way of saying "at the turn of the century."

La verita' nuda e cruda. "The truth, naked and raw," or as we would say, "The whole truth and nothing but."

Avere la botte piena e la moglie ubriaca. The Italian version of "having your cake and eating it, too" is "having a full barrel and a drunk wife."

Salvare capra e cavoli. There doesn't seem to be an exact English equivalent for this one. "To save the goat and the cabbages" means to achieve two seemingly incompatible goals and derives from an ancient riddle about a farmer who has to ferry a wolf, a goat, and a crate of cabbage across a river. He can only take himself and one other item in the boat at a time and he can't leave the goat with the cabbage unattended, nor the wolf with the goat. Danny solved this instantly; I had to look up the answer online.

Mi formicola il piede. "My foot tingles, my foot fell asleep." This tickles me, so to speak, because the verb for "tingling" comes from formica, ant, and evokes little critters crawling around under your skin.

Mamma mia! I am delighted to report that Italians really do say this, all the time. It's adorable.