Lately I have been staying late at the office, because Ricky was always online several minutes before my working hour ended, so I wanted to chat with him.
Yesterday he gave me two ‘sciogli lingua’ riddles to test my Italian ability (I have started a habit to learn Italian again, I try to spare an hour everyday, but I don’t always obey it).
Here’s his first one:
sopra la panca la capra campa, sotto la panca la capra crepa
No cheating on dictionary, he warned. Anyway, there’s none at my office except of course Indonesian-English.
So I answered,
On my stomach the sheep camps, below my stomach the sheep dies
And my new Italian teacher from Milan burst into laughter, because I was mistakenly thinking ‘panca’ meant ‘stomach’ (which is ‘pancia’ in Italian), but actually it meant ‘bench’. That’s why I had wondered before “what the heck is a sheep doing on my stomach? There’s no grass there!”
But other than that, I was good enough to pass, or so he declared. But I challenged him to give me another one.
Tì ca ta tachet i tac tacum i tac. Mi tacat i tac a tì ca ta tachet i tac? Tachesi tì i to tac che mi ma tachi i me tac.
Nooo…it doesn’t sound like Italian to me, at all. So I just gave up. Ricky said it’s a dialect of Milan. But at least I guessed one right word for ‘heel’ (Tanti, you’re smart! Hehehehe)
And now I know another Italian sciogli lingua (that might impress Ricky):
Trentatre trentini entrarono a Trento tutti e trentatre trotterellando
Ehehehe, sono inteligente, no?
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