bitful

Sei su Facebook?
Are you on Facebook?
Literally: Are on Facebook?

Even if Facebook should disappear in a few months' time, I feel it has changed the way I (and many of my friends) keep track of people.

Outlook is now for business and admin, or for personal conversations I want to keep for future reference. Facebook is for entirely ephemeral social and friendly contacts.

Often after meeting people through a friend, Facebook lets us connect without exchanging phone numbers (too private) or scribblling email addresses (that end up as spam, if the card is not left in a pocket and shredded in the washing machine). We poke each other, become friends and then make each other aware of everything we are doing at each moment of the day.

I am not very keen on virtual pints and super walls though. And my status updates are synced from Twitter, so I don't spend too long on Facebook, much to its advertisers' disappointment. This is why I am very unlikely to say:

Sono tutto il giorno su Facebook
I am all day on Facebook
Lilterally: Am all the day on Facebook

If you want to find out more

If you have been following these Italian daily phrases, you might have noticed that pronouns (the short words that replace names, like I, you, he, she, it, we, they) are almost always omitted.

You can do that in Italian because verbs (words that indicate actions) are conjugated, which means that they change ending depending on who is performing the action (I, you, he, she, etc.).

You cannot do that in English because verbs stay the same, with very few exceptions.

This is why in English you will say:

I work
You work
He/she/it works
We work
You work
They work

but in Italian:

lavoro
lavori
lavora
lavoriamo
lavorate
lavorano

This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 6:50 am and last modified on January 7th, 2008 at 9:15 am, and is filed under italian. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.