bitful

Lavora anche di notte
Dr B. works at night too
Literally: '(he/she/it) works also of night'

Every few weeks the company Dr B. works for requires him to be on call for a four-day stretch during which colleagues and clients can call him at every hour of the day or night for support. This means he needs to be at home in order to log on to the work servers. Some nights the phone almost never stops ringing.

When he is on support he needs peace and quiet to concentrate, especially if he is speaking on the phone. So last night I volunteered to switch off my computer (the fan was humming) and then to leave the room (I was breathing). And by 'volunteered' I mean 'not so subtly encouraged with heavy sighs and glaring looks'.

When he is on call he is in a pretty foul mood - well, wouldn't you?

È di cattivo umore
He is in a bad bood
Literally: '(He/she/it) is of bad mood'

If you want to find out more

• Prepositions (words that are usually short words and show the relationship between two other words, like to, from, on, at, in etc.) often do not match in Italian and in English. Di notte (at night). Di cattivo umore (in a bad mood).
• 'Umore' is not a translation of the English word 'humour'. Umore (mood) but umorismo (humour).
• 'Anche' (too/also) always comes before the word it refers to, unlike in English where it is usually placed afterwards. Anche tu (you too). Anche di notte (at night too).

This entry was posted on Friday, January 11th, 2008 at 6:33 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.