Italian phrase of the day: Abbracciami, baciami… e chiamami!
Abbracciami, baciami… e chiamami!
Hug me, kiss me… and call me!
Literally: 'Hug-me, kiss-me… and call-me!'
Today we are going to learn how to give orders (or, for those of you who have some knowledge of grammar, the imperative).
First you take the verb as you find it in the dictionary, i.e. in its 'to …' form:
To hug = abbracciare
To kiss = baciare
To call = chiamare
Then to give an order you simply chop off the -re from the ending:
Hug! = abbraccia!
Kiss! = bacia!
Call! = chiama!
You might also want to give an indication of who should receive the action, in this case 'me'.
I have intentionally used three regular verbs, of which there are plenty more, for instance 'scopare' which as you can see from the Wiktionary entry for 'scopare' has one meaning of 'to sweep' and another (caution, vulgar) that Ollie might use with his Italian date if he gets lucky.
And yes, it follows the rule, you chop away the -re at the end, replace it with -me and switch the accent on the letter 'o'. But that is one sound bite I shall not provide you with.
Thursday 17 January 2008 at 9:16 am
Hmm.
I thought the imperative was the polite 'you' form of the verb - or is that what you've done here.
Would it change if you were addressing more than one person?
Also, in the group case. would this be one of the cases where it changes depending on the number of women in the group?
Thursday 17 January 2008 at 9:56 am
No, the imperative is the 'command' form of the verb.
Yes, if you were addressing more than one person you would say for instance 'Abbracciatemi', meaning '(You, plural) hug me'
No, verbs do not change to match the gender of the person(s) performing the actions. Adjectives (attributes like young, old, nice, foreign, etc) do. I see you are already aware of the rule that if you are describing a group of 99 women you use the feminine adjective, whereas if the group contains 99 women and one man you must use the masculine one).