Question for any Italian speakers out there · 3:52am Apr 21st, 2017
So, in writing up my newest chapter of Amore Obbligato, I've run into a small problem with which I was hoping my readers can help. As you know, the story revolving around Octavia and Twilight, there's going to be a lot of musical terms, most of which are Italian in origin. That being said, I thought it would be cute if Octavia and her mother have cute little musical nicknames for each other. To that end, I've done some searching (read: tried using Google translate), and have come to the conclusion that I don't know what I'm doing with another language. I wanted her mother to use something along the lines of "my little joy", and have only come up with "felicituccio" and "felicitacchiotto". The first is okay, but I've read that particular diminutive suffix can have pejorative connotations, and the second is a bit long. I haven't even started on Octy's affectionate name for her mother, but I was considering something along the lines of "big note". If any of you Italian-fluent readers (if there's any) know of a better way to do this, please let me know below.
As a side note, I already have a new project in mind when this one is done (yes, it's a pony story), so let's keep our paws crossed!
Oh, hey, good to see you kicking about again.
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You do know I just updated a story like, last week, right?
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Actually, yes and no. I somehow missed the update when it happened. Usually I catch that stuff in my feed, but I guess there was a bunch of stuff that day or something.
However, I had caught it just a couple of hours before this blog post.
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That's why I turned off all notifications from groups. I got tired of seeing 500 alerts in my pile, and knowing that I would never get through them all.
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But how will I get my futa-clop notifications?
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Fair enough.
"My little joy" can be translated almost literally, as "gioia mia" (my joy) is actually used in that context. "Gioietta" is a diminutive of "gioia" that literally means "little joy".
For notes... Note values have actual names (instead of just fractions), so maybe you could use those? The 4/4 is "Semibreve" and it's the longest note. Notations for longer notes exist but from what little we studied of basic musical notation I can't remember seeing them.
In fact, I just checked. Breve (8/4) is rare, and Lunga and Massima (16/4 and 32/4) are not used anymore. If you want Octavia poking fun at her mother for being old you could use one of those
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Oh. That is brilliant. I am definitely going to use that. Thank you so much for the help. I hope that if I need further help with Italian in this story in future, I can come to you.
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Also, when calling someone "Massima", is there anything I should be aware of? I'm not sure if I want to make it a diminutive to make it more familiar and possibly take some of the sting out of it, but what would be the best one for that particular word? I saw a few pages that shows various diminutives in Italian ( https://www.thoughtco.com/italian-modifying-suffixes-2011381 https://www.thoughtco.com/alteration-in-italian-diminutives-2011565 ), and I know that nouns in Italian have genders like they do in Spanish, so do they follow the same rules (-a for female, -o for male)?
4526941 Yes, like names they are differentiated by gender: -ina/-ino, -etta/-etto...
A common one for children is mamma->mammina, so "massimina" (lowercase, so there's no confusion with her name) could probably work; nicknames are meant to be silly anyway.
Edit- let me clarify: Massimo is an actual proper name. It's female version, though, is almost unused, and could work well as a nickname in this case.
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Neat! Thanks again.