19. Telling A Joke (Culture Shot) Learn Italian with Podcasts at LearnItalianPod

19. Telling A Joke (Culture Shot)

August 12th, 2007

PDF Transcript - Dialogue - Expansion - Glossary - Quiz

Telling A Joke - Raccontare Una Barzelletta

Learn how to speak Italian with LearnItalianPod.com! “But is it true that Italians love very much telling jokes to entertain their guests and friends? - And who’s this “Pierino”, protagonist of so many Italian jokes?” These are the questions posed by Michelle, one of LearnItalianPod’s subscribers. She says she went to Italy, enjoyed every minute of her trip, and she had a particularly great time when one night her Italian friend Antonio entertained her by telling a joke after the other. Well Michelle, just listen to today’s story to find out more about Italian jokes, joke-tellers and the legendary “Pierino”. Enjoy!

Culture Shot - Episode Nr. 19

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 12th, 2007 at 9:19 pm and is filed under Culture Shot. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses to "19. Telling A Joke (Culture Shot)"

Jim Says:

August 12th, 2007 at 9:22 pm

:-) I love this episode - thank you! Bravo Jane & Massimo!
It looks like Pierino is the equivalent to Little Johnny…

LearnItalianPod.com Says:

August 12th, 2007 at 9:31 pm

Thank you Jim - it was really fun to record this episode!

Yes, you could say Pierino is the Italian version of Little Johnny…

Alan Chambers Says:

February 14th, 2008 at 3:55 pm

Hi - another very enjoyable episode. I have two questions about the sentence: “Ecco uno dei classici della barzelletta su Pierino.”

1. Why is Barselletta in the singular? In english “jokes” would be in the pural, as it is in your translation.

2. Why “su Pierino” rather than “di Pierino”?

I’d like to understand this better, if you can explain it for me.

Many thanks,

Alan

LearnItalianPod.com Says:

February 14th, 2008 at 11:44 pm

Alan, regarding “barzelletta” - if you think about it, the construction of the sentence is equivalent of “uno dei classici della letteratura Italiana” (one of the classics of Italian literature). In this case, you would not use “literature” as plural. So, I guess that, in the case of the word “joke”, it’s just a linguistic difference between Italian and English.

“Su Pierino” means “on Pierino”, “about Pierino”. In this case, you could have used “di Pierino”. We have decided to go with “on Pierino” because it’s more common.

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