One of the most useful travel phrases you can learn in preparation for a trip to Italy is Come si dice…? which means How do you say…?
Come si dice…?
How do you say…?
If, in English, you want to speak about people in general rather than a specific individual, there are many options:
- one > “One goes to the market.”
- you > “You can eat a lot of delicious things.”
- they > “In England, they speak English.”
- people > “In Italy, people speak Italian.”
In Italian, you can express the impersonal nature of a phrase with the impersonal pronoun si. Let’s take a look at how these English phrases would be rendered in Italian:
- Si va al mercato. = One goes to the market.
- Si possono mangiare tante cose buone. = You can eat a lot of delicious things.
- In Inghilterra, si parla inglese. = In England, they speak English.
- In Italia, si parla italiano. = In Italy, people speak Italian.
Today’s phrase uses the impersonal si, so the translation could be any of the following:
- How do you say…?
- How does one say…?
- How do they say…?
- How do people say…?
Of course, since we are talking about how to say something Italian, it makes sense to complete the phrase with …in italiano which means in Italian.
Come si dice “dog” in italiano?
How do you say “dog” in Italian?
Another common impersonal phrase is si dice che which means it is said that / people say that. Take a look at the following example:
Si dice che farà caldo domani.
It is said that tomorrow will be hot.
Heather Broster is a graduate with honours in linguistics from the University of Western Ontario. She is an aspiring polyglot, proficient in English and Italian, as well as Japanese, Welsh, and French to varying degrees of fluency. Originally from Toronto, Heather has resided in various countries, notably Italy for a period of six years. Her primary focus lies in the fields of language acquisition, education, and bilingual instruction.
