Learning a foreign language is hard work when you’re an adult! It’s always a humbling experience when, having diligently studied Italian for many years, you travel to Italy only to hear a group of four year olds playing together and speaking much better Italian than you!Non è giusto!

Well obviously those children have had the natural advantage of growing up surrounded by the sound and rhythm of Italian from day one. Children absorb language unconsciously, and at that stage don’t technically know the difference between a noun and an adverb, or how to conjugate the subjunctive. These are all things they will learn later on at school.Unfortunately for us poor old adults who set out to learn a second language in an evening class, or from a book, we have to do more or less the whole process back to front!

One of the earliest ways in which children begin to learn their mother tongue is throughfilastrocche(nursery rhymes). A couple of days ago I heard my friend Adriana singing this popularfilastroccato her 14 month old son Luca:

Farfallinabella bianca

vola vola mai si stanca

vola in qua, vola in là

poi si posa su un bel fior

Rather than translate it for you I’m going to do a grammatical analysis:

Farfallina(little butterfly) is a feminine singular noun. It is composed offarfalla(蝴蝶)+女性后缀-ina, meaning ‘small’ or ‘little’

bella(beautiful) andbianca(white) are both adjectives in the feminine singular form and refer to the nounfarfalla

vola(fly)is the third person singular of the present tense of the verbvolare(to fly): ‘he / she / it flies’. In this casevolameansla farfallavola(the butterfly flies)

maiis an adverb which can mean ‘ever’ or ‘never’. Here it means ‘never’

si stancais the third person singular of the present tense of the reflexive verbstancarsi(‘to get tired’, literally ‘to tire oneself’). In this case the reflexive pronounsirefers to thefarfallina

in qua / in là:the adverbsqua(here) andlà(there) are interchangeable withqui(here) and李(there). We choose which form to use according to personal preferences, local traditions, and how they sound in a particular context. For example, in this case:in qui / in lìwould sound ugly to an Italian person, so we usein qua / in làinstead

poiis an adverb which in this case means ‘then’

si posais the third person singular of the present tense of the reflexive verbposarsi(‘to settle’ – literally ‘to place oneself’ or ‘to put oneself’)

suis a preposition meaning ‘on / above / over / onto / about’. In this case it means ‘on’

unis the masculine form of the indefinite article ‘a’ or ‘an’. If you would like to revise the use of the indefinite article, see my old post:Articles-articles-articles

belis the masculine singular form of the adjectivebello(nice). This adjective behaves in a particular way when it precedes a noun. You can find out more about it in my old post:Buono o bello?

fioris a masculine singular noun. It should really be writtenfiore(flower), but in poems and songs we often drop the final –eto make certain words fit (e.g.cuorinstead ofcuore, ‘heart’;amorinstead ofamore, ‘love’).

Now you should have all the information you need to translate it for yourselves,su, forza!