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I was reading an old document put on the web and saw “siam” where I expected “siamo.”

I was about to report a typo when I realized that at least a third of the verbs were that way—“dobbiam” and “abbiam” per esempio.

Was that ever normal long long ago?

Charo
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WGroleau
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    It is still normal, I do it all the time :-) –  Mar 16 '14 at 18:45
  • You mean 1st person plurals, don't you? – DaG Mar 16 '14 at 20:49
  • @randomatlabuser, I agree it's still normal, but if you really do it all the time I fear people may think you are a poet... – Walter Tross Mar 16 '14 at 23:10
  • @DaG - Si, dispiace. – WGroleau Mar 17 '14 at 02:43
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    @Walter Tross, probably this is something Italians do all the time without really being aware of it. Consider the polirematica (1, 2 "un bel po' ": three apocopic words for a very frequent phrase used every day by millions of people who are not poets and presumably ignore what an apocope is. –  Mar 17 '14 at 03:33
  • @randomatlabuser, agreed - I thought you were referring to siam, dobbiam and abbiam. – Walter Tross Mar 17 '14 at 07:48
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    "siam peccatori ma figli tuoi" :-) – mau Mar 17 '14 at 09:23

1 Answers1

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It is an apocope (in Italian troncamento or apocope), a usual phenomenon in which one or more final letters of a word are omitted, usually for metrical or general euphonic reasons, not specific of a particular grammatical person or number (but with its own empirical rules).

Some troncamenti are now fixed (think about buon giorno rather than *buono giorno, un uomo rather than *uno uomo, dottor Rossi vs.*dottore Rossi). Others are optional, and left to one's sense of the language and the different emphasis to be given to a sentence (ti vuole bene as well as ti vuol bene).

In Italian you can read more about it in Treccani Enciclopedia dell'Italiano's article about troncamento.

DaG
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    "un uomo" is not an apocope actually, as "un" does exist as article – Mad Hatter Mar 16 '14 at 21:06
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    Thanks for your remark, but the article is actually uno, which «ha al masch. sing. la variante apocopata un» (http://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/uno/). – DaG Mar 16 '14 at 21:10
  • Touché, I'm sorry. – Mad Hatter Mar 16 '14 at 21:12
  • let me expand on an example of yours: ti vuole bene parlare di me vs ti vuol ben parlar di me – Walter Tross Mar 16 '14 at 23:02
  • Thanks for the interesting info about troncamento. I will have to read that article. Turns out this time, though, it was just a lot of sloppy typing--I found another web page with the same text except no dropped 'o' – WGroleau Mar 17 '14 at 02:46
  • @MadHatter Many (all?) the primary school teacher believe that it's convenient to tell lies to children, so they explain that there are three indeterminate articles, namely un, uno and una. This may be a pedagogically sound lie: teaching sometimes requires telling white lies. – egreg Jul 24 '14 at 08:07
  • @egreg: Apart from temporarily protecting children from the most horrible aspects of human actions, I do not advocate lying to them. As you see, the linguistic white lies you admit have enduring, detrimental consequences (see also the “no accent on sé stesso” fable and so on). – DaG Jul 24 '14 at 10:08
  • @DaG I said may! Unfortunately, Italian grammar is often taken for granted in high school, so it's not discussed in greater depth when students have more maturity for understanding the real processes. – egreg Jul 24 '14 at 10:36
  • I do not consider it good pedagogy to tell a student something that they will later have to unlearn. If the truth is too complicated to explain, then either the student isn't ready for it or the teacher doesn't understand it well. When I was a teacher, correcting the damage done by erroneous simplifications was one of my more frustrating duties. – WGroleau May 31 '16 at 20:26