# dirmelo - dire me lo? - etymology



## __Tony__

I'm trying to understand the details of "dirmelo". I know it means "tell me" but I'm trying to understand the root words that make up this word, or maybe its etymology. If you search WR it directs to dire, which makes sense, but then there are no examples involving dirmelo on that page, including the Collins tab -- just some forum questions that don't seem address my interest. I'm just learning Italian so it seems like a composite of "tell me it" -- is it that simple? I've seen 1 pronoun put on the end of a word, but not 2 yet, and I'm unclear on this subject.

Understanding how words are constructed really helps my learning -- can anyone direct me to a good (English) site that explains the etymology of Italian words?


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## Riverplatense

__Tony__ said:


> can anyone direct me to a good (English) site that explains the etymology of Italian words?



Well, there may be good etymological dictionaries, but analysing _dirmelo _is not a question of etymology, but of morphology.



__Tony__ said:


> If you search WR it directs to dire, which makes sense, but then there are no examples involving dirmelo on that page



The reason is that transitive verbs or even verbs with a direct and an indirect object can be combined with many pronouns — and that's what happened with _dire_. So it's true that _dire_ means ‹to say› (and it's indeed the infinitive ‹to say› and not the imperative *‹say me!/tell me!›). Now, as ‹to say› can have two objects (you say something to somebody), in Italian it can be combined with two clitic pronouns. That's the case in _dirmelo_, which consists of _dir(e)_ ‹to say›, _me ← mi_ ‹me› and _lo_ ‹it›. For instance, ‹can you tell me (it)?› would mean _puoi dirmelo?_ Another combination would be _dirtelo _(‹to say it to you›), like in _vorrei dirtelo_ ‹I'd like to tell (it to) you›. By the way, note that these clitic pronouns are never stressed, so the verb keeps the accent (_dìrmelo_).

So, instead of (or additionally to) recommending an etymological dictionary I'd rather recommend a good grammar book.


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## __Tony__

Thank you for the excellent reply -- I'm much clearer now.

Two points:
1) Seems to me it would be good to have one of your examples on the page which appears when one does a search for dirmelo
2) I still would like a recommendation for "a good (English) site that explains the etymology of Italian words"

Your explanation demonstrates something I've enjoyed about learning Italian: It's incredibly sensible and simple in so many ways! By contrast I have in mind French which sacrifices the simplicity of pronouncing every letter for an abstract concept of beauty, and German which has a ridiculously complicated grammar that is often applied based on virtually insensible genders that must be memorized. And don't get me started on English. If I wasn't a native speaker I'm sure I'd never have figured it out.

By the way, an excellent site for explaining German words is YourDailyGerman . com


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## Riverplatense

__Tony__ said:


> Thank you for the excellent reply -- I'm much clearer now.



You're welcome 



__Tony__ said:


> 1) Seems to me it would be good to have one of your examples on the page which appears when one does a search for dirmelo



I think the problem is that there's a lot of thinkable combinations. Of course, _dirmelo _(or the imperative _dimmelo!_) is more frequent than other forms, but still you can find many of these verb + objects constructions, besides not only with pronouns, but also with pronominal particles like _ne_. So in the case of _dare _‹to give›, for instance, one might look for _darceli _‹to give them to us›, _darmene _‹~ to give me from it›, _dargliela _‹to give she/it (feminine direct object) to her›, _dammelo!_ ‹give it to me!› etc.



__Tony__ said:


> 2) I still would like a recommendation for "a good (English) site that explains the etymology of Italian words"



In the Online resources thread there is only an Italian dictionary. As I'm not used to consulting English dictionaries for Italian issues, the only thing I could think of is Wiktionary.


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## Olaszinhok

Are the articles and compound prepositions so easy in Italian?! If I were an absolute beginner I would probably find Spanish and even French easier grammatically. Spelling and pronunciation are another story, though. I was forgetting geminate consonants: they are tricky, indeed.
By the way, the imperative tell me! is *dimmelo *in Italian*.*
What is sensible and simple in the following forms: *dammene, darceli, dargliene, darglieli, dillo, diccelo, vacci, andatevene and so forth???*


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## Riverplatense

Olaszinhok said:


> Are the articles and compound prepositions so easy in Italian?!



I'm not sure if this is the right forum to discuss this, but I (with native language German) have always found concordance to be one of the trickiest things in Italian. Not difficult to understand the system, but difficult to apply. It's many years that I have been learning and speaking Italian, but still it requires at least much concentration to build (spoken) sentences like _sono rimast*e* non dett*e* tant*e* cos*e* important*i*. _For me it still feels somehow difficult to agree the predicate with a subject that has not yet been pronounced, with the additional trouble of third-declension derived adjectives with _-e_ singular and _-i_ plural. In my personal experience applying the gemination is much more a question of habituation (besides I guess most learners simply ignore it).


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## Olaszinhok

Riverplatense said:


> For me it still feels somehow difficult to agree the predicate with a subject that has not yet been pronounced



That is a typical mistake made by Germans.  Die Frau ist sehr schoen - la donna è molto bello, I know,  this is a simple and silly example, but I often happen to hear that kind of mistake.

As for gemination, it is true that most foreigners simply ignore it, but we do distinguish between simple and double consonants and it is a common mistake made by non-native speakers, for instance Pope Francis.


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## bearded

Olaszinhok said:


> Die Frau ist sehr schoen - la donna è molto bello


Well, in your example, actually, the subject _is _expressed before the predicate.  A sentence like _Molto belle e intelligenti erano quelle donne _would probably  be 'somehow more difficult' for our friend Riverplatense.


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## Riverplatense

bearded said:


> Molto belle e intelligenti erano quelle donne



Exactly, that's a brain-challenging sentence 



Olaszinhok said:


> As for gemination, it is true that most foreigners simply ignore it, but we do distinguish between simple and double consonants and it is a common mistake made by non-native speakers, for instance Pope Francis.



I've always found this trait of Italian particularly beautiful and fascinating, also because it's often the remaining echo of sounds that haven't been pronounced for so long time. This «aesthetic» relationship to gemination has always made me try to apply it correctly, even if I also find it difficult in certain cases. But isn't this «natural standard gemination» a rather exclusive trait of Central Italy, with tendencies of loss towards the north and non-etymological gemination towards the south?


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## __Tony__

This discussion has gone way beyond my (beginner) level in Italian, but I appreciate it. My comments about the relative simpleness and sensibleness of Italian is perhaps because I'm just a beginner. The comments by Riverplantense give me pause (e.g., "...Not difficult to understand the system, but difficult to apply. It's many years that I have been learning and speaking Italian, but still it requires at least much concentration to build (spoken) sentences like ...")

Getting back to my original post: I think WordReference could be made even more wonderful if it included at least one example like Riverplantense gave on the page that appears when you search for that particular word. As it is right now, you see a page with "dirmelo" in bold at the top but then no direct information about it. In other words, either don't have a specific page with "dirmelo" in bold at the top, or have something that specifically addresses its meaning.

And secondly, it would be wonderful for Italian beginners if there were an etymology reference in English in the Online resources thread.


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## bearded

Riverplatense said:


> isn't this «natural standard gemination» a rather exclusive trait of Central Italy,


Well actually, the tendency to elimination (North) or exaggeration (South) of geminated consonants is true particularly for dialectal/local speeches. Here in the North, speakers of standard Italian do distinguish between simple and geminated consonants in pronunciation (we often adopt a sort of 'feeble' gemination which might give the impression of non-existence to non-trained ears, but is nevertheless perceived by natives/Einheimische). Everybody here, when hearing _asalto _instead of _assalto_, would think that the speaker is either a foreigner or (if the rest of his speech complies) an inhabitant of Veneto...


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## Olaszinhok

Riverplatense said:


> But isn't this «natural standard gemination» a rather exclusive trait of Central Italy, with tendencies of loss towards the north and non-etymological gemination towards the south?


 

I dare say that gemination is generalised in standard Italian, however I have noticed that most Northern speakers don't pronounce as double certain consonants such as *gl* and *gn *if they are in between two vowel sounds as in_ figlio, ogni, etc.,_ Oftentimes, I have heard this kind of pronunciation: fi:ʎo instead of fiʎʎo as in standard Italian. Perhaps, as our friend Bearded stated in the previous post, geminate consonants are a bit less intense in most areas in the North of Italy.
Riverplatense, you were probably referring to  syntactic gemination (Raddoppiamento fonosintattico), which is a particular feature  of standard Italian but it is not used in Northern Italy at all. Bearded, please correct me, if I am mistaken. For instance: _vado a casa_, in Central and Southern Italian is generally uttered  va:do akkasa/akkaza, whereas va:do a Ka:za in Northern Italy.


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## bearded

Olaszinhok said:


> please correct me, if I am mistaken.


No, you are not mistaken. We 'Northeners' only respect the syntactic gemination when it also appears in writing/spelling: e.g. in words like _dappertutto, giacché, etc.. _But I'm not sure River referred to this.


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## Riverplatense

Olaszinhok said:


> Riverplatense, you were probably referring to syntactic gemination (Raddoppiamento fonosintattico)





bearded said:


> But I'm not sure River referred to this.



I referred to this when speaking about the «echo» (a very unscientific term for sure) of sounds that are not pronounced any more, but my comment about the northern tendency was general.



bearded said:


> we often adopt a sort of 'feeble' gemination which might give the impression of non-existence to non-trained ears



That's very interesting. I will pay particular attention to this northern gemination variant in the time to come!


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## bearded

Riverplatense said:


> «echo» (a very unscientific term for sure)


It may be unscientific, but I find it's a fascinating way to describe our 'syntactic gemination': in a phrase like _la virtù della mamma _(mom's virtue), our standard pronunciation 'virtùddella' reminds of the syllable that has disappeared ('virtu_te_(_m_) della'..), so it's a kind of 'echo'. Bravo Riverplatense!


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## francisgranada

bearded said:


> It may be unscientific, but I find it's a fascinating way to describe our 'syntactic gemination': in a phrase like _la virtù della mamma _(mom's virtue), our standard pronunciation 'virtùddella' reminds of the syllable that has disappeared ('virtu_te_(_m_) della'..), so it's a kind of 'echo'.


I only want to add that in ancient Italian (or better: old Tuscan) the word _virtù _was_ virtude, _and  in certain positions pronouced without the final _-e_, like in case of _ amor mio_,_ Mar Mediterraneo_, etc., or like in Spanish (_virtud_).  Thus the result is _virtud' della,_ i.e. _'virtùddella'. _


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## bearded

francisgranada said:


> the word _virtù _was_ virtude_


Well, actually there is no need to resort to a somewhat unusual (poetic) or dialectal form with 'd' in order to explain the 'syntactic gemination', as even in old Tuscan the standard form sounded 'virtute' (see e.g. in Dante's Commedia _''per seguir virtute e canoscenza''_)
Inferno - Fatti non foste a viver come bruti
I think it is sufficient that a consonant (any consonant) disappeared from the final syllable, and gemination results from 'assimilation' by the subsequent consonant (examples: dapprima from _de-ab-prima, _giacché from _iam-quem/-quia..._). Assimilation seems to occur in Italian even when the first of the two consonants in question is unvoiced (a very old phenomenon): adattare from Lat. _adaptare.._


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## Olaszinhok

In Italian, we can also find gemination even after words with no dropped final syllable, as in _tu_ and_ chi:_ For those interested in the subject, I highly recommend this detailed article. It is in Italian.

RADDOPPIAMENTO SINTATTICO in "La grammatica italiana"

I would also like to add that if the final letter of certain Latin particles is a _d _or a_ t, _such as: _ad, aut, et_ and the following word starts with a vowel sound, we can resort to the so-called euphonic d. To be honest, it seems to me that this d preserves the origianl Latin d in _ad _but it is the result of the transformation of _t_ into d in the conjuctions _et or aut._
In short, gemination and the euphonic d are somehow two related topics, in my opinion.


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## bearded

Olaszinhok said:


> euphonic d


Can you please provide some examples?


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## Olaszinhok

Again, two more links:
Sulla d eufonica | Accademia della Crusca
D [EUFONICA] in "La grammatica italiana"

Here is a couple of examples:
_Ad Petrum_ becomes _Appietro_ in Italian and _à Pierre_ in French, _a Pedro_ in Spanish…: in Italian the d is removed and we have the gemination of the P.
_Ad Adamum_ becomes _Ad Adamo_ in Italian, the d is preserved, whereas it disappears both in French _à Adam_ and in Spanish a _Adàn._


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## francisgranada

bearded said:


> Well, actually there is no need to resort to a somewhat unusual (poetic) or dialectal form with 'd' in order to explain the 'syntactic gemination', as even in old Tuscan the standard form sounded 'virtute' (see e.g. in Dante's Commedia _''per seguir virtute e canoscenza''_)


My intention was not to contradict to what you have said before ... However, the form with "-d-" in my opinion is neither unusual nor only poetic or dialectal. At the moment I am not able to give you examples citing Dante, but see e.g. Treccani:

città (ant. cittade) s. f.
virtù (ant. virtude o virtute, e anche vertù, vertude o vertute)
(etc.)

I fully agree with you, i.e. the 'syntactic gemination' can be explained also without supposing _-d-_ instead of the unvoiced _-t-_, but the 'syntactic gemination' works only if the last sound of the first word was originally a consonant. So to explain the _double d_ in the pronunciation of _virtù della [virtùddella]_ first _w_e have to suppose the loss of the final _-e_. Thus we have two possibilities: *_virtut della_ or *_virtud della_. Intuitively, I think that the loss of the final -e (in _virtut*e*_) was preceded by a process of _lenition _of the intervocalic _-t- _, resulting in a kind of a voiced final consonant _-d_.


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## bearded

OK


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## __Tony__

__Tony__ said:


> By the way, an excellent site for explaining German words is YourDailyGerman . com



The closest I've found to a site which explains Italian words is the advanceditaliano blog at advanceditaliano . wordpress . com

It's somewhat similar to the German site I mentioned, but not as extensive and there's more emphasis on word meaning and usage than etymology. Still, since no one has posted anything in response to my question about such a site (in English), I thought I'd post what I'd found so far.


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