Note 2 — THE TWO HUNCHBACKED BROTHERS.1

‘Bachettone mena!’ Perhaps the greatest stumbling-block in the way of acquiring familiarity with the art of conversing in Italian is the capricious use of the augmentative and diminutive terminations of words. Scarcely any substantive or adjective comes out of the mouth of an Italian without qualifications of this sort, making the spoken quite different from the written language. A foreigner can never arrive at the right use of these, because they have to be made up at the moment of use, upon no established laws, but entirely by a sort of instinctive perception of fitness. At Note 1 and 3 to ‘Il Poveretto,’ and other places, I have given some specimens of some of the most ordinary of these transformations. In the instance before us, ‘bacchettone,’ from ‘bacchetta,’ a rod, presents two distinct irregularities. The augmentative of a feminine noun never ought strictly to be ‘ona;’ but there are numerous instances, scarcely to be remembered under the largest practice, in which a feminine noun takes a masculine augmentative. ‘Bacchetta’ happens to be one of these. Next, the addition ‘one’ would ordinarily express that the thing to whose designation it was added was particularly big; yet in this instance it is applied to a little wand; it is clear, therefore, that it no longer means ‘big,’ but ‘singular,’ ‘remarkable’ in some way or other; best rendered in English by ‘good stick.’ ‘Menare,’ whence ‘mena,’ is a word of many meanings, which, though they may be all traced to the same original idea, must not be confounded. In common parlance, as in the present case, it means to beat; and ‘menar moglie’ is a common expression too; but it does not mean ‘to beat your wife,’ but ‘to lead home a wife,’ or, as we say, to ‘take a wife.’ The primary meaning is ‘to lead;’ hence, to govern; hence, to govern harshly; hence, to govern with violence; hence, to spite, to beat. One sentence in which it is used recalls a capricious use of our own word ‘to beat.’ ‘Menar’ il cane per l’aja’ (literally, to lead the dog all about the threshing-floor), answers exactly to our expression, ‘to beat about the bush’ in talking. ‘Menare’ and ‘dimenare, la coda,’ is said also of a dog wagging his tail. On the other hand, ‘menare per il naso’ (literally, ‘to lead one by the nose’), has by no means the signification those words bear in English, but implies a roundabout way of giving an account of anything. ↑