Mincing Words With Smoke and Ash

Mincing Words With Smoke and Ash

We recently visited our local IKEA.  Although still some distance from us, by “local” I mean here, confined to the USA.  Every so often, it’s fun to follow the arrows on their showroom floor, room to room, through their maze of displays.  It brought back memories of the IKEAs in Italy where we’ve purchased a good share of the items that fill our home in that beautiful corner of Italy called Calitri.  Seeking contentment through familiarity, IKEAs in the US and Italy are laid out exactly alike.  I’m guessing they are all alike.  We’ve been to quite a few over the years, beginning with one in Florence.  I recall those early days when although we knew there were some in our region of Campania, we couldn’t get people to understand us when we asked where IKEA was located.  It was because of the way I was pronouncing it.  The “I” of Eye-Key-ah was putting the local Italians off because the vowel “I” in Italian is pronounced “E”, making it E-Kay-ah.”  “Oh, vuoi dire E-Key-ah!” (Oh, you mean Ikea!).  Just what was to us a minor shift in pronunciation made our request totally unintelligible until I wrote it out.  It is much like how an errant comma in a computer’s code could cause a probe to miss the moon.  With slip-ups like this, there’s no telling what I may have been saying at other times.  I guess I was truly mincing words.

As I roam from correct pronunciation using stitched together words and turns of phrase, I’ve no qualms about losing face making mistakes.  It seems I have no reticence over making such gaffes as I verbally slobber all over myself with not only incorrect pronunciation, but word choice as well.  Thankfully, some clarity eventually appears.  Instead of a rapid-fire salvo of “Ciao, Ciao, Ciao” on arriving or departing, I’ve learned to hold them back and use salve (hello), buongiorno (good morning), or arrivederci (good-bye).  Unlike me, many are unwilling to risk making mistakes.  They are reluctant to open their mouths and attempt a simple sentence for fear, beyond the complexities of the vocabulary, that they might fumble over perfect pronunciation, complex tense forms, or thorny gender selection.  Folks have told me, however, that my attempts, nascent as they are, please them for the mere fact that I try. 

Italian is arguably the most beautiful and melodic language in the world.  To speak it, any language for that matter, is a process of trial, error, and occasional funny moments when someone slips up by using the wrong word or pronounces something in an incomprehensible manner.  But there is some help getting it right.  I’ve heard for instance that any word in English ending in “ion” is easily pronounced in Italian by adding an “e” to its ending.  Seems to work.  Thus “constitution” becomes “costituzione” and “tradition” becomes “tradizione.”  Pretty much sounds the same although syllable emphasis is often different but not enough for you not to be understood.  It has worked to instantly increase my Italian vocabulary by hundreds of words.  Some missteps, like my fumble over IKEA, beyond generating a laugh, can lead to trouble when similar sounding words have totally different meanings.

Going the other way, listening can be just as tricky.  Words that resemble each other, especially when they sound alike in both languages, can and often mean something completely different and provide an opportunity for major gaffes.  To make this point, in the movie, “Under the Tuscan Sun” the word “celibe” is used in dinner conversation when Frances (actress Diane Lane) is asked whether she is “celibe” by a handsome Italian gentleman seated beside her.  She makes the obvious jump, thinking he was asking her if she was “celibate”, as in sexual abstinence.  Quite a few meanings removed, he was actually asking her if she was single, as in unmarried.  That got a laugh out of me back in 2003 and imprinted in me not to ever make that mistake.  Here is another example of close but not exact and definitely far from correct.  Can you guess what the Italian word preservativi (pre-zer-vah-t-vee) means?  Well, I can assure you it has nothing to do with safeguarding something or even breakfast jellies and jams.  It actually translates to condoms!  Talk about stepping on a landmine.  And I won’t even try to describe the consequences of how just changing the “o” in the Italian word for fig to an “a” can prove catastrophic when in this case all you wanted was some jam for your toast.  That is an embarrassing way to learn a language, surely not part of your Rosetta Stone or Babble subscription.  I doubt there’d be any laughter over that foul-up.  Foot-in-the-mouth faux pas, in this case spoken totally correct, also extend to food etiquette.  Take for instance asking for parmesan cheese to put on a fish or seafood pasta dish or ordering a cappuccino well into the afternoon or with an evening meal (some say the cutoff is 10 a.m.).  Yet many times, putting the proverbial foot in your mouth is part of the learning process.  After all, we learn from our mistakes.  Wasn’t it Tom Edison who said, “I have not failed.  I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”  In the case of language though, 10,000 times might be fairly excessive.  With pronunciation at least, Tom’s dawning light bulb of realization for getting it right ought to go on well before that.

I have a good ear, so repeating the sound with the proper intonation, syllable cadence, and rolling those R’s with the proper inflection is not difficult.  The hard part is remembering the words and especially those troublesome verb constructs.  At this point, it is doubtful I have much room in my head for another language dictionary; Recalling the one already built into me, English, is hard enough.  I attribute this inability to my age and that processor called a brain.  My ram memory for quick recall isn’t so fast anymore and has grown somewhat volatile, dropping things here, there, everywhere, while my brain’s hard drive wobbles and skips from continual overwrites.

Yet, while there are words and confusion over them as I’ve mentioned, there are also non-words.  From those first Neanderthal utterances to books full of words today, the terms we use need a spark of invention.  New ones, so new my spellchecker doesn’t recognize them, like, “elbow-bump,” “unfathom,” “zoodle,” along with many others, are annually given the Merriam-Webster stamp of approval.  But way back, pre-alphabet and pre the advent of books, a mere picture would suffice to record what would eventually become a word.  One such image word was what we now refer to as a volcano.

Possible 9,000 Year0old Depiction of
an Erupting Volcano

   The earliest recording of a volcanic eruption is thought to be depicted in a wall painting dated to about 7,000 BC found at a Neolithic site in Anatolia, Turkey.  It depicts a village with what is thought to be an erupting volcano looming in the background.  Scientific tests on pumice from a nearby volcano have in fact confirmed that an eruption occurred there between 9,500 and 8,400 years ago.  This time span included the era when the mural was believed to have been painted.  Then, there are more recent eruptions in geologic terms like the 1646 BC massive eruption, perhaps one of the largest ever witnessed by man, that took place at Thira (present-day Santorini, Greece), an island not far from Crete.  Reportedly as many as 20,000 people may have been killed as a result of that explosion.  Yet this is still short of the 1883 AD Indonesian colossal eruption of Krakatoa that saw a death toll of over 36,000 and had a Volcanic Explosivity Index of 6 (the maximum is 8).

For both the Greeks and Romans there was no reserved word for a volcano.  Their cultures explained volcanoes as the sites of various gods.¹  Like so much in their world, they associated volcanic events with godly intrigue.  Mountain rumblings were thought to be the tormented cries of imprisoned

Snakes Protecting Pompeiians
from Vesuvius?

gods and defeated giants, the flames, the caustic gases and spewing ejecta their breath, and the quakes their more forceful railings against their prison enclosures.  The Greek word to describe volcanoes was aetna, taken from the Greek word aitho (to burn), which likely explains the volcano of the same name in Sicily.  Like a word or symbol for the number zero, the Romans were also found wanting.  The closest the Romans came in Latin to volcano was the description, Mons Igneus (Fiery Mountain).  In Pompeii, one mural depicts Vesuvius with a snake to either side and another in the foreground.  Snakes enjoyed more positive reputations at that time.  They were symbols of good fortune and the bearers of abundance.  As guardian deities, they protected the home, neighborhood, and temple.  With such a conspicuous depiction surrounding Vesuvius, they just may have served as a standing entreaty to the gods for protection from the nearby mons igneus. 

With the loss of Pompeii, a get-away resort for vacationing Romans, as well as nearby Ercolano (Herculaneum) in a matter of hours in 79 AD, Vesuvius achieved lasting fame.  Although the area had shared the same fate 1500 years earlier, with fewer people around to relate the happening and no Pliny the Younger present to record the details, it lacked the notoriety of equal billing.  While they may not have had a word for it, nonetheless they knew the feeling.  Its volcanic flare-ups have grown rather commonplace, for Vesuvius has erupted hundreds of times.  Today it is the only active volcano on mainland Europe and likely, with over 3 million people nearby, the most dangerous.  With all the attention on the 79 AD eruption, many are unaware that Vesuvius last awoke from its slumber in March of 1944 at the height of World War II.  It was a stunning surprise to the Allied forces who had invaded Italy only seven months earlier.  Especially surprised were the airmen of the 340th Bombardment Group who occupied an airfield only miles from the volcano.  Knowing the history of the place, since many a Pliny the Younger had subsequently weighed in, they were likely flabbergasted.

B-25 Mitchell Bomber

     On 2 January 1944, the Twelfth Air Force’s 340th Bombardment Group, equipped with B-25 Mitchell bombers, had settled into a new base not far from ancient Pompeii and only a few kilometers from Mount Vesuvius.  When Vesuvius erupted on 18 March 1944, the B-25s were covered with hot ash that burned their fabric control surfaces, even tipping some B-25s onto their tails from the weight of the ash and more solid ejecta.

“Black stones of all sizes, some as large as a football, fell in great quantity completely covering the ground, breaking branches from the trees, smashing through the tents to break up on their floors, tearing through the metal, fabric, and Plexiglas of the airplanes. Soon all the tents were in tatters with much of their contents destroyed by direct hits. Radios, cots, and many other effects were severely damaged.”²

No lives were lost at Poggiomarino, the Pompeii Airdrome, and 

Look Closely ... is that Nose
Wheel Of the Ground?

American injuries were minor with personnel casualties amounting to a sprained wrist and a few minor cuts.  The damage from the eruption lay with the aircraft that proved overwhelming despite a major effort by the 12th Air Force to repair and salvage the damaged aircraft.  Over approximately the first week of the eruption, the base and 88 of the 340th's aircraft (estimated value $25,000,000) were destroyed.²  As a result, the airfield was dismantled and the 340th relocated to another airfield, this one near Paestum.  A week afterward, with the arrival of new aircraft, the 340th was back in action unleashing hell on the enemy in Northern Italy.  This would become the same unit immortalized in the 1961 novel “Catch-22.”  Its author, Joseph Heller, would join the 340th as a B-25 bombardier (mirroring Capt. Yossarian himself?) just two months later in May of 1944 when the Bomb Group relocated to the island of Corsica.  This particular eruption lasted 17 days, nothing approaching 

B-25s Back in Action

the seven record-setting eruptions since 1750 that lasted more than five years, each of which is absolutely amazing.

With such pent-up energy, it’s a wonder that no one has exploited the destructive potential of a volcano.  Far beyond serving as a geothermal energy source, why not use it as a weapon and let it all out?  While a volcano has never been weaponized, the thought is rumored to have been broached.  It was allegedly suggested as a Nazi tactic to slow the movement of Allied forces traveling north up the Italian peninsula into the heart of Europe.  Whether it represented just “what-if” bar talk or actually had some credibility behind it, isn’t clear.  Naples, from Vesuvius all the way around to Sophia Loren’s hometown of Pozzoli, close to the coast on the northern shore of the Bay of Naples, then to today floats atop a sea of molten magma.  It was an area well known to the Romans as the Agri Phlegraea (Phlegraean Fields), today an active area of boiling mud and gaseous emission.  It lies close to the Solfatara crater, the mythological home of the Roman god of fire, Vulcan.

Vesuvius Dominates the Naples Skyline

If the Nazi scheme had been undertaken, I question whether it would have triggered an eruption.  After all, tons and tons of bombs had already been dropped on the port of Naples by repeated Allied raids when it was occupied by the Nazis.  Thankfully, with the ordinance on hand at the time, Allied actions hadn’t ruptured the crust, triggering a volcanic catastrophe. 

Neapolitans by nature are a superstitious lot.  Much like their ancestors, they look for signs and omens of what lies ahead.  Instead of an augur’s prophecy or the inspection of the entrails of sacrificial animals, they offer prays and appeal to saints today.  Case in point:  Three times a year, the first Saturday in May, a particular saint’s feast day in September, and again on 16 December (the anniversary of the 1631 massive eruption of Mount Vesuvius), Neapolitans gather at the cathedral in the center of Naples to witness the miracle of San Gennaro (St. Januarius).  During the fourth century, Gennaro was an archbishop who was martyred during the Diocletian persecution of Christians.  Legend has it that an ampoule of his blood was collected and to this day serves as a religious relic.  The blood solidified but didn’t always remain in a solid state.  Its state transitions serve what flights of birds and

Calitri with the Caldera of Our Extinct
Volcano in the Background - Long
May She Rest Quietly

dissected livers had in the past for ancient Romans.  Remaining in a solid state is a forecast of trouble ahead, some form of disaster.  Three times, nearly every year over the centuries, the condition of the blood is checked.  A miracle is declared to have taken place each time the blood in the vial is found to have liquefied.  On those rare occasions when the blood remained solid, disaster has struck the city.  In 1528, a plague devastated Naples.  1980 was another solid blood year.  That year an earthquake struck and killed nearly three thousand people.  And it happened again recently on Dec 16, 2020.  Was it a COVID warning?  Would there be an eruption, some other form of plague, or both?  Like many Delphic utterances, it calls for interpretation for its implication is never really clear.  As I write this, Naples lies in a COVID red zone, while on 9 May 2021, Vesuvius was shaken by a quake of magnitude 3.0 (“often felt”) accompanied by an additional 46 quakes below magnitude 2.0 (“usually not felt”).  On the bright side, COVID 19 is on the wane, and we must keep in mind that Vesuvius has been around for 25,000 years in an area subject to volcanic activity for at least 400,000 years.  Doubtful that puts much of a shine on it though.  But then, that December negative forecast is old news.  The most recent May of 2021inspection of the vial proved to be another miraculous event.  Those socially distanced people lucky enough to get into the Cattedrale di Santa Maria Assunta, breathed a sigh of relief through their masks and rejoiced.  Once again, San Gennaro had come through and answered their prayers.

Hopefully, my rambling has not frightened you from ever attempting to speak Italian, visiting the magma spewing Naples area, or the entirety of Italy

View of the Extinct Monte Vulture Volcano
from Casa Calitri, Our Home in Italy

for that matter.  Just be mindful to take special care when mentioning figs, be cautious with the preservativi, and even if you decide to live life close to a volcano as we do with Monte Vulture outside our windows, play it safe and confirm it is quiescent, and then pray it stays that way.  Honestly, I am loath to confess that I’m a little hesitant myself when I walk the streets of Naples, absent those protective snakes, and aware of the churning magma is beneath my feet.  And after a year away, with the obvious erosion of what Italian I’d managed to learn, there is also no telling what I might say or be able to say when I eventually return.  Would I be wise to remain mute until re-acclimated?  My worry then, in a one step forward, two steps back shuffle, is how my unplanned sabbatical has eroded what limited capability I had.  Will my words go wrong in my mouth and my listener’s ears?  It is akin to being in orbit a long time and then trying to immediately walk upon returning to Earth.  It’s astounding how over a three-month stay there I’d grown more adept at speaking Italian and was on the path to fluency.  Like falling off the wagon, I’ve since gone off that path.  But I’m adventurous, so let’s pray for the best, avoid the quakes, and get fluent!

 

From that Rogue Tourist,
Paolo

 

1. Volcanology  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanology

2. War Diary of the 340th Bombardment Group, March 1944 http://57thbombwing.com/340th_History/340th_Diary/15_March1944.pdf