If you know one Romance language...

[alexpgp]

It's kind of funny, I was surfing just now and ran across the following:

Un dottore al suo paziente obeso: "Se fai 10 chilometri al giorno per un anno arriverai al tuo pesoforma".

Un anno dopo il paziente telefona al dottore. "Dottore ho perso forma, ma ho un problema".

"E qual'è il problema?".

"Sono a 3650 Km da casa"

...and understood it with hardly any problem, after a few moments, even with a possible typo in the text (is it "persoforma," or "perso forma," or are both okay, or should it be something else entirely? The term(s) are unknown to me, as I don't speak Italian!)

In any event, the process involved filling in the words I knew (most of them cognates), and then making intelligent guesses on the blanks in between based on context. (Then again, it doesn't hurt to have grown up hearing ads that go "'Ronzoni sono buoni' means 'Ronzoni is so good!'")

BTW, the comprehension came easily for the following, but for a different reason:

Lo sai che differenza c'è fra l'ignoranza e l'indifferenza?.

No e non me ne frega niente!

In the second case, I sort of did a "back translation" from what amounts the same line in English ("Do you know the difference between ignorance and apathy? No, and I don't care!")

Hmmm.

Cheers...

Comments

[lemur-man.livejournal.com]

The doctor is actually referring to peso forma (from the words for 'weight' and 'shape'), meaning ideal weight or normal weight. What the patient is saying is that he has lost (perso, from perdere) weight, or slimmed down or whatever you want to call it.