Italian word of the day
| Pronunciation | |
| English translation | September |
| Origin | From the Italian number sette, “seven” |
Settembre, from sette meaning seven, is so named because it was the seventh month of the year during the Roman Empire.
It was King Numa Pompilius who introduced what are now the first two months of the year, January and February (or, more accurately, gennaio and febbraio… after all, we are studying Italian)! So, September is now the ninth month of the year.
Unlike months in English, months in Italian are not capitalized.
Examples
| La scuola riapre a settembre. | School reopens in September. |
| Compirò 16 anni a settembre. | I’ll be sixteen in September. |
| Questo settembre è stato molto piovoso. | This September has been very rainy. |
What happens in September
September is a crazy month. It can be very rainy, piovoso, but also still quite sunny, soleggiato. The summer, l’estate, comes to an end and the schools reopen for a new school year, un nuovo anno scolastico.
| L’equinozio d’autunno si verifica a settembre. | The autumnal equinox occurs in September. |
What fruits ripen in September? If you go shopping in a supermarket, you’ll see a wide variety of fichi, figs, pesche, peaches and above all uva, grapes!
| Il fico, i fichi | The fig, the figs | |
| L’uva | The grapes | |
| La pesca, le pesche | The peach, the peaches |
For example, you can say…
| Le scimmie stavano mangiando dei fichi. | The monkeys were eating figs. |
| L’uva è così acida che non riesco a mangiarla. | The grapes are so sour that I can’t eat them. |
| Mattia ha un piccolo pesco in giardino. | Mattia has a little peach tree in his garden. |
Expressions with settembre in Italian
Let’s wrap up our lesson with some expressions (espressioni, from the singular espressione) featuring the word settembre in Italian.
The first one we’re going to see literally translates as “to postpone to September”, but it means to fail a subject.
In Italy, if you finish the school year and have bad grades in any subject, you will have to take an exam in that subject just before the next year starts in September. If you fail that exam, you will fail the whole year. It’s as if your failure is “postponed” until September.
| Rimandare a settembre | To fail a subject | |
| Settembre, l’uva è fatta e il fico pende | Fruit ripens in September |
Settembre, l’uva è fatta e il fico pende is a saying about the many kinds of fruit that ripen in September (we’ve just covered some of them in the paragraph above).
September is a very productive month in agriculture: grapes are harvested and fig trees are so laden with fruit that their branches literally lean to the ground!
Thirty Days Hath September…
You’re probably familiar with the nursery rhyme that goes Thirty Days Hath September… well, Italian has its own song too!
| Trenta giorni ha novembre | Thirty days has November | |
| con april, giugno e settembre. | with April, June and September. | |
| Di ventotto ce n’è uno, | of twenty-eight days there’s one | |
| tutti gli altri ne han trentuno! | all the others have thirty-one! |
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