[Italian] Se avesse potuto comunicare così

[Tomisimo]

I ran across this video, which I'm sure is in Italian, and I wanted to check if I deciphered it right.

At the end it says:

Se avesse potuto comunicare così oggi che mondo sarebbe?

And I think it means:

Si se hubiera podido comunicar así, todo el mundo hubiera sabido.

Am I way off? (I need to buy a dictionary and start studying this language.)

[Rusty]

Originally Posted by Tomisimo

I ran across this video, which I'm sure is in Italian, and I wanted to check if I deciphered it right.

At the end it says:

Se avesse potuto comunicare così oggi che mondo sarebbe?

And I think it means:

Si se hubiera podido comunicar así, todo el mundo hubiera sabido.

Am I way off?

Not too far.

The song may be in Italian (I need to hear more of it), but the only thing being said in the video is in English (spoken by Ghandi, with an accent).

Here are the words he spoke:
If you want to give a message, it must be a message of love. It must be a message of truth. I want to capture your hearts. Let your hearts clap in unison with what I'm saying. (unintelligible phrase) A friend asked yesterday, did I believe in one world? How can I possibly do otherwise? Of course I believe in one world.

The Italian phrase at the end means:
Si hubiera podido comunicar así, hoy que mundo sería.
(If he could have communicated this way, what a world it would be today.)

[gatitoverde]

Interesting. As I recently proved, my French sucks, but se entiende, and looking at/hearing Italian is like looking at French meets Spanish with some strange third element. I've seen the chart on how they evolved, and I know I don't have it right, but that's what it seems like.

Has anyone here ever poked at Romanian? I did for a couple of weeks and I remember being thrilled by its enclitic construction-- that the articles are suffixes to the nouns. It has seven cases of declension by the way. I wonder way its case system survived whereas the others lost all but a hint of theirs. I suppose I could look into it but, I mean, come on, why? It's Romanian. Joking. Kind of. I know all this is totally off the subject, but I figure as long as we're discussing Romance languages. . .

[poli]

Ruego que lean la letra de esa canción: http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/ladyi...agaofjenny.htm
Que hagan caso de la parte que se trata con el estudio de idiomas.
Esa canción de precaución es hiperbólico, pero la verdad es si concentran
en muchas lenguas no podrán aprender bien ningunas. ¿Hay gente aquí
que le gusta hacer presentaciones You Tube? Si hay, propongo que cante
esa canción en varios idiomas y grabarlo para nosotros y el resto del mundo.

Poli

[Tomisimo]

A little bit of a word-for-word translation will help me learn. Is this right?

Se  avesse potuto   comunicare     così oggi  che mondo      sarebbe?
If  he could have   communicated   this way,  what a world   it would be today.
Si  hubiera podido  comunicar      así,       qué mundo      sería?

Is oggi 'today'?

[Tomisimo]

Originally Posted by gatitoverde

...looking at/hearing Italian is like looking at French meets Spanish with some strange third element. I've seen the chart on how they evolved, and I know I don't have it right, but that's what it seems like.

Italian is supposed to be the closest to vulgar Latin of all the romance langauges.

Originally Posted by gatitoverde

Has anyone here ever poked at Romanian? I did for a couple of weeks and I remember being thrilled by its enclitic construction-- that the articles are suffixes to the nouns. It has seven cases of declension by the way. I wonder way its case system survived whereas the others lost all but a hint of theirs. ...

Never had a chance to look into Romanian. But by your description, it sounds pretty interesting. How many cases did Latin have?

[Marsopa]

It means: If only I had been able to communicate like this, what would the world be like today.

Marsopa

[Rusty]

Originally Posted by Tomisimo

Is oggi 'today'?

Yes, oggi is today. I threw it on the end of the subordinate clause because it sounds better to the English ear in that spot.

Marsopa gave another possible translation. I wouldn't phrase it as a question (there is no punctuation in the original, just a hard return after the word così, so we can assume it was the end of the clause). Throwing in the word 'like' is a viable option in English, to make it sound better.

No subject pronoun appears in the Italian from the video. However, it is clear from the verb conjugation (congiuntivo trapassato (pluperfect subjunctive)) that a third person was intended. I chose he over she or it. If the first person were intended, the phrase would have been avessi potuto.

I would change your word-for-word translation to:

Se  avesse potuto comunicare     così       oggi   che mondo      sarebbe
If  he could have communicated   this way,  today  what a world   it would be.
Si  hubiera podido comunicar     así        hoy    que mundo      sería

[gatitoverde]

Originally Posted by Tomisimo

Never had a chance to look into Romanian. But by your description, it sounds pretty interesting. How many cases did Latin have?

Latin has 6, Russian, 6, and Greek, 4. The only other major influence I can think of on Romanian is Italian--though late in its development--except for . . . Slavonic, which turns out to have 7 cases, identical to the Romanian cases. So I guess that's where it got 'em, or at least some of them.

And this is totally off the subject but it occured to me because of the language I just used. 'Em may not be a degraded form of them, but rather a carry-over from a variant of Old English--more northerly than the main contributor to modern English--wherein the word was hem. I discovered that in the course of my orthography research, and found it interesting, so . . .

[Marsopa]

I checked the first post, and there is a question mark there. That's why I translated it that way.

Marsopa