Who decides whether a word exists or not? There is the dictionary of course, and associations like L'accademia della crusca. But language is fluid, and it's ordinary people, in the end, who decide what's in and what's out. If "most" people use a word that might not be in the dictionary, it will likely be mentioned in a future edition. But things change so quickly that it's hard to keep up, and printed classical dictionaries are way behind. Let's look at a word that has cropped up in a Yabla video. It has the famous S prefix: Sporzionare. 

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If we know the word "portion," we can guess that porzione is the Italian noun. In English, we sometimes say "to portion out" or "to portion up" when talking about something like a pie or cake. The more formal term would be "to apportion." We usually say "to divvy up," informally, or "to divide something into portions." Or, just "to cut."

Getting back to Italian, Italians love to make verbs out of nouns, and sometimes, in order to give more clarity to an action that goes in a certain direction, an S will be added. One example that comes to mind is sdoppiare, when talking about duplicating a cassette or media platform, even though sdoppiare means "to split up" or "to divide." 

In a recent episode of JAMS, Davide, a cook at a local bistro, who helps the kids out with their cooking projects, has to come up with a last minute birthday cake because Joy forgot the cake she had made at someone's house (a whole other story!). Alice blows out the candles, but then Davide takes the cheesecake away to cut it into portions. 

{Dove} vai con la torta? -{La} devo sporzionare.

Where are you going with the cake? -I have to portion it out.

Captions 27-28, JAMS S1 EP8 - Part 7

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It's kind of fun to come across new words with an S prefix. For more about the S prefix, see this lesson. Meanwhile, let us know if you find any we haven't talked about. We're interested! Write to us at [email protected]

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