There have been a number of videos on Yabla that refer to fumetti, but what are they? Fumetti are comic books and comic strips. A graphic novel is called un romanzo a fumetti or un romanzo grafico and sometimes the English term "graphic novel" is used for these. They consist of a complete story, not a continuing story as we often have in comic books.
Why do we call comics fumetti? Fumo is smoke, and the speech bubbles or word balloons you find in comics are kind of like puffs of smoke. The suffix -etto means "small" and the puffs of smoke, or speech bubbles, are relatively small. These speech bubbles are sometimes called nuvolette (little clouds).
Senti, tu vedi di fargli leggere almeno un fumetto quest'estate eh.
Listen, you see to it that he at least reads a comic book this summer, huh.
Caption 52, Provaci ancora prof! S2E6 La strana ossessione - Part 22
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Comic books are very popular in Italy. There is an entire convention dedicated to comics, Lucca Comics, the largest in Europe.
Che stai facendo? -Sto leggendo un fumetto. -Com'è? -Fichissimo.
What are you doing? -I am reading a comic book. -How is it? -Super cool.
Captions 18-20, JAMS S1 EP2 - Part 4
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On an Italian quiz show this question was asked about the fumetto Diabolik:
In quale luogo Angela Giussani trovò l'ispirazione per creare il fumetto "Diabolik"?
In which place did Angela Giussani find inspiration for creating the cartoon, “Diabolik”?
Caption 18, L'Eredità -Quiz TV La sfida dei sei. Puntata 2 - Part 12
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Subscribers can find the true answers to this question in this video!
There are two different documentaries on Yabla about fumetti:
Guido Crepax, Cercando Valentina and Fumettology.
Guido Crepax is the pen name of Guido Crepas, whose best-known character was Valentina. She was created in 1965 and her last appearance was in 1996. In the documentary, we discover where the author's ideas came from and what his techniques were in designing the panels and thinking up the stories.
Nel Sessantadue, mettono in piedi una casa editrice che, che si mette a pubblicare Diabolik, il fumetto più scandaloso di quegli anni.
In nineteen sixty-two, they set up a publishing house that, that set to publishing Diabolik, the most scandalous comic book of those years.
Captions 22-24, Fumettology Diabolik - Part 3
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"Fumettology" is a documentary about various popular Italian fumetti.
The first episode is about Diabolik. Read about this fumetto here on Wikipedia. You'll also find the answer to the quiz show question above.
All'inizio, quando loro partirono, non ci fu un distributore che volle distribuire il fumetto.
In the beginning, when they started out, there was no distributor who wanted to distribute the comic book.
Captions 1-2, Fumettology Diabolik - Part 4
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Both Valentina and Diabolik were created for adults, but the second fumetto featured in "Fumettology" is aimed at a general audience, and is an Italian take on the American Wild West. Read about Tex Willer here.
Tex è un eroe capace di modificare il mondo attorno a sé con la sola sua presenza.
Tex is a hero capable of changing the world around him solely by means of his presence.
Captions 1-2, Fumettology TEX - Part 2
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In an episode of Imma Tataranni, we even see her husband, Pietro, on the couch, reading Tex. Whoever watched the episode knowing about Tex probably let out a chuckle. Pietro might have been in "don't bother me" mode.
Italians got some of their ideas from American comics, and had them translated, but during the Fascist period, there were bans, except for Topolino (the Italian version of Mickey Mouse). Italian comics were allowed, but there were restrictions as to content. Once World War II was over, fumetti became very popular once again and that is when Tex was created.
Reading fumetti can be an enjoyable way to learn some Italian! Take it from someone who did that and whose daughter did, too!
This brings us to another word used in this week's segment of L'Eredità, the quiz show: giallo (yellow).
Ritenne che la maggior parte dei pendolari aveva una grande passione per i racconti gialli.
She found that the majority of commuters had a great passion for yellow [detective] stories.
Captions 36-37, L'Eredità -Quiz TV - La sfida dei sei. Puntata 2
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Here, although the color yellow does play an important role, un giallo is something specific: a crime, mystery or detective story. Note: The moderator of the quiz show uses giallo as an adjective: i racconti gialli (the detective stories) and it is common to say un romanzo giallo (a detective novel), to specify the format, but giallo as a noun encompasses any format and is widely used and understood by Italians.
But what's this "yellow" business?
Here's the story. (click here for the extended Italian version).
In 1929, Mondadori, a major Italian publishing house, came out with a series of detective novels. They were tascabili (in paperback, literally "pocket-sized") and had a distinguishing yellow cover. They were called I libri gialli della Mondadori (Mondadori's Yellow Books). In 1946, the name of these books changed to I gialli Mondadori. The name giallo caught on, and has been used ever since to indicate a detective, crime, or police mystery, and can be applied to books, comic books (as in Diabolik mentioned on the quiz show), movies, or even news events. Giallo with this meaning has become a word everyone should know, especially if you like to read. And it can't be guessed at if you don't know the story. But now you know the story, too.
You may have heard of an American television series from the eighties and nineties called Murder, She Wrote with Angela Lansbury. This series, dubbed into Italian, became extremely popular (and stilll is) as La Signora in Giallo (The Lady in Yellow). This play on words should make sense to you now!
Read this article (in Italian) for more information about the Italian version of the show, and, why not? Find it for streaming in Italian, just for fun.
Italian has a wonderful word for "commuter." It comes from the back and forth movement of a pendulum, and is, you guessed it: pendolare.
Pendolare è quella persona che prende il treno. -Prende il treno tutti i giorni.
A commuter is a person who takes the train. -He takes the train every day.
Caption 23, Serena - presenta Martina
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Ritenne che la maggior parte dei pendolari aveva una grande passione per i racconti gialli.
She found that the majority of commuters had a great passion for detective stories.
Captions 36-37, L'Eredità -Quiz TV - La sfida dei sei. Puntata 2
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Pendolare is originally a verb having to do with the movement of a pendulum, or pendolo, but it is now commonly used to mean "commuter." Italy is a long, narrow penisola (peninsula) with mountains in the middle. Many people live in one place but work in another. Rather than actually moving, they become pendolari (commuters). Being a pendolare is tough, and often complicated, so if you listen to the news, you'll hear the word pendolare often. A pendolare may travel by car (in macchina), by bike (in bici) by bus (in pullman), by train (in treno), or by plane (in aereo). Note the preposition in ! But generally, when we think of pendolari, we imagine them on trains. Nowadays, people have phones (cellulari), laptops (portatili), or tablets (tablet) to occupy them while traveling by train, but it wasn't always so. People used to read libri (books), riviste (magazines), or giornali (newspapers). A certain kind of book was particularly popular. Il giallo. See the lesson about it!
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