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# 77 MARCH 21 , 2016
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ITALIAN LANGUAGE:
The origin of Thanks, You are
welcome, Grazie and Prego
By Giosuè Prezioso
According to the Californian
neuropsychiatrist
Louann Brizendine, the
amount of words pronounced on a daily basis by women and men is
very diverse: the former, in
fact, can use until 20 thousand terms, the latter only
7 thousands, basically a
third. Among these words,
there are some other that,
more frequently, appear
with a certain regularity. Interestingly, in English and
Italian “Grazie” e “Prego”
(“Thanks” and “Your Welcome”) occur very often,
as words expressing gratitude and gratefulness.
According to “Word Frequency Data”, the word
“Thank” (as a verb) ranks
498 out of the 5000 most
used in English. With less
precision, the word “wel-
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come” (from “You are welcome”) ranks 1555, which
means a lot, in a language
made up of 1, 022, 000
words (according to a study by Google and Harvard
University). In a list created
by “About Education”, instead, the Italian “grazie”
ranks 76 out of 100 words,
a datum that cannot be
found with “Prego” and
the affine “a te”(“to you”).
However, the meaning
of “Grazie” and “Prego”,
“Thanks (you)” and “You
are Welcome” differs in
the two languages. Coming from the ancient