@marktsoapm ed ella concepì per opera dello Spirito Santo. #twitterangelus #it
— Caral James (@Caral4Christ) Gennaio 11, 2013
A (hasty) recording of the Angelus in Italian.
ed
ed is a modified form of e, so it just means "and" again. It's called the 'd eufonica'; it's euphonic in that it avoids a cacophonic repetition of the vowel 'e' together with ella.
This can also happen with the preposition a–ad (to) or o–od (or).
ella
This is another case of literary/formal language. I conjugated essere with its subject pronouns last time (here). Now we can expand it a little with some literary forms, which I've put in green.
| essere | (to) be, being | |
|---|---|---|
| io | sono | I am |
| tu | sei | you are |
| lui/egli, lei/ella, Lei | è | he/she/it is (+ you are) |
| noi | siamo | we are |
| voi | siete | you are (plural) |
| loro, essi, esse | sono | they are |
Egli and ella are simple enough; they're direct literary equivalents for "he" and "she". The distinction for "they" is to do with gender and agreement, which I discussed here, but without touching on the relevant aspect. essi is the masculine form, and esse the feminine; this is simple enough since it corresponds to the normal endings of nouns, but with plurals it's a bit more complicated. What happens when you're dealing with a mix of masculine and feminine? The answer is simple, if arbitrary, you use the masculine form. In effect, you would only see esse when talking about a group comprising exclusively women. In the following, for example, the prayer is for all the dead, men and women:
splenda ad essi la Luce Perpetua
may-it-shine to them the Light Perpetual
Here we're talking about forms which you wouldn't tend to use every day, but the same rule applies in regular Italian:
sono benedetto – I am blessed (male speaker)
sono benedetta – I am blessed (female speaker)
sono benedetti – they are blessed (men or mixed group)
sono benedetti – they are blessed (women)
opera
These are the feminine nouns in the Angelus:
| singular | plural | English | |
|---|---|---|---|
| la grazia | le grazie | the grace(s) | |
| la donna | le donne | the woman/women | |
| la madre | le madri | the mother(s) | |
| la morte | le morti | the death(s) | mortal |
| la serva | le serve | the female servant(s) | |
| la parola | le parole | the word(s) | |
| la carne | le carni | the flesh, meat | carnal |
| la promessa | le promesse | the promise(s) | |
| la passione | le passioni | the passion(s) | |
| la croce | le croci | the cross(es) | crucifix |
| la gloria | le glorie | the glory/glories | |
| la risurrezione | le risurrezioni | the resurrection(s) | |
| la luce | le luci | the light(s) | lucid |
| la pace | le paci | the peace(s) | pacifist |
| (la peccatrice) | (le peccatrici) | (the female sinner(s)) | im-peccable |
| l'opera | le opere | the work, action, means | operation |
| l'ora | le ore | the hour(s) | |
| l'incarnazione | le incarnazioni | the incarnation(s) |
You can see what I wrote on nouns, both masculine and feminine, last time here. Take a look before carrying on. Here there are more things to take into account.
Again, there are feminine nouns that begin with a vowel: opera, ora and incarnazione. As with the masculine nouns, the normal article "la" becomes an "l" with apostrophe. The plural, however, remains "le" in all cases.
With many words, there is a masculine and a feminine version. This can be quite simple, as in the case of "servant" – il servo (male) and la serva (female) – or slightly more complicated. I added peccatrice, which isn't in the Angelus, by way of illustration. You may remember that I listed il peccatore as "sinner" among the masculine nouns.
prega per noi peccatori
pray for us sinners
Here, as I was saying above, the masculine form is used to cover both sexes, but if, in a fit of philogyny, I were to pray for women only, it would have been peccatrici.
The -trix suffix isn't widely used in English, but it reflects the pair of -tore and -trice in Italian:
executor - executrix
genitor - genitrix
