A friend of mine who comes from Rome often says things in her local dialect that are new to me. Italy has many regional dialects that can be quite incomprehensible to anyone from other parts of Italy. In Friuli when someone says they have mal di chiav, it means they have a headache, it would be mal di testa in Italian. Most of the time my friend speaks Italian and keeps her Roman expressions for when she speaks to her family. Today someone asked her at what point she was with her task. She said she was at Caro amico, which means Dear friend. No-one understood what she meant. She explained that in Rome they use this expression when they are at the beginning of something. Like a letter that starts Dear Friend, ... I asked her to tell me some other expressions. She said that instead of calling out Ciao to each other, her friend say Bella per te,or simply Bella. They tend to shorten their words so Mamma becomes Amà, Amore becomes Amò. I really liked the Caro amico idea and I really like Lucio Dalla's song Caro amico, ti scrivo, even though he was from Bologna and not from Rome.
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