Sechenenza, a market and the origin of neapolitan words
- At December 11, 2012
- By Zia Lucy
- In Senza categoria
- 0
I always loved neapolitans for their lifestyle but the most interesting thing is their dialect.
Defined as a romance “mini tongue”, Neapolitan dialect took some words from all over the world. History tells us about spanish and french dominations and we can see that some words, or part of the grammar are closely related to our “cousins’ tongues”. For example the word “Cucchiàra” (ladle) derives from the spanish “cuchara”, or “Tirabbusciò”(corkscrew) from the french “tire-bouchon”. Another example could be “Tamarro” (boorish) from arabic “al-tamar” who probably was a not-very-polite-merchant of dates in Naples.
You’ll be surprised of what happened during the Second World War. When US and british soldiers came here to help us, we tried to comunicate with them: lots of people didn’t know English and they tried to understand or be understood. The contact with those people created a social and cultural evolution and some words were adopted by neapolitans.
One of these words is “sechenenza”: nowadays it means “a low quality thing” but about 60 years ago it described something used a second time, not necessary of low quality, and this strange and difficult-to-pronunce word is just a reworking of the american “second hand”.
Few weeks ago I met some friends, The Divino Cibo Association, who were planning to create a flea market for Christmas time. While they were choosing the name of the market someone proposed “sechenenza” and soon everybody loved it!
On December 14th, 15th and 16th (2012) at Hotel Villa delle Palme there will be Sechenenza Market.
I’ll also be there for some hours with my stories and some pictures of wild local orchids.
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