Please explain the following:

Chi ha mangiato la mia pasta?

becomes

Chissà chi avrà mangiato la mia pasta!

Please translate each and help me remember what chissà is? Grazie!

ap6380, chissa' means "chi sa?" WHO KNOWS?

So it's "who ate my pasta?", then "who knows who will have eaten (awkward in English but correct enough, I guess) my pasta?" (i.e., who knows who ate my pasta?)

Further explanation of chissa'
It means "who knows" in our sense of "nobody knows"

So I imagine this is something that might have been said, resignedly, by the Italian cousin of Papa Bear before he left the house on that fateful day....

M

The Shadow knows....... heh heh heh

Yes, Carol. I could keep myself amused just trying to figure out the occasions that give rise to the constructions in Italian lessons. As always, glad to find that you are as easily amused as I am.

Ce vediamo ---- a presto! Tra Philadelphia e New Jersey!

M

Could the meaning of "Chissà chi avrà mangiato la mia pasta!" be expressed in English as "I wonder who ate (or could have eaten) my pasta?"

Also, does anyone have information on the origin of Italian words that have begin with sb and other similar consonant clusters?

I understand the origin of those words starting with "s" consonant clusters to have developed from the Latin prefix "ex".

M

Thanks for the info. I've been looking around and came up with a good site detailing Italian prefixes (link below) and "s" is one of them. I've still not found information on the unusual consonant cluters such as sb-, sg-, sm- but I'll continue to look.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Wiktionary_Appendix:Prefixes:Italian

Morsots, I can't answer for the origin, but in some cases, the "s" tacked onto the beginning of a word indicates the opposite, so "contento/a" (happy, pleased) becomes "scontento/a" (unhappy), "gelare" (to freeze) becomes "sgelare" (to thaw), etc. That accounts for at least a few words with the "leading-s" consonant clusters, though certainly far from all of them. I'll be interested in hearing what else you learn in your researches.

Like KimC sais most of the s- at the beginning of a word stand for opposites or "undoing" the action in a verb like in
agganciare = hook
sganciare = unhook
Other cases have unknown ethimologies or come from longobard or other languages having influenced italian during the centuries: I just read that spaccare (to break) comes from longobard "shahhan" and a rude Italian word beginning with st also comes from Longobard...
Can I ask why you consider sb-, sg- etc. as "unusual consonant clusters"? Does the group include clusters like sp- and st-? They are very common both at the beginning of words and inside in other latin languages (eSPañol for instance!).

You are both right; I did look this up and do see how the s- can be used to emphasize or negate the action in question.

I don't know where I got the idea that just consonant clusters were unusual in Italian. I'm fascinated by etymology and language origins. I noticed that when I removed the 's' from many of these verbs the remaining "word" was not in the dictionary so I began to wonder if many of these words hadn't originaled outside mainstream Italian.