Tongue-twisters! Trivia Quiz

Answer: campa, crepa

"Sopra la panca la capra campa; sotto la panca la capra crepa", i.e. the goat lives on the bench and dies under it! Utterly meaningless, to be sure, as I've never heard of goats living on benches, but quite difficult to pronounce, especially if you have to repeat it several times!

Answer: trentini

Trentini, i.e. people from Trento (beautiful town in the North of Italy), who apparently - in the number of 33 - entered Trento, all of them trotting along! I've never figured out the exact reason why they should trot, though...

Answer: tigre

Yes, "tigre contro tigre", that is "tiger against tiger". Believe me, it is really hard to say this! There is also a more difficult variant, "tre tigri contro tre tigri", namely "three tigers against three tigers".

Answer: disarcivescovizzereste

It's difficult even in writing: disarcivescovizzereste!
The meaning, so to speak, is "If the Archbishop of Constantinople gave up his post, would you do the same?". To my knowledge, the verb "disarcivescovizzarsi" does not exist in Italian, occurring only in this terrible tongue-twister! Other versions exist besides this one, all of them even longer and harder...

Answer: Papa, pepe

Absurdly enough, Pisa weighs pepper for the Pope, who indeed weighs pepper in Pisa, i.e. "Pisa pesa il pepe al Papa; il Papa pesa il pepe a Pisa"! Again, this tongue-twister comes in different versions, sometimes substituting "Papa" (Pope) with "papà" (dad).

Answer: galla

"Apelle figlio di Apollo fece una palla di pelle di pollo; tutti i pesci vennero a galla per vedere la palla di pelle di pollo fatta da Apelle figlio di Apollo". In other words, Apelles, son of Apollo, made a ball of chicken skin, and fish came to the surface to see the chicken skin ball that he had made.

As to why on earth Apelles should have been wasting time in making balls out of chicken skin, well... that's a riddle!

Answer: nove

"Sul mare ci sono nove navi nuove; una delle nove non vuole navigare", that is "Nine new ships are in the sea; one out of those nine does not want to sail".

Answer: importa

"Porta aperta per chi porta; chi non porta parta pure, poco importa". Which means that the door is open to those who bring something: those who don't... well, they can just leave, and it does not really matter! The whole tongue-twister is obviously based on the assonance of "porta" (door), "porta" (3rd person of the verb "portare", to bring) and "importa" (matters).

Answer: palazzo, pane

"Dietro a quel palazzo c'è un povero cane pazzo; date un pezzo di pane a quel povero pazzo cane". Kindly enough, the scioglilingua suggests you to give some bread to a poor mad dog standing behind a building. I'm quite sure the dog in question would rather have meat, but that ("carne" in Italian) wouldn't make a good tongue-twister!

Answer: pozzo

"Pozzo", indeed! This long story concerns a Master Pazzino de' Pazzi (we're apparently in the Middle Ages; the verb "gittolle" is in fact an archaic form for "le gettò", i.e. "threw them"). A crazy woman was washing cloth in his garden when he came, took the madwoman and the cloth and threw both into the well! Isn't that sheer madness?