I wrote this on a piece of paper and pasted said paper drunkenly above the door to my dorm room (more impressive a feat than it sounds, as our cielings were 14 feet tall and our doors at least 8) late one evening. I woke up (came to?) at some God-awful hour and looked over at my wide-open door to see a young blonde staring at the Dante quote.
She stared for a while, and asked me what it said. I told her, and she asked what language it was in. She hadn't recognized the "abandon all hope" claptrap as Dante, probably because it's been used so many other places in popular culture, so I was just about to tell her it was in an old version of Italian when she said "Ah! "Voo-ah" is French!"
I could not convince her that "voi" was actually pronounced more like "VOE-ee", and that the sentence was, actually, Italian. In her defense, I was not at my highest level of debating skill at that moment...
Wistful memories of my days as an undergrad
I wrote this on a piece of paper and pasted said paper drunkenly above the door to my dorm room (more impressive a feat than it sounds, as our cielings were 14 feet tall and our doors at least 8) late one evening. I woke up (came to?) at some God-awful hour and looked over at my wide-open door to see a young blonde staring at the Dante quote.
She stared for a while, and asked me what it said. I told her, and she asked what language it was in. She hadn't recognized the "abandon all hope" claptrap as Dante, probably because it's been used so many other places in popular culture, so I was just about to tell her it was in an old version of Italian when she said "Ah! "Voo-ah" is French!"
I could not convince her that "voi" was actually pronounced more like "VOE-ee", and that the sentence was, actually, Italian. In her defense, I was not at my highest level of debating skill at that moment...