Daily Italian: Scolapasta (colander/strainer)

Some of you may think this is an unusual choice, but based on recent conversations in our Facebook group, it’s also one of your favorites!

filterconsisting of two words – verb School (drain or strain) and nouns pasta – literally means “pasta strainer.”

Although the ending is -A, it is a masculine noun and its plural form remains unchanged. It requires the following definite and indefinite articles:

• slotted spoon = slotted spoon
• Colander = colander
• slotted spoon = slotted spoon
• some colanders = (some) colander

as you can see, filter not changed to *Colander. in plural form. This is because it is invariant, which is a technical term that indicates that both the singular and plural forms of a noun remain in the same form.

And the version starting with the prefix s- is the most common, you may also encounter these terms filter (fall “Tighten” + pasta) and screen (fall “Tighten” + stock “broth”) refers to filter. fall and School The meaning is the same, but s- According to “given a value to the intensive compared to the original verb” Trecani.

In some dialects of Italian it is called Drain macarons (literally “macaroni strainer”) or sculptor (mainly Sicily).

Another word belonging to the same family of kitchen utensils as “kitchen utensils” filter yes filterknown in English as filter, screenor sieve.

Some other related terms you may come across include screenwhich is a wheel-shaped sieve used to separate small particles from large particles, old-fashioned sieveexists today mainly in figurative expressions, e.g. through censorship (meaning “to examine carefully before drawing conclusions”).

Here are some other everyday Italian kitchen tools we use when preparing meals:

Heather Broster is a graduate with honors in linguistics from the University of Western Ontario. She is an aspiring polyglot, fluent in English and Italian, as well as varying degrees of fluency in Japanese, Welsh and French. Originally from Toronto, Heather has lived in several countries, notably Italy for six years. Her main research areas are language acquisition, education and bilingual teaching.