By oncptime
Normally, you wouldn’t think of “I’m sorry” as slang. In Italy, however inflection is everything and scusate or “I’m sorry” is something of a chameleon word. By the end of my first day of Italian classes I’d learned three things: Carlo was to be my Italian name, my professor and I shared an undying love for 50’s American jukebox music, and apparently scusate would be the one phrase I needed to know for the next 24 hours.
“In Italy, scusate is more than sorry,” Nicoletta (my professor) explained matter-of-factly. “It is an apology. It is an assertion. Scusate is a foreigner’s best friend"
I got to know the apologetic scusate first. Bump into someone squeezing down one Florence’s narrow streets? “Oh, scusate.” Suddenly you’re the charming, lost American tourist navigating your way across the city. Assaulted by a barrage of rapid-fire Italian questions on the bus? A pause, a frown, and “Scusate.”
Your lack of understanding becomes endearing. “I’m sorry, but I don’t speak Italian and I’m terribly sorry not to be able to be of more service to you. Please forgive me.” All of that conveyed in a single world with just the right intonation.
I quickly learned that scusate’s uses extended far beyond simple apologies, though. In a tourist hotspot city like Florence where you’re as likely to overhear Mandarin as you are to hear Welsh, being able to politely assert one’s self in the official language has its perks.
Someone’s bee-lining for the last baguette in the grocery store that you need for your dinner party. A reach, an “accidental” brushing away of their hand, and a sincere scusate in your best Italian accent and it’s obvious that you deserved that bread. Someone’s just about to cut you off from getting onto the last train back into town and a polite, firm scusate makes clear that you’re in no mood to deal with nonsense.
Where mi dispiace is reverently apologetic, and scusami is just static common-speech, scusate rolls of the tongue with a sultry languidness—as malleable a word as it is simple and effective.