Transcript of “Bad Air, Malaria, and Advice from Nonna”
Hi there. You have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Samantha calling from Charleston, South Carolina.
I’m really excited to get to ask you my question.
Hi, Samantha.
Glad to have you.
Welcome. What’s up? What’s on your mind?
I’ve got a question about a phrase that my family would use, my mom and my Nona, my grandmother, and it’s an Italian phrase, malaria, meaning bad air, malaria.
But they would use it all the time in kind of almost like a folksy kind of lore way of, you know, don’t go outside with wet hair. You might get sick, that kind of thing.
If the seasons were changing, that was often a time when you might catch malaria. You know, it’s kind of chillier than normal or the temperature is different.
My mother’s grandparents also said you could catch it if you stood in front of the air conditioning. And so a way to avoid it would be you have to cover your neck.
So my mom still does it to this day. She feels like the weather is changing. She’ll say, oh, Maladia is in the air. And so she’ll wear a scarf or if she forgets her scarf, she puts her hand over her neck.
Just protecting your neck is the big way to not catch it, I guess.
So my question is, you know, I don’t know if this was something specific to my family. Is this kind of an old wives’ tale in other places?
And then in a bigger sense, combining the two words, mal-aria, you know, you get the word malaria. And so I just wonder if there’s some sort of connection with that and where this all might have come from.
Yeah, you’re right on target, Samantha.
First, let’s talk about that folklore, which is really interesting, that whole idea of going outside with wet hair or going to bed with wet hair.
Lots of cultures around the world have folklore about that, that you would get sick of some kind, maybe pneumonia or an earache, or if you go to bed with wet hair, you’ll wake up with a sore throat, or your teeth will fall out, or you’ll go blind or insane.
All of these things. And so it’s not just the Italians, like the Russians and the Filipinos and many other people have this too.
And I’ve heard the air conditioning one as well, which I love because it means it’s modern folklore. Since air conditioning is relatively new.
So I love the fact that new folklore is so apparent.
So something I really love though here is that the word folklore in English sometimes means old wives’ tale in English. But in Italian, it’s consigli delle nona, which is funny because you know it was one of the people who used it.
It’s advice from nona.
Oh, that’s wonderful. I love that.
But the other thing is your larger connection that you made, and you must feel really good about this, is that, yes, the malaria, that’s two words meaning bad air, is indeed the origin of the word malaria.
The disease that we get from mosquitoes. And it comes from this history of, before germ theory was a thing, of people believing that there was bad air, perhaps connected to swamps, that gave you the disease.
They didn’t even know that there were insects involved. And so what happens is those linguistically, those two words mala, meaning bad, and aria, meaning air, they combine into one word, where the end A on mala and the beginning A on aria make one A, and that’s called haplology.
So it shows up in Italian in the 1500s and in English in the 1700s.
And actually in English, the guy who brought it into English, Sir Robert Walpole, who’s a British politician, he also brought us the word serendipity.
So this guy has two words to his credit.
Oh, that’s so interesting.
I’m so glad to just hear more about it because it’s something that, I mean, my mom still says this to me today.
You know, in the fall, it’s inevitable that my mom will be like, don’t forget your scarf. There’s malaria around today.
And I’m like, OK, I’ll make sure.
So she’s referring to this older notion, which is an ague, any kind of fever that you might have, just generically called an ague before we had the word malaria.
And so she’s got this whole other, your mother and your nonna have this whole other track that has continued, even after malaria became a separate thing in this mosquito-borne disease.
So that folkloric idea of just general bad error, meaning general bad sickness, that’s always existed too.
So much history right there in her mouth.
Yeah.
Samantha, that’s delightful.
And you are delightful.
I appreciate you sharing your stories with us.
Oh, yes.
Thank you so much for making time to talk to me and answering my question.
I’m so excited to get to talk to you both.
I’m glad to have you.
Take care of yourself.
Okay, bye. Thanks.
