Smettetela di parlare di noi.

English Translation

Stop talking about us.

Is smettetela a bit rude? Is finite more neutral?

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Ciao di nuovo. In this instance I would be happy to say “Stop it, all of you!” “Smettetela…” rather than a polite “done, over, finish”.

Believe it or not I learnt all about “smettila!” from watching Romeo the Italian parrot on youtube;-)

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I don’t find it particularly rude, but it is something you may say when you are fed up of something. It is phrased as an order, so in that sense it may be rude.

“Smettete” instead of “smettetela” may work, but it is less emphatic.

“Finite” does not work. It could be translated back to English as “end/complete talking about us”. “Finire” means more “to complete”, to do something until it’s complete.

On the other hand “finitela” can be used as an alternative to “smettetela”, with the same meaning.

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Thanks for the response! :+1: I hadn’t thought much before about the semantics of finire.

Now it strikes me that Basta might have similar semantics to smetterla. :thinking:

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Basta - enough! Stoppit. Another way of saying it.

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About “basta”: It is often used as an interjection, meaning “Enough!”, or “Stop!”.

But it is actually a form of “bastare”, to be enough.

So, you can use it in this sentence as “Basta parlare di noi!”. with pretty much the same meaning.

But notice that “Basta” means “It’s enough”.
So it is also often used in explanations, meaning “it is enough to…/simply/just…”

E.g. “Come lancio il programma?” – “Basta fare clic sull’icona.”
(How do I start the program? – Just click on the icon.")

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Grazie @mike-lima It’s quite a useful little word. I particularly like it as in “Punto e basta!” I think Cloze also gave us “Taci e basta!”

Buonanotte.

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