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What is piano slang for?

Come on, nice and easy, take it slow. Just bear in mind that depending on context, piano piano can also mean 'be quiet', 'be gentle' or even 'calm down' – so someone might alternatively be telling you to keep it down, be more careful, or chill the heck out.

thelocal.it - Italian expression of the day: 'Piano piano' - The Local Italy

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Learning a new language sometimes feels like an uphill slog. Why are there so many words that mean the same thing? How can you tell that verb’s irregular? Who says nouns have genders, anyway?

So it’s reassuring to be told, sometimes, hey – take it slowly. No rush. That’s how I first encountered today’s phrase: as a new arrival in Rome, struggling to explain to my elderly neighbour why I was moving in, to the woman from the telephone company that I needed internet, or to the repair guy that I’d spilled soup on my laptop and it was making a weird noise. Each one told me “piano piano” – ‘no hurry’ – and lo, I have wifi, I’m still using the same laptop and my neighbour recognizes me most days (she’s in her 80s, after all). And now I’m the one to tell her, when I see her coming home behind me and hold the lift, “piano piano, Signora, piano piano”. While the word piano means a number of things (as an adverb, slowly; gently; carefully; quietly; or when it’s a noun, a plan), when it’s repeated it usually means gradually or little by little. You might also see it written as pian piano, or for emphasis, pian pianino (‘little by very little bit’).

Pian piano ha acquistato una certa esperienza.

Gradually she gained experience.

Versare l’olio piano piano.

Pian pianino siamo arrivati.

Slowly but surely, we got there.

By extension, when you say it someone as an instruction it means ‘go slowly’, or even implicitly, ‘don’t worry, you’ll get there’.

Dai, con calma, piano piano.

Come on, nice and easy, take it slow.

Just bear in mind that depending on context, piano piano can also mean ‘be quiet’, ‘be gentle’ or even ‘calm down’ – so someone might alternatively be telling you to keep it down, be more careful, or chill the heck out.

Fate piano piano, il bambino dorme.

Be quiet, the baby’s sleeping.

Piano piano, è fragile.

Careful, it’s fragile.

And like all great Italian expressions, it comes with its own hand gesture: palms up, pushing down and away a few times. Here’s Cristiano Ronaldo to demonstrate how. Do you have a favourite Italian word, phrase or expression you’d like us to feature? If so, please email us with your suggestion.

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Is piano good for depression?

Studies show that time spent at the keyboard improves mental health: people who make music experience less anxiety, loneliness, and depression. Playing piano has also been shown to be a great source of stress relief, and provides ample opportunities to bolster self-esteem.

steinway.com - The Benefits of Playing Piano - Steinway & Sons

Sharpen the intellect

Piano practice also boosts cognitive and intellectual abilities, which is to say it makes you smarter and activates similar parts of the brain used in spatial reasoning and math. Studying piano has also been shown to amazingly improve memory — particularly verbal memory — and build good habits like focus and perseverance, diligence and creativity. Children who had a few years of piano study under their belts could remember twenty percent more vocabulary words than their peers. And childhood musicians are better equipped later in life to retain information from speeches and lectures. Playing piano has been shown to increase spatial-temporal ability, which figures heavily in math, science and engineering. Regular music practice at an early age can even make structural changes to the brain that stay with you for the rest of your life, making your brain more efficient both while playing and in extra-musical endeavors. Children who had a few years of piano study under their belts could remember twenty percent more vocabulary words than their peers.

Calm the mind

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