Translation?

[Cicero17]

"con voi ber, affè, mi fia caro." I'm pretty sure it's Italian, and that the first part is "I drink with you," or something.

[RWD]

Originally posted by AMK1211
"con voi ber, affè, mi fia caro." I'm pretty sure it's Italian, and that the first part is "I drink with you," or something.
No it's not Italian, unless you're typing with your toes and mistyping a lot of characters. It does bear some resemblance to Italian and it could be one of the dialects (there are many) perhaps a southern one like Neapolitan or Sicilian.
The closest guess, using Italian words would be
Con voi bevo caffè, mio figlio caro (With you I drink coffee, my dear son.)
However, "voi" is either the plural form of you (y'all for Texans) or a polite form (as when calling someone sir.) Speaking with your son you would use the familiar form,
Con te bevo caffè, mio figlio caro.
But even there althought he sentence would be understandable the word order is stilted. A more common way to say it would be
Bevo caffè con te, mio caro figlio. or,
Bevo caffè con te, caro figlio mio.
JUst curious where did you find this sentence?

[Plentyn Y Chwyldro]

I agree that it's probably an Italian dialect, but not Neapolitan.

Otherwise could it be Portugese or Spanish?

[RWD]

No, definitely neither Spanish nor Portuguese.
In Spanish it would be
Tomo cafe contigo, mi hijo querido. (There's an accent on the e of cafe but I don't know how to type it.)
I don't know how to say it in Portuguese but I would recognize it if it were written in Portuguese.
The fact that the word in the quote is affe (not caffe) and that the words are fia (a ending = feminine) and caro (o ending = masculine) makes me wonder whether there might be typos in the quote.

[Cicero17]

Come to think of it, it very well may be Spanish or a Spanish dialect.

[RWD]

Originally posted by AMK1211
Come to think of it, it very well may be Spanish or a Spanish dialect.
Noooo ... not Spanish.
Again, where did you find this???

[Skujinovsky (A&F)]

NO is not spanish, or anything similar to it (I mean dialects).


:)

[Cicero17]

Originally posted by RWD
Again, where did you find this??? It's from Carmen... apparently.

[RWD]

It's not Modern Italian, but it could be the Italian spoken when Carmen was written (just like Old English differs from modern English.)

[kennymevrick]

I also agree that it's probably an Italian dialect, You can also check in Google translator its a Italian but not Neapolitan.

[SneakBrain]

Lolz Look at Cicero17 seven years ago that's kinda funny :)

[oceanborn]

I've already discarted all Spanish dialects (I can speak most of them and none looks like that).
It's not Catalan nor Roman.

In my oppinion its the Italian spoken during the 19th century (when the opera Carmen was composed)

the 1st part would be something like "Drinking with you (you in its plural form)" I don't know the meaning of "affè" and "fia", but "mi" means "to me" and "caro" can mean at least 2 different things "expensive" and "dear".
The word "fia" looks like the 3rd perston singular of some verb, but I can't guess which one...