Phone calls and appointments

Halfway down is darsi appuntamento, and the -si on the end is not doing what an English reader expects. It is the reflexive pronoun, the one that in lavarsi means to wash yourself. But in the plural Italian lets that same pronoun mean to each other, and nothing in the form says which of the two readings is meant. Ci diamo appuntamento davanti al teatro is we are arranging to meet: we give each other an appointment. The telephone half of this list runs on the same machinery. Ci sentiamo is we shall speak again, literally we hear each other; ci vediamo is see you; si sono incontrati in ufficio is they met at the office. English has no such pronoun and has to do the job a second way — either by bolting on the words « each other », or by choosing a verb that is reciprocal already, as « meet » and « agree » are. That is why ci sentiamo has no short English equivalent: four syllables carry a subject, a verb, a mutual object and a promise to ring.