Sesame On A One-Way Street

You know we are in trouble when Sesame Street gets things wrong. My daughter was watching Sesame Street Workshop. The segment had Grover saying words in different languages. The one that caught my good ear is 'ciao.' According to Prairie Dawn the word is Portuguese. My wife and I looked at each other. "Ok, I'll go research it," I told her.

'Ciao' is known world wide as an informal versatile greeting (that is, hello or good-bye. Though in English we regard it to be 'good-bye') in Italian. The word itself derives from the Venetian dialect which is a derivative of the word 'schiavo.' There are different definitions of the word but the consensus is 'I am your slave.' In Victorian English it meant 'Your servant.' Of course, we contemporaries all use it far more loosely. For some, it's just quicker and nicer to say 'ciao' rather than 'bye' or its extension 'good-bye.'

Nowhere could I find in my exhaustive search did the word remotely have any connection to Portuguese. The only thing I can think of is that the person (s) who put together that segment got lazy and assumed that the 'iao' sound is inherently Portuguese. The Portuguese spelling of the word is 'tchau' - though this seems to be of the Brazilian variation. At least, they kept in the Latin family.

Even if the word did have roots in the Iberian peninsula, the word is unmistakably Italian. It is a symbol of Italian cultural exports that reached its zenith in the 50s and 60s to come out of Italy.
'Ciao' is now part of the cycle and routine of many cultures. However, it naturally finds its highest expression in Italy.