The word ciao (pronounced CHOW) is, today, thought of as very much Italian, but its origins are in the Venetian dialect. (That dialect has proven to be a rich source of words we use in English, too, but that’s a subject for another article.) In the Venetian dialect, the phrase s-ciào vostro means “I am your slave” – and over time, the phrase was abbreviated to simply s-ciào, while ...