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Archive for July, 2009

‘Bat-box’ to the rescue! Posted by on Jul 30, 2009

Roma, our illustrious capital, is launching a new campaign to improve living conditions in the quartieri periferici (city suburbs). We are pretty much used to hearing about these campaigns: a campaign to fight against the deterioration of the environment, a campaign to help homeless immigrants, a campaign against le lucciole (lucciole are fireflies but the…

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Tricky little words: “Ci” Posted by on Jul 27, 2009

Very often, in the process of learning a language it’s the little things that we find the hardest to get to grips with. It doesn’t take long when learning Italian for example to work out that soddisfazione  means ‘satisfaction’, eccellente means ‘excellent’, and that riabilitazione means ‘rehabilitation’. But ‘ci’, that little two letter word that…

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Esprimiti! part 3 Posted by on Jul 24, 2009

So far, in the first two articles of this series, I’ve been concentrating on the positive aspect of expressive vocabulary. What a wonderful world it would be if we only ever needed to talk about good and beautiful things! But of course life isn’t always so kind and sometimes we need to express distaste or…

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Ciliegie e Amarene Posted by on Jul 21, 2009

Questa è stata un’ottima estate per molti tipi di frutta! This has been a great summer for many types of fruit! The first fruit to ripen in our village are le ciliegie (the cherries), which are fairly small and dark but very sweet, and they appear at the end of May. There are lots of cherry trees…

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Esprimiti! part 2 Posted by on Jul 18, 2009

In the first article of this series Esprimiti! part 1 I introduced a number of useful words and expressions aimed at extending your expressive vocabulary. Let’s continue in the same vein in part two by looking at a range of descriptive words and phrases that will help you to esprimerti (express yourself). In Italian we…

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Insetti! Posted by on Jul 15, 2009

Fa caldo! it’s hot! and from dawn to dusk the air resounds with il frinire delle cicale (the characteristic sound produced by the cicadas). I love this sound, not because I find it musical but because for me it represents the ‘soundtrack’ of summer. Unfortunately my husband doesn’t share my passion for this particularly screechy…

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Esprimiti! part 1. Posted by on Jul 12, 2009

Learning another language always has its ups and downs, and it’s quite normal to pass through phases in which you feel that you’re making progress, followed by times where you feel that you’re not getting anywhere. This partly depends on the level of interaction that you have with native speakers of the language that you…

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