Archive for September, 2012
Quanto Vento! Posted by Serena on Sep 29, 2012
Oggi è molto ventoso, perciò parleremo del vento! It’s very windy today, so let’s talk about the wind! We’ll begin by looking at different ways of describing the wind: alito di vento (breath of wind), e.g. che caldo, non c’è neanche un alito di vento (it’s so hot, there isn’t a breath of wind) venticello (light…
Mulattiera di Mare Posted by Serena on Sep 27, 2012
Occasionally it’s fun to find examples of one of the many dialects which make Italy so linguistically rich, and to show the difference between dialect and ‘official’ Italian. Today I’ve chosen Fabrizio de Andrè’s beautiful song Creuza de mä, written in the Genoese dialect (from Genova). Fabrizio de Andrè (Genova 1940-1999) was a very important…
Pronomi Personali Formali ed Informali Posted by Serena on Sep 26, 2012
The use of formal and informal personal pronouns is a subject that needs revisiting often, especially if your mother tongue is English and you are not used to using these two forms of addressing people. In this post I’m going to concentrate on the ways in which we use the formal and informal pronouns when…
Le Mille Ciotole di Catullo Posted by Serena on Sep 25, 2012
Last week, while researching for my quiz about Italian airport names, I came across the poems of the Latin poet Gaius Valerius Catullus, who was born in 84 BC in Verona. When I was at secondary school I studied Latin, and Catullus was on our reading list. We all used to like his poems, because…
Italian Airport Quiz: Answers Posted by Serena on Sep 21, 2012
Well done everybody who had a go at my airport quiz! Her are the answers, with a little bit of extra information: 1. Parma, aeroporto Giuseppe Verdi. Verdi was born in 1813 in Roncole, near Busseto, north west of Parma. You can read about the role of Giuseppe Verdi during the Italian Risorgimento in this…
A bit more about ‘ne’ Posted by Geoff on Sep 20, 2012
We recently published a blog about ‘ne’ (of it/them), a very important little word that is quite tricky to use correctly. I’m going to continue the theme in today’s blog by looking at how we use ‘ne’ as a substitute for ‘of it/them’ or ‘about it/them’, after verbs that are normally followed by the preposition…
Italian Airport Quiz Posted by Serena on Sep 18, 2012
So, here’s a little quiz for you. Many Italian airports are named after famous Italians. Below I’ve given ten descriptions of people who have had an airport named after them. Who are they, and which airports are their names linked to? Please leave your answers in the ‘Leave a Reply’ section at the end. Don’t…