Archive by Author
Carmela’s Little Black Book Posted by Geoff on Oct 14, 2015
She awoke suddenly in darkness, a strange light flickered around the door frame sending menacing shadows dancing across the walls. Smoke … her throat was parched, she began to cough. Stumbling across the room she reached for the door handle and cried out in pain as it burnt her palm. An intense panic welled up…
Carmela’s Italian Footwear Obsession – Part 2 Posted by Geoff on Oct 7, 2015
When the train pulled out of La Stazione Di Mantova just before midday, Carmela was still on board. Mantova had been on her list of ‘luoghi da visitare’ along with the name of an expensive shoe shop and a conveniently located bank, but having told the young vigile that silly story about visiting her poorly…
Carmela’s Italian Footwear Obsession – Part 1 Posted by Geoff on Oct 2, 2015
Carmela boarded the 07:21 train bound for Modena. Wearing a Bonnie Parker style beret, an old faded red hoodie and worn out jeans, she blended in like a chameleon with the early morning workers on their way to just another day on the production line. But Carmela’s was a different line of work. It had…
“I Like You!” Posted by Geoff on Sep 28, 2015
A reader recently left a comment on my article I Would Have Liked asking for more “curly conjugations”. I was particularly taken by that phrase, and immediately decided to adopt it as a blog theme. So, where better to begin than with one of the curliest of all Italian constructions: piacere. And to keep things nice…
Down On The Farm In Italy – The Solutions Posted by Geoff on Sep 25, 2015
Isn’t it frustrating when something that should be simple turns out to be surprisingly difficult? Farm animals, animal noises, the things that we learn in nursery school in our mother tongue, become illusive. Are we really at the pre-nursery stage in our studies of the Italian language? Not really. The problem, as I so often…
Down On The Farm In Italy Posted by Geoff on Sep 21, 2015
Paintings by Antonio Ligabue (1899 – 1965) We’ve had a lot of comments from readers who were disappointed not to have received our September quiz due to the changes that were made to our e-mail system. So I’ve decided to rectify the situation with a little story based largely on the vocabulary from the quiz…
Italian Quiz – September 2015 – Gli Animali Posted by Geoff on Sep 16, 2015
Dear Readers, we’ve been making a few changes to the e-mails that you receive from us in order to make it easier for you to comment on the articles. These changes were implemented on Monday at around the time that this quiz was originally published, and it’s possible that some of you may have missed…