Archive by Author
Italian Insects – Part 2 Posted by Geoff on Nov 15, 2018
In Italian Insects – Part 1 I described a few of the, for want of a better word, ‘household’ insects that we see more or less all year round. But, of course, many insects are strictly seasonal … Before we begin though, here’s a message from Meaghan, our manager at Transparent Language, explaining some changes…
Italian Insects – Part 1 Posted by Geoff on Nov 13, 2018
Do you like insects? Personally, I find them fascinating, which is just as well because out in the countryside where we live there are plenty of them! Some of these creature are present for most of the year. I ragni (the spiders), for example, find our rustic stone house the perfect sojourn, constructing their intricate…
Il Dottore Delle Bambole – Part 4 – Translation Posted by Geoff on Nov 2, 2018
Here’s the English translation for part 4 of ‘Il Dottore Delle Bambole’. How much of the Italian text did you manage to understand? Let’s find out! Il Tenente Ciceri bussa alla porta della cella 3 con trepidazione. In mano ha il rapporto appena ricevuto dalla questura di Bari. Lieutenant Ciceri knocks at the door of…
Italian Adjectives Quiz Posted by Geoff on Oct 22, 2018
How would you describe someone’s character? Vocabulary lists are useful, but in everyday conversation you need to be able to come up with the appropriate vocabulary on the fly. Here’s an exercise that puts you in that situation. You’re chatting with an Italian friend (in Italian obviously!) who’s asking you about other people. See if…
Describing People’s Character In Italian – Part 2. Posted by Geoff on Oct 18, 2018
In Describing People’s Character In Italian – Part 1. we looked at some important adjectives that also happen to be ‘false friends’, and a few others that have very straightforward translations. Let’s move on to common adjectives that don’t have an obvious meaning. We’ll divide these attributes into three categories: positive, neutral, and negative. affidabile/i…
Describing People’s Character In Italian – Part 1. Posted by Geoff on Oct 15, 2018
In Italian, we use a whole plethora of adjectives that describe people’s character. Several of these also happen to be ‘false friends’. False friends, sometimes called false cognates, are words which look or sound similar in two different languages, leading us to the erroneous conclusion that they have the same meaning. Some of these are…
Il Dottore Delle Bambole – Part 3 Posted by Geoff on Oct 9, 2018
So far in our original detective story we’ve given you the Italian text, followed a couple of days later by the English translation. Today, we’re going to mix it up by starting with the English text. This will give you a chance to think about how you might translate it into Italian before we give…