Archive by Author
Understanding Directions in Italian Posted by Geoff on Mar 23, 2015
Last week I published an article about Asking For Directions. The article itself was fairly basic, and probably not much different from what you might expect to find in a typical Italian phrase book. But now comes the real challenge … making sense of the reply! To that end I’m going to provide you with…
Asking For Directions – Part One Posted by Geoff on Mar 16, 2015
When I was in my early twenties I spent 3 months travelling by foot, bus, train, and facendo l’autostop (hitch hiking) around the UK and mainland Europe. At that time I was pretty much monolingual, and yet I managed to successfully navigate myself through at least ten non-English speaking countries without too many problems, before…
Every Now and Then … Posted by Geoff on Mar 12, 2015
Written by Serena (and accidentally published under Geoff’s name!) A while back I received a request from a reader asking me if I could shed some light on the word tanto and the many different ways in which it’s used. So, first of all, my apologies to Paul for taking così tanto tempo (such a…
Non E’ Detto …. Posted by Geoff on Mar 9, 2015
I must say that I really enjoyed reading the responses to my recent post Conversational Fragments. I love the fact that we have such imaginative readers, and I also find the responses very useful for gauging people’s comprehension of the colloquial expressions that I tend to use in my articles. One such expression that really…
Conversational Fragments Posted by Geoff on Mar 2, 2015
Last week I wrote an article entitled Useful Conversational Rejoinders … well you asked for more, so here it is: Setting: doctor’s waiting room. State of mind: bored to the point of counting the cracks in the ceiling for the third time Entertainment value: –10 suddenly … nothing happens! but then … ubiquitous ring-tone … whose…
Useful Conversational Rejoinders Posted by Geoff on Feb 23, 2015
As learners of Italian we’ve all found ourselves in situations where our limited vocabulary makes us sound like fumbling four year olds, vero? Yes we’ve studied our grammar, we’ve rehearsed fantastical Italian conversation in our heads, we’ve made grand speeches on the most fascinating of topics in la bella lingua …. and suddenly there we…
I Racconti di Luisa – Il Falò Posted by Geoff on Feb 19, 2015
Story by Luisa with an introduction by Geoff A good friend of ours, Luisa, grew up in Vittoria, Sicilia. Sometimes when we’re chatting she opens up her ‘box of memories’ as she calls it, and recounts episodes from her youth. “Do you like writing?” I asked her one day, “yes, I used to” she replied…