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La Leggenda del Panettone – The Legend of Panettone Posted by Serena on Dec 22, 2008
Anyone who has spent Natale (Christmas) or Il Capodanno (The New Year) in Italy will have been offered the traditional Panettone. Yes it’s one of those indispensable elements of the ‘Festive Seasons’ that contradicts the old adage ‘you can never have too much of a good thing’. I assure you that you can have too…
Da or Per? Posted by Serena on Dec 20, 2008
Yesterday, while teaching English to a private student here in Italy, I came across an interesting example in my English grammar book; it said: “John and Ann have been married for 20 years”. My student translated this sentence into Italian word by word as: “John e Ann sono stati sposati per 20 anni”. This is a wonderful example…
Italiano o Toscano? Posted by Serena on Dec 17, 2008
In the last few blogs about Italian pronunciation I mentioned in reply to some comments that the Italian language has its origins in Toscana (Tuscany) and that Toscano is considered the most correct Italian. But are Italiano and Toscano the same thing? Lets see. When Italy was being unified in the 19th century there wasn’t…
Buon Compleanno Maestro! Posted by Serena on Dec 11, 2008
Il Mondo della Lirica (the Opera world) is getting ready to celebrate the 150th birthday of Giacomo Puccini author of many famous Italian operas such as La Bohème, Madame Butterfly, Tosca and Turandot. Reading his biography I discovered an interesting, lively character, and decided to write a little blog to add my small contribution to…
La Pronuncia, part three! Posted by Serena on Dec 10, 2008
I had not originally planned a part three, but as I received an interesting question by e-mail from Andrew I thought other people might find my reply helpful, so I’m publishing it here as a mini-blog. Andrew asked: “How do you pronounce sch as in bruschetta, please?” During the time I lived in…
La Pronuncia, part two. Posted by Serena on Dec 8, 2008
In part one of this blog we looked at the vowels, a e i o u and the consonants c, g and h. Now I want to continue with some combined letter sounds, and double consonants but firstly I’d just like to clarify that all examples of English words given as a guide to correct…
Torta di Mele Posted by Serena on Dec 6, 2008
The other morning one of my neighbors turned up at my doorstep with a wooden box full of mele (apples) or rather meline (small apples). They were small, but full of flavor, so I decided to bake a torta di mele (apple cake). I learned this recipe many years ago from a book that my…