Archive for 'Culture'
La Mia Revisione Posted by Geoff on Jun 1, 2012
I’ve always disliked needles, especially when attached to a syringe held in the hand of a nurse who is staring intently at a nice big vein in the tender part of my inner elbow. Fortunately the nurses at our local ASL (Azienda Sanitaria Locale – Local National Health Service) here in Pontremoli are really friendly…
Il Giovane Cuoco Italiano Posted by Geoff on May 21, 2012
In our blogs we always try to portray as many different facets of Italian language and culture as possible, but at the same time we are aware of the difficulty of trying to depict a country as varied as l’Italia from our relatively limited perspective. So for some time now we’ve been looking for an…
Il Pane Posted by Serena on May 18, 2012
Bread has been a fundamental part of our diet for thousands of years. Examples have been found in Egyptian tombs dating back more than five millennia. It is not surprising therefore that there are innumerable variations based on the simple ingredients of flour and water. Here in Italy we have our fair share of different…
L’Infinito di Leopardi Posted by Serena on May 16, 2012
A couple of months ago my uncle Luciano gave me a CD on which the great late actor Vittorio Gassman reads some poems from the most important Italian poets of the Romantic era: Ugo Foscolo, Alessandro Manzoni, and Giacomo Leopardi. Listening to them brought to mind the time when, aged eighteen, I had to study…
Caratteri Somatici–Le Soluzioni Posted by Serena on Apr 18, 2012
Well done everyone who had a go at my caratteri somatici quiz, either we’ve got some very clever readers, or I made the questions too easy. I suspect it’s the former! O.K., here are the solutions, with a bit of interesting information about each one. Il naso: 1. Ogni volta che dice una bugia, il…
Le Pulizie di Pasqua Posted by Serena on Apr 2, 2012
I’ve had several requests recently for more articles in Italian. Well of course it’s always a pleasure for me to write in my mother tongue, so here we go! I’ll give you a short vocabulary with some keywords and idiomatic expressions at the end of the post. If you have any problems please ask for…
La Quaresima Posted by Serena on Mar 21, 2012
A few days ago I met my friend Cecilia, an inexhaustible source of Italian traditions who, knowing about my blogging job, stopped me in the street saying: “Tu che sei sempre alla ricerca di tradizioni, me n’è venuta in mente una sulla Quaresima che si usava un tempo dalle mie parti, giù nel Sud Italia”…