Archive for 'Grammar'
An Italian Quiz For April – The Solutions Posted by Serena on Apr 29, 2016
Here are the answers to our recent quiz. Well done those of you who had a go. Those who didn’t, I shall want to hear your excuses, and they’d better be good. None of that “the cat ate it” nonsense! But seriously, give us some feedback, was it too difficult? Did you not feel confident…
An Italian Quiz For April Posted by Serena on Apr 27, 2016
Monday morning, blog brainstorming, Serena: di cosa scriviamo questa settimana? (what shall we write about this week?) Geoff: beh, secondo me è da un po’ che non facciamo un quiz, e ai nostri cari lettori piace sempre un bel quiz, no? (um, I think it’s been a while since we’ve done a quiz, and our…
Dammi Il Cinque … High Fiving In Italy – Part 2 Posted by Serena on Apr 22, 2016
In my previous post we looked at how we use the irregular verbs dare (to give), dire (to say or tell), and fare (to do/make or let) in their imperative form, second person singular, followed by the direct or indirect object pronouns (you can revise them in part 1). Today we are going to look…
Dammi Il Cinque … High Fiving In Italy Posted by Serena on Apr 21, 2016
Dammi il cinque = gimme five In Italian, just as in English, words often get moulded together to form new, shorter, and more fluent words. The expression gimme five and its Italian equivalent dammi il cinque are good examples of this. Of course, you need to know the underlying grammatical rules if you’re going to…
For Better or For Worse Posted by Geoff on Apr 5, 2016
Parli bene l’italiano! (You speak Italian well!) You won’t get far in any conversation without needing to use the words good, bad, well, badly, better or worse. Now here’s one of those topics that in theory should be simple but in practice can turn out to be quite confusing. Let’s try and break it all…
Does It Suit Me – Does It Fit Me? Posted by Geoff on Mar 21, 2016
Here’s a little point of grammar that can easily trip up the unwary: In Italian, when we talk about things fitting, we usually use the form starci (from the verb stare = to be/stay/remain and ci = there). Let’s take a look at some examples: Mi puoi mettere questa valigia in bagagliaio? – Purtroppo non…
Idiomatic Expressions With The Italian Verb Fare – Part 2 Posted by Geoff on Mar 16, 2016
Well, I did warn you that there are a lot of idiomatic expression with the verb fare! If you missed part 1 of this post you can find it HERE. 1. idiomatic weather expressions with fare: fare caldo/freddo = to be hot/cold: oggi fa proprio freddo! = it’s really cold today! fare bel/brutto/cattivo tempo =…