Archive for 'Grammar'
“I Like You!” Posted by Geoff on Sep 28, 2015
A reader recently left a comment on my article I Would Have Liked asking for more “curly conjugations”. I was particularly taken by that phrase, and immediately decided to adopt it as a blog theme. So, where better to begin than with one of the curliest of all Italian constructions: piacere. And to keep things nice…
Down On The Farm In Italy Posted by Geoff on Sep 21, 2015
Paintings by Antonio Ligabue (1899 – 1965) We’ve had a lot of comments from readers who were disappointed not to have received our September quiz due to the changes that were made to our e-mail system. So I’ve decided to rectify the situation with a little story based largely on the vocabulary from the quiz…
Now How Do You Say That In Italian? Posted by Geoff on Sep 2, 2015
Following Serena’s recent article Anyone Want A Kitten, a reader asked us why we hadn’t had Amber sterilised. I thought that my reply might be a good opportunity to do something that we haven’t done in a while: an English to Italian translation. So, here is my explanation of the Amber situation, with Serena’s eloquent…
How to Use Uno in Italian Posted by Serena on Aug 21, 2015
In my last post we looked at the use of the definite article lo and its plural form gli. Today we are going to find out how to use the indefinite article uno (a/an) works. Rules for using uno: 1. when a masculine word begins with the letter ‘s’ followed by another consonant, e.g.: uno…
Lo and Behold! Posted by Serena on Aug 19, 2015
One of the many mysteries of the Italian language is the crazy amount of ways of saying ‘the’. Not content with having il,i,la,le and l’ the Italians just had to come up with lo and gli! Well, ours is not to reason why … but to find out when and how. Rules for using lo/gli…
An Italian Desire Posted by Geoff on Aug 5, 2015
Hai voglia d’imparare l’italiano? Do you want to learn Italian? The sentence above illustrates a very common Italian phrase: ‘avere voglia di fare qualcosa’. This can be translated as: to feel like doing something to fancy doing something to want to do something Let’s have a look at a few everyday examples: non ho voglia…
Express Your Opinion In Italian! Posted by Geoff on Jul 13, 2015
Last week, in my blog In Che Condizioni E’ I wrote about the importance of developing a vocabulary of descriptive adjectives in Italian. Believe me, I know the frustration of wanting to say something intelligent on a topic and ending up sounding like a complete troglodyte due to having a limited vocabulary. Everything you want to express an…