Archive for 'Grammar'
Il Riccio, che cos’e’? Posted by Serena on Mar 10, 2009
Students of the Italian language often complain that us Italians have far too many different words that say the same thing. So, in order to prove that this is not always the case, a little challenge for you: Il riccio, che cos’e’? (What is a riccio?). Well a riccio can be four different things! Below I will give you some clues as to…
Reflexive Verbs Posted by Serena on Mar 5, 2009
Mi chiamo Serena. Come ti chiami? (my name is Serena. What is your name?). This is the first thing I say to my students whenever I start a new Italian class, and it’s probably the first thing you’ll find in most phrasebooks. But it’s also a sentence that illustrates really well one of the many differences between Italian and…
Using the definite article Posted by Serena on Feb 28, 2009
In Italian we use l’articolo determinativo (the definite article): il, lo, la, i, gli, le (the) more often than in English … … in fact even now after many years of speaking and reading English I still tend to use ‘the’ far too often because, I suppose, it just doesn’t sound right without it! The…
Ahi, mi sento male! Posted by Serena on Feb 13, 2009
Only a short blog today I’m afraid because when I woke up this morning I didn’t feel very well, non mi sentivo bene. So I decided to let you benefit from my illness by giving you a bit of vocabulary that you can use next time siete malati (you are ill) to have a good…
Passato Prossimo e Imperfetto Posted by Serena on Feb 4, 2009
If you’re struggling to understand when to use the present perfect and when it is more appropriate to use the imperfect this blog should help you. In my experience of teaching Italian to English speakers I have found this to be a very common problem. It is equally difficult for Italian people learning English to…
Maschile o Femminile Posted by Serena on Jan 30, 2009
One of the most confusing aspects of Italian for English speakers is trying to get to grips with the gender of words. This is further complicated by he fact that we don’t use the letter ‘s’ to pluralize but ‘i’, or ‘e’ depending on the gender of the word. Therefore constructing a sentence can be…
Essere o Stare? Posted by Serena on Jan 29, 2009
I recently received an e-mail from a reader asking if I could explain the difference between essere and stare and how they are used. I got out my faithful Vocabolario della Lingua Italiana Treccani and … oh povera me! (poor me!) Under the entry stare there are 5 columns of information and for essere? well…