Archive for 'Grammar'
La Settimana Italiana Posted by Serena on Jan 23, 2009
The Italian word for week is settimana which comes from Latin and means ‘in numero di sette’ (lit. in number of seven) because, yes you’ve guessed it, there are seven days in the week. The first five of these take their names from the planets. lunedi’ (Monday) is from the Latin Lunae dies, or ‘day…
Rainy Day Blog Posted by Serena on Jan 20, 2009
Stamattina mi sono svegliata col rumore della pioggia che batteva sul lucernaio. This morning I woke up to the sound of rain beating on the skylight. Hmm, inspiration for a rainy vocabulary blog! As is true of just about anywhere, us Italians like talking about the weather. It’s nearly always too hot, too cold, too…
Lezione di cucina Posted by Serena on Jan 14, 2009
In Italian we have two verbs which both have the meaning of “to cook”: Cucinare and Cuocere. Mi piace molto cucinare perche’ e’ creativo (I really like cooking because it’s creative). Cucinare means “to prepare and cook food”, which involves gathering the different ingredients needed for a recipe, then preparing and cooking them. I spend quite…
Homo Sapiens Posted by Serena on Jan 9, 2009
Homo Sapiens is a Latin construction meaning “Knowledgeable or Wise Human Being”. Sapiens, or in Italian Sapiente, comes from the verb sapere (to know), however in Italian we also have the verb conoscere (to know). These two verbs, conoscere and sapere, although both translating as “to know”, have different meanings, which are not interchangeable. Sapere…
A different point of view! Posted by Serena on Jan 3, 2009
Mi piace l’italiano. The preceding sentence is a good example of the confusing difference between English and Italian when we talk about what we like. Literally translated as “Italian pleases me” what it actually means is “I like Italian”. Whereas in English the action of liking moves from the person to the object, in Italian…
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…
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…