La Rosa dei Venti Posted by Serena on Oct 3, 2012
If you read or listen to the weather forecast here in Italy you’re quite likely to come across expressions such as: vento di libeccio (wind from libeccio) meaning vento provenienete da sud ovest (wind coming from South West) or vento di tramontana (wind from tramontane) meaning vento proveniente dal nord (wind coming from the North)…
La Bianchina Posted by Geoff on Oct 1, 2012
Here in Pontremoli we have two lovely piazze in our centro storico: Piazza della Repubblica, commonly called Piazza del Comune because it houses the council offices, and Piazza del Duomo. Most of the time it’s difficult to appreciate the beauty of these piazze due to their unfortunate, and somewhat controversial use as car parks. Every…
Quanto Vento! Posted by Serena on Sep 29, 2012
Oggi è molto ventoso, perciò parleremo del vento! It’s very windy today, so let’s talk about the wind! We’ll begin by looking at different ways of describing the wind: alito di vento (breath of wind), e.g. che caldo, non c’è neanche un alito di vento (it’s so hot, there isn’t a breath of wind) venticello (light…
Mulattiera di Mare Posted by Serena on Sep 27, 2012
Occasionally it’s fun to find examples of one of the many dialects which make Italy so linguistically rich, and to show the difference between dialect and ‘official’ Italian. Today I’ve chosen Fabrizio de Andrè’s beautiful song Creuza de mä, written in the Genoese dialect (from Genova). Fabrizio de Andrè (Genova 1940-1999) was a very important…
Pronomi Personali Formali ed Informali Posted by Serena on Sep 26, 2012
The use of formal and informal personal pronouns is a subject that needs revisiting often, especially if your mother tongue is English and you are not used to using these two forms of addressing people. In this post I’m going to concentrate on the ways in which we use the formal and informal pronouns when…
Le Mille Ciotole di Catullo Posted by Serena on Sep 25, 2012
Last week, while researching for my quiz about Italian airport names, I came across the poems of the Latin poet Gaius Valerius Catullus, who was born in 84 BC in Verona. When I was at secondary school I studied Latin, and Catullus was on our reading list. We all used to like his poems, because…
Italian Airport Quiz: Answers Posted by Serena on Sep 21, 2012
Well done everybody who had a go at my airport quiz! Her are the answers, with a little bit of extra information: 1. Parma, aeroporto Giuseppe Verdi. Verdi was born in 1813 in Roncole, near Busseto, north west of Parma. You can read about the role of Giuseppe Verdi during the Italian Risorgimento in this…