Tag Archives: bisogno
October Italian Grammar Quiz – The Solutions Posted by Serena on Oct 28, 2016
Lazy astronauts up in your space station, and lazy submariners under the polar ice cap … where are your answers? Luckily some of our clever readers have had a go at this weeks quiz, which, if you haven’t yet seen it, you can find HERE. Now, let’s see how you got on. 1. Finché or…
October Italian Grammar Quiz Posted by Geoff on Oct 26, 2016
Time for a quiz, and time for all of you who are normally too shy, or too busy to leave us a comment. That includes you, astronauts up in the space station, and you, submariners under the polar ice cap … we know you’re reading this! Fill in the blanks in the Italian translations below…
Expressing Your Needs In Italian – Part 2 Posted by Serena on Aug 19, 2016
In my previous post we looked at three ways of expressing necessity in Italian: occorrere, bisogna and bisogno. Today we’re going to continue the theme with three more common forms. servire = to need servire is only used in the third person singular (serve) and plural (servono). Examples: per fare il cemento serve la sabbia…
Expressing Your Needs In Italian – Part 1 Posted by Serena on Aug 17, 2016
A reader recently asked me if I could shed some light on the different forms that we use to express necessity. The best way to understand how we use these forms is by looking at practical examples. Allora, cominciamo! occorrere = to need the verb occorrere is only used in the third person, both singular…
Bisogno or Bisogna? Posted by Serena on Jun 6, 2009
Here is another example of a verb that does not translate very well from English into Italian: “to need”. In Italian the verb bisognare (to need) has become redundant except in its third person form, but we use two different constructions to express the concept of ‘need’ that should not be confused with each other…