Heather Broster
I don’t know about you, but mi da veramente sui nervi (it really gets on my nerves) when people try to push their luck with me. There is something especially irritating about someone who decides to test my patience, even though I’ve already said no, or made it abundantly clear that they’re taking things too …
Mio papà (my dad) has developed a habit over the years that is pretty common amongst the over-sixties: afternoon naps. He never used to be someone who’d let l’omino del sonno (the Sandman) pay him a visit while the sun is up, but these days, if there’s a quiet afternoon and he’s reading a book …
A common noun with a dual meaning in Italian is tenda, which can be translated as either curtain (or drapes in US English) or tent depending on the context. Let’s discover it now! tenda curtain / tent The word derives from the Medieval Latin word tenda. It is a derivative of the Latin verb tendĕre, …
Proprio is one of those sneaky little Italian words that seems to pop up everywhere. In fact, I don’t think five minutes ever go by without me slipping a proprio into one of my sentences. Its sheer ubiquity, in addition to the fact that it can function as an adjective, adverb, pronoun, and noun, is …
Today’s Italian expression cannot really be classified as an idiom, but it is an interesting one to explore nonetheless because a) it has a dual meaning, and b) it is an expression that often bewilders learners when they first encounter it. fare il bagno to go for a swim / dip Before we proceed any …
When I first started learning Italian many moons ago, I clearly recall that one of the topics I struggled with the most was difference between the prepositions da and per when talking about periods of time or durations. Indeed, it is possible to translate for X number of years (to use a common example) as …