Heather Broster
One of the most effective ways of picking up a new language is through music and song. Not only does music make language learning more enjoyable, but it is also repetitive, allowing unfamiliar vocabulary and grammar patterns to sink in more quickly than if you heard them only a few times in conversation. Children, in …
If you attend a party wearing an abito da sera (evening dress) or a smoking (tuxedo), there is a very good chance someone will compliment you on how elegante (elegant) you look! The word elegante is used in reference to both masculine and feminine subjects. It can refers to clothes but also manners and attitude. …
Scarpetta in Italian is the diminutive of scarpa, the word for shoe or boot. It refers to any small shoe including a child’s shoe, a small and elegant shoe that ladies wear, or a flat sports shoe made of light and flexible material such as canvas or rubber. The idiomatic expression fare la scarpetta (lit: …
As you might have already guessed by the similarities in their spelling and pronunciation, interessante is the word for interesting in Italian. The singular interessante becomes interessanti in the plural. The gender of the subject doesn’t influence the ending as it does with some adjectives. Trovo che questo libro sia più interessante dell’ultimo che ho …
If you learn one Italian word related to time today, make sure it is ora (feminine, plural: ore)! One of the most common translations of this word is hour, as in the time unit of 60 minutes measured by the clock. Questa lezione d’Italiano dura quasi un’ora. This Italian lesson lasts almost an hour. A …
The word for vacation or holiday in Italian is vacanza (feminine, plural: vacanze). Derived from the Latin vacantia, it is used for both the fixed holiday periods between school terms and periods of recreation or leisure, often spent away from home. If you are referring to an extended period such as the summer break or …