Heather Broster
The word for twins in Italian is gemelli (masculine, singular: gemello; feminine, singular: gemella). Whereas in English, we have separate terms for offspring in a multiple birth (twins, triplets, quadruplets, quintuplets, sextuplets, septuplets, octuplets, nonuplets and decuplets), Italian applies the blanket term gemelli regardless of the number. In order to be specific, you must add …
Today’s word is useful on both sunny and rainy days! Ombrello (masculine, plural: ombrelli), which is the word for umbrella in Italian, is the diminutive form of ombra meaning shade and comes from the Latin umbra of the same meaning. The ombrello da pioggia (rain umbrella) can also be called a parapioggia or paracqua in …
One of the key ingredients in most Italian dishes is aglio, the word for garlic in Italian. A bulb of garlic in Italian is testa d’aglio, which literally translates as a “head of garlic”, and each bulb is made up of a number of spicchi d’aglio (garlic cloves). Pensi che io abbia messo troppo aglio …
Every year, Mother’s Day (known as La Festa della Mamma in Italian) falls on the second Sunday in May in most countries across the world including Italy, the United States, Canada, and Australia. It marks a special time honouring all kinds of mothers, from birth mothers (mamme biologiche) and grandmothers (nonne) to adoptive mothers (mamme …
The Italian word domani (tomorrow in English) comes from the Latin de mane whose rough translation is starting from the morning. Domani can be paired with different words that denote the time of day: Domani sera vado da un amico per una cena. Tomorrow evening I’m going to a friend’s house for a dinner. The …
Today we’re going to be talking about a very short yet extremely important word in Italian: e which means and. Just as in English, e can join two nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs or sentences. Ho guardato un film e poi sono andato a letto. I watched a film and then I went to bed. Similarly …