Heather Broster
When I moved to Italy, I embraced most of the local eating and drinking customs—pizzas, late dinners, and apertivos—but the one thing I couldn’t quite get used to was il caffè – sacrilege, I know! That’s because, being British-Canadian, I’m a dedicated tea drinker! In Italian, the word for tea is simply tè. tè tea …
The piece of bedroom furniture where we store household linen, bed linen and clothes is known as a comò in Italian. It is an adaptation of the French word commode, the piece of furniture containing a concealed chamber pot. comò chest of drawers Comò is a masculine noun, and it is also invariable, meaning that …
I firmly believe that to truly master a language and make it an integral part of who you are, some form of full immersion is essential. But what exactly does full immersion mean? It’s about living and breathing the language as if it were your native tongue. If you reside in a country where the …
We’ve already covered mountains—montagne—in a previous article, but what about their smaller, humbler cousins? In Italian, the word for hill is collina. collina hill According to Devoto-Oli, the feminine noun collina comes from Late Latin collina, which is the feminine form of the adjective derived from collis (meaning “hill” in Latin). A possible synonym for …
It’s not every day that we come across a word that primarily exists only in its plural form. Occhiali, meaning glasses, originates from the adjective and noun occhiale, which refers to anything related to or designed for the eye. occhiali glasses While occhiale is still used in everyday Italian, it is more common to use …
Here in Wales, where we live, it rains quite a lot, as you can imagine. But since today is a rare sunny day, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to dive into the ever-relevant Italian verb piovere (to rain)! piovere to rain Piovere is an -ERE verb that is only ever conjugated in the …