Heather Broster
Are you a party-goer? Then you’re going to love today’s word of the day! The word festa can mean a number of things in English, but one of the first translations you’ll certainly come across when living in Italy is party or celebration. festa di compleanno = birthday party festa di Natale = Christmas party …
I’ve always found it surprising how quickly children grow. One minute they’re in diapers, getting ready to take their first steps, and the next, they’re packing their bags for college! The word for child or boy in Italian is bambino (plural: bambini) whereas girl is bambina (plural: bambine). These words are used to describe any …
The humble tomato forms the basis of nearly all Italian cuisine. It is used to make tomato sauce for pasta and lasagne, is a key ingredient in most pizzas, and is a popular addition to many Mediterranean salads. If you thought that the Italian word for tomato would sound like the English or the Spanish …
In Italian and English, it isn’t uncommon to come across “false friends“, or in other words, vocabulary items in different languages that look or sound similar but have a completely different meaning. One of the best examples of this is the word camera (feminine, plural camere). At first glance, any English speaker would immediately assume …
Buffo is a wonderfully useful adjective that means funny, amusing or odd in English. Below are the masculine, feminine and plural forms: It is almost always used to describe someone or something that makes you smile or laugh, or that you find ironic or peculiar. Quel pagliaccio è molto buffo. Mi fa morire dal ridere! …
When talking about the existence or presence of something in English, we use the expressions there is / there’s (singular) and there are (plural). In Italian, the exact equivalents are c’è (singular) and ci sono (plural). C’è is the contracted form of ci + è. In informal speech, English speakers tend to use the abbreviation …