Heather Broster
This classic idiom was suggested to me by my mother-in-law, who uses more idiomatic expressions in her everyday speech than most Italians! mettere una pulce nell’orecchio (di qualcuno) to plant an idea in someone’s head In Italian culture, the act of slipping a flea into someone’s ear isn’t about bugs; it’s a metaphor for introducing …
Italian and Spanish are both Romance languages, which means they share a lot of similarities in terms of grammar, vocabulary, and pronunciation. Do you already speak Spanish, and now wonder how easy it would be to pick up Italian? Which languages are easiest to learn depend on your background and the other languages you are …
During my time in Italy, I worked for five years at a nursery school, which meant I interacted with a lot of children! Most of the kids had very classic names, but there were a few with especially adorable names that stayed with me for years. Some of them even made it onto the shortlist …
Today we’re going to explore pensare, a common verb in the Italian language that will offer a gateway to convey your thoughts and feelings. pensare to think Italian verbs are categorised into three classes: -are, -ire, and -ere. Pensare belongs to the first category, meaning that its conjugation in the present tense adheres the following …
What comes after il mattino (the morning) and precedes la sera (the evening)? Il pomeriggio (the afternoon), of course! pomeriggio afternoon According to Treccani, this term is a cross between the Latin adjective pomeridiano (the adjective “afternoon”) and meriggio (a synonym for mezzogiorno – midday – that refers to the hours at which the sun …
A soiled diaper. A smelly sock. Or a dead spider in your bathtub. All of these can be succinctly described with a single Italian noun: schifo (gross / yuck / disgust). schifo gross / yuck / disgust The term has roots in the Old French eschif and Old Franconian *skiuhjan, meaning to respect / revere …