Heather Broster
Each hour (ora) of the day consists of sixty minutes, which in Italian are known as minuti (singular: minuto). It comes from the late Latin minutum, which means particle, and is the neuter noun form of the adjective minutus. minuto minute Because minuto is a masculine noun, it takes the following definite and indefinite articles: …
Out of all the small and widely used adverbs in Italian, già is undoubtedly one of the most important. Its most frequent translation in English is already and it comes from the Latin word iam of the same meaning. già already It is mostly used with the passato prossimo tense, appearing between the auxiliary verb …
I can vividly recall all the Halloween costumes I donned during my childhood. If I’m being entirely truthful, my very first Halloween is a memory captured in photographs rather than one I can recall firsthand. In those pictures, I’m dressed as a red crayon, a choice made by my parents. After I outgrew the crayon …
Sputare il rospo is an Italian idiom that literally translates to “spit out the toad” in English. This expression figuratively conveys the act of finally confessing something that one couldn’t or didn’t want to say, such as a secret, concern, or source of anxiety. It more or less equates to the English “to spit something …
Most learners will agree that Italian, on the whole, is a fairly easy language to pronounce. It doesn’t have as many sounds as other languages (yes, English, I’m looking at you), nor as many complex consonant clusters. Still, there are a few words that can present a challenge to English speakers, even after years of …
The masculine noun stento in Italian is used to describe a situation of severe suffering or privation, much like the word hardship in English. stento hardship It derives from the verb stentare which translates as to struggle, to find difficult or to scrape by. Because stento begins with the letters st-, it takes the following …