Heather Broster
December, or dicembre in Italian, is the month in which winter (inverno) officially begins in the northern hemisphere. The days may be short and the weather variable, but it is certainly the most magical time to visit Italy thanks to the festive atmosphere. Some things that characterise Italy in December include elaborate nativity scenes (presepi) …
Il Natale è alle porte is a very common expression used when Christmas is only days away. It literally translates as “Christmas is at the doors” and equates to the English expressions: Il Natale è alle porte. Christmas is just around the corner. The use of the definite article il (the) is optional. You can …
Students of Italian often find themselves feeling confused about when to use ancora versus di nuovo since both can be translated with the word “again”. In this article, we attempt to shed some light on the differences in their usage. How to Use “Ancora” in Italian Before we delve into ancora as a translation for …
You’ve probably already learned the extremely common greeting Come stai? (“How are you?”) in Italian, but what if you want to ask what someone is up to? In this case, you can use the expression: Che fai di bello? What are you up to? Che fai…? , the variation Cosa fai…? and the more formal …
The Italian word for door is porta. It comes from the Latin porta of the same meaning. If you have trouble remembering this word, try and associate it with the English word portal! Porta is a feminine noun whose ending changes from -a to -e in the plural. It takes the following definite and indefinite …
Although Italian has gained the reputation of being a “phonetic language” – meaning that there is a direct relationship between the spelling and sounds – there are a few pesky letters that aren’t always pronounced in the same way. We already looked at the letter C a few months ago, and today we’re going to …