Heather Broster
Although I have always loved Italian, learning the language really became important to me after my daughter met and married an Italian man while working in Torino, Italy. When we first met him his knowledge of the English language was already impressive and since living here in the U.K., he has achieved fluency. At the …
How can I learn Italian language easily and quickly? This is a question we regularly receive on our blog, and one that merits a fair answer. The truth is that learning a language, like any other skill, takes time, practice and perseverance. In fact, it has been estimated that in order to learn a Romance …
When I was young, one of my favourite pastimes was flipping through my father’s vast collection of postage stamps, among which was the prized Penny Black, the world’s first adhesive stamp. The word for postage stamp in Italian is francobollo. Being a masculine noun, it takes the following definite and indefinite articles. The etymology of …
Making mistakes is not only natural, but in the case of language acquisition, also an essential part of the learning process. After all, if we don’t make mistakes, how will we ever improve? No one is born knowing a language, so the only way to reach fluency is to keep making mistakes until we achieve …
An Italian word that sounds as lovely as the thing it indicates is rugiada, which means dew. It is thought to have entered the language from the Latin ros via the Gallo-Italic rosada. Rugiada is a feminine noun whose plural form is rugiade. (Note, however, that the plural form is used far less than the …
Ciao and arrivederci are two of the most well-known Italian greetings – in fact, even those who have had zero contact with the Italian language before tend to be familiar with these terms. The difficulty for beginners is knowing when it is appropriate to use ciao as opposed to arrivederci and vice versa. In this …