Heather Broster
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 …
If someone provides you with an explanation but you struggle to understand the meaning behind their words, it is only natural to ask the question: What do you mean? One way to express this in Italian is with the phrase Che cosa vuoi dire? which, word-for-word, can be translated as What do you want to …
Italian verbs can be divided into three families, called “conjugations”, based on the ending of the infinitive. Verbs ending in -are belong to the first conjugation, those in -ere to the second conjugation and those in -ire to the third conjugation. Avere (“to have”) and essere (“to be”) are the only exceptions since they belong …
If you want to sound like an Italian and know more about their culture, you should learn expressions like fare i conti senza l’oste or trovare il pelo nell’uovo. Let’s take a look at the most common Italian idioms: words and expressions that have a different meaning compared to their literal translations. 1. Fare i …
The word for a city in Italian is città. It is derived from the Latin civitatem, a derivative of civis meaning “citizen“. It generally refers to any human settlement of considerable size with streets, public services, and a local administration. Because it is an invariable feminine noun, the plural form is the same as the …
One of the cardinal rules Italian learners are taught from day one is that possessive adjectives always require a definite article, or the equivalent of “the” in Italian, when they precede the noun being modified. For example: However, there is one glaring exception to this rule, which is members of the family in the singular. …