It’s difficult to believe that we are already well into the month of May, known as maggio in Italian. Maggio is the fifth month of the year (quinto mese dell’anno) according to the Julian and Gregorian calendars. As is the case with all months of the year, maggio isn’t capitalised in Italian as it is …
The affectionate name children use towards their father (padre) in Italian is papà. It is the equivalent of dad, daddy or pa in English. A very easy mistake you might make when you first start learning Italian is to accidentally place the emphasis on the first rather than the last syllable. If you place it …
If you’re experiencing sadness from the absence of a family member, close friend, lover or spouse, a good phrase to know is I miss you which translates as (Tu) mi manchi in Italian. In conversation, the personal pronoun tu is almost always omitted since the grammatical person is clear from the conjugation of the verb …
The name almost all children call their mother (madre) in Italian, no matter their age, is mamma, which translates as mom / mommy in American English or mum / mummy in British English. Three possible variations are the affectionate diminutives mammi, mami and mammina. When using a possessive adjective like mia (my), you have the …
The word for fear in Italian is paura and it derives from the Latin pavor meaning fear or fright. It can be combined with the verbs avere (to have), fare (to do/make) and prendere (to take/get) to create some extremely useful phrases: avere paura = to be scared (literally: to have fear) Non avere paura. …
As you might have already guessed by the similarities in their spelling and pronunciation, interessante is the word for interesting in Italian. The singular interessante becomes interessanti in the plural. The gender of the subject doesn’t influence the ending as it does with some adjectives. Trovo che questo libro sia più interessante dell’ultimo che ho …