The word for queen in Italian, which is regina (feminine, plural: regine), is easy to remember because it looks a lot like the verb to reign in English. Both words are related to the Latin term rex meaning king. Margherita di Savoia fu la prima regina consorte d’Italia. Margherita di Savoia was the first queen consort of …
March marks the beginning of spring (primavera). The weather starts to warm up, flowers begin to bloom, and the days grow longer. Marzo is the third month (terzo mese) of the year according to the Julian and Gregorian calendars. As is the case with all months of the year, marzo isn’t capitalised in Italian as …
The Italian word succo (plural: succhi), meaning juice in English, comes from the Latin succus. An easy way to remember this word is to think of the term succulent (full of juice). It is closely related to the verb succhiare meaning to suck, presumably because at the time, people would suck on the fruit to …
The Italian word polizia (feminine, plural: polizie) and the English word police both derive from the Latin word politia, which in turn comes from the Greek word politeia meaning citizenship. Of course today both the Italian and English refer to the civil force of a state, responsible for maintaining public order and preventing crime. La …
A very easy adjective for English speakers to remember in Italian is timido, meaning shy, bashful or timid. Both timido and the English timid derive from the Latin word timidus. As with many adjectives in Italian, the ending tells you whether the subject is masculine or feminine / singular or plural. timido = masculine, singular …
In Italian, the diminutive suffixes -ino / -otto / -etto are often added to the end of animal names to denote their offspring. A good example of this is our word of the day, gattino (masculine, plural: gattini), which means kitten. Gattino is simply the word gatto (cat) with -ino attached to the end. When …