If you’ve only just arrived in Italy and your vocabulary hasn’t progressed far beyond ciao and grazie, there is a survival phrase you should definitely make an effort to learn: Do you speak English? Italian has both formal and informal registers, so if you’re addressing a stranger on the street or in a shop, the …
If there is bread on the table, I can’t help myself – I’m going to eat it all, right down to the very last crumb. I’ve been a bread lover since childhood and when I was 3 years old, I refused to eat anything else. Living in different countries has allowed me to taste different …
English speakers are taught from an early age that putting more than one negative in a sentence is grammatically incorrect. In fact, I’m sure my English teacher would have spontaneously combusted had I ever written “I don’t have nothing,” in one of my essays! Not so in Italian! In the language of love, it is …
Art is the uniquely human skill of being able to consciously create something beautiful or meaningful by employing skill and imagination. Typically visual but also auditory and theatrical, art can assume many forms including paintings, sculptures, music, architecture and more. In Italian, all you need to do is add an e to the end of …
The Italian word for rainbow is arcobaleno (plural: arcobaleni). l’arcobalenoun arcobaleno gli arcobalenidegli arcobaleni It is composed of two words: arco (arch) and baleno (flash, flare). Ho visto un arcobaleno dopo il temporale. I saw a rainbow after the storm. The seven colours of the rainbow (sette colori dell’arcobaleno) are as follows: violetto = violet …
The word faccia (plural: facce) in Italian is the most widely used term for face. la facciauna faccia le faccedelle facce Mi sono lavato la faccia stamattina. I washed my face this morning. Below are the main componants that make up a human face: It is used in both the literal, anatomical sense of the …