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 …
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 …
This article is part of our Bilingual Blog series, where we share useful information and tips about non-language related aspects of Italian culture such as food, music, travel and more. These articles have been written in Italian and English to give our readers the opportunity to improve their reading skills whilst learning something new about …
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 …
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. …