Italian, like many other romance languages, has formal and informal registers. The purpose of formal speech is to show respect. It may be used when addressing a stranger (especially someone older than you) or superiors such as your boss. It is also the default register for those who provide a service such as shopkeepers or …
Question words (or open question words) are an extremely important part of any language because they allow us to expand our knowledge about the things happening around us. Open questions differ from yes-no questions in that the possible ways of responding to them are limitless – or in other words, they must be answered with …
When I first moved to Italy back in 2008, one of the biggest culture shocks I experienced was the general apathy towards Halloween. I originally come from Canada, a country that like the USA enjoys celebrating Halloween as much as Christmas and Easter, so it was a surprise to see October 31st come and go …
When I first started learning Italian over a decade ago, much of my studying was based on the traditional pen-and-paper format of writing down vocabulary and grammar in a notebook and trying to memorise everything by rote. Although this method worked better than simply twiddling my thumbs waiting for fluency to happen, it wasn’t without …
Food is an incredibly important part of Italian culture, so it is little wonder that so many of their most popular sayings and idioms contain words related to food and eating! In this article, I’ve come up with a list of ten of the best Italian sayings featuring food that I’ve encountered since I started …
Gorgeous is a popular adjective used to describe someone who is beautiful or something that is attractive or pleasant. It can also be used as a term of endearment to flatter someone. There isn’t a direct translation for gorgeous in Italian, but there are lots of words that express more or less the same thing, …