Today’s word is useful on both sunny and rainy days! Ombrello (masculine, plural: ombrelli), which is the word for umbrella in Italian, is the diminutive form of ombra meaning shade and comes from the Latin umbra of the same meaning. The ombrello da pioggia (rain umbrella) can also be called a parapioggia or paracqua in …
One of the key ingredients in most Italian dishes is aglio, the word for garlic in Italian. A bulb of garlic in Italian is testa d’aglio, which literally translates as a “head of garlic”, and each bulb is made up of a number of spicchi d’aglio (garlic cloves). Pensi che io abbia messo troppo aglio …
The Italian word domani (tomorrow in English) comes from the Latin de mane whose rough translation is starting from the morning. Domani can be paired with different words that denote the time of day: Domani sera vado da un amico per una cena. Tomorrow evening I’m going to a friend’s house for a dinner. The …
Today we’re going to be talking about a very short yet extremely important word in Italian: e which means and. Just as in English, e can join two nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs or sentences. Ho guardato un film e poi sono andato a letto. I watched a film and then I went to bed. Similarly …
When a group of employees refuses to work as a form of organised protest, this is called a sciopero (masculine, plural: scioperi) in Italian (or strike in English). There are two main ways that you can say to go on strike in Italian: scioperare, the verb from which sciopero derives, and fare sciopero, which literally …
Felicità, the Italian word for happiness, comes from the Latin word felix meaning happy, blessed or lucky. English speakers shouldn’t have any trouble remembering this word if they call to mind the term felicity, a close synonym for happiness. Felicità is a feminine noun that takes the following definite and indefinite articles: Some closely related …