It doesn’t matter whether you’re learning a brand new language or looking to enhance your grasp of your native one, having a dictionary at hand is always useful for looking up new words and expanding your vocabolario (vocabulary). In Italian, this invaluable resource is called a dizionario, a word that sounds quite similar to its …
When I moved to Italy, I embraced most of the local eating and drinking customs—pizzas, late dinners, and apertivos—but the one thing I couldn’t quite get used to was il caffè – sacrilege, I know! That’s because, being British-Canadian, I’m a dedicated tea drinker! In Italian, the word for tea is simply tè. tè tea …
The piece of bedroom furniture where we store household linen, bed linen and clothes is known as a comò in Italian. It is an adaptation of the French word commode, the piece of furniture containing a concealed chamber pot. comò chest of drawers Comò is a masculine noun, and it is also invariable, meaning that …
We’ve already covered mountains—montagne—in a previous article, but what about their smaller, humbler cousins? In Italian, the word for hill is collina. collina hill According to Devoto-Oli, the feminine noun collina comes from Late Latin collina, which is the feminine form of the adjective derived from collis (meaning “hill” in Latin). A possible synonym for …
It’s not every day that we come across a word that primarily exists only in its plural form. Occhiali, meaning glasses, originates from the adjective and noun occhiale, which refers to anything related to or designed for the eye. occhiali glasses While occhiale is still used in everyday Italian, it is more common to use …
Here in Wales, where we live, it rains quite a lot, as you can imagine. But since today is a rare sunny day, I thought it was the perfect opportunity to dive into the ever-relevant Italian verb piovere (to rain)! piovere to rain Piovere is an -ERE verb that is only ever conjugated in the …