In Italian, the word tempesta (feminine, plural: tempeste) refers to any violent storm and may be characterised by strong winds (venti forti), thunder and lightning (tuoni e fulmini), heavy rainfall (forte pioggia), ice (ghiaccio), or winds carrying sand (sabbia), snow (neve) or hail (grandine). There are numerous names and varieties of tempeste in the Italian …
The Italian word for nature is the similar sounding natura (feminine, plural: nature). It corresponds to the English meaning of the word in every sense as we’ll discover below. The first translation is the physical world that surrounds us including plants (piante), animals (animali), the landscape (paesaggio) and any other features or products of the …
My husband and I are extremely lucky live just a stone’s throw away from the beach, which translates as spiaggia (feminine, plural: spiagge) in Italian. It is a derivative of the now-obsolete word piaggia which means a variety of things including slope, shore and land. Below are the verbs you’ll most often see used with …
The most literal meaning of the Italian word cielo (masculine, plural: cieli) in English is sky. There are various ways of describing the sky in Italian depending on the atmospheric conditions and the time of day: Il cielo è coperto di nuvole oggi. The sky is filled with clouds today. A common expression in Italian …
The word for wind in Italian is vento (masculine, plural: venti) and it comes from the Latin term ventus. Whereas in English, we tend to say It’s windy to describe breezy conditions, Italians have the choice between two expressions: Tira vento. = Lit: It’s pulling wind. C’è vento. = There is wind. Caspita, c’è tanto …
The usage of the word mondo (masculine, plural: mondi), which translates as world, is more or less the same in Italian as it is in English. In its most literal sense, it can refer specifically to the physical planet that we inhabit (Earth), or to other heavenly bodies outside of our solar system. L’astronauta riesce …