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 …
The Italian word pietra (feminine, plural: pietre) can be translated as either rock or stone in English. It comes from the Greek word πέτρα (pétrē). As you can see from the two examples below, pietra is used to talk about both the compact mass formed by natural mineral substances, as well as the smaller fragments …
If you are already familiar with the English word fluvial, you will have no trouble whatsoever remembering the Italian word for river which is fiume (masculine, plural: fiumi). The longest river in Italy, il Fiume Po, runs through the city of Turin where my husband was born. It flows 405 miles from its source near the …