If you are curious to know what someone does for a living, the most natural phrase you can use in Italian is:
Cosa fai nella vita?
What do you do for a living?
The literal translation of this phrase is “What do you do in life?” but it is implied that you are referring to the person’s profession rather than, say, his or her hobbies.
Cosa is a noun that means “thing” but when used as a question word, it means “what”. It is also possible to use the slightly more formal Che cosa which literally means “what thing”.
Fai is the second-person singular of the verb fare (to do / to make). In a more formal context, fai should be substituted with the second-person formal fa and, more often than not, Italians will change the phrase entirely, going with something like the example below. This is because asking “what do you do in life” is more colloquial.
(Lei) che lavoro fa?
What is your occupation?
Nella is a compound preposition – all this means is that it is the combination of a preposition (in this case in = in) and a definite article (in this case la = the).
Finally, we come to the feminine noun vita, which means life. The reason it is preceded by la is because, as a general rule, all nouns must have articles before them in Italian.
You can phrase this question in a few other ways too:
- Che lavoro fai? = What (job) do you do?
- Qual è il tuo lavoro? = What is your job / occupation?
- Qual è la tua professione? = What is your profession?
- Di che cosa ti occupi? = What do you do?
Heather Broster is a graduate with honours in linguistics from the University of Western Ontario. She is an aspiring polyglot, proficient in English and Italian, as well as Japanese, Welsh, and French to varying degrees of fluency. Originally from Toronto, Heather has resided in various countries, notably Italy for a period of six years. Her primary focus lies in the fields of language acquisition, education, and bilingual instruction.
