The phrase « Life is beautiful » translates as « La vita è bella » in Italian. It is made up of the following components:
La (feminine form of definite article ‘the‘) + vita (life) + è (third person of essere ‘to be‘) + bella (feminine form of bello ‘beautiful‘).
It’s important to note that you cannot say vita è bella because in Italian, an article is almost always required in front of the noun. Also make sure not to forget the grave accent above the è. Without the accent, e translates as and rather than is!
Another possible way of saying « Life is beautiful » is « La vita è bellissima ». The only difference is that bellissima is more emphatic than bella on its own. Other variations include:
- La vita è meravigliosa. = Life is wonderful.
- La vita è la cosa più bella che ci sia. = Life is the most beautiful thing there is.
La vita è bella is also the name of a 1997 Italian comedy-drama film starring, directed and co-written by Roberto Benigni. It tells the tale of Guido Orefice, a Jewish Italian bookshop owner who uses his imagination to shield his son from the horrors of internment in a Nazi concentration camp. Both a critical and financial success, it became one of the highest-grossing non-English language films of all time.
Below you can watch a famous scene from the film that demonstrates the comic talent of Benigni.
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.
