The impersonal ‘you’ is used in English when not directly referring to the person or people in front of you, but people in general - eg ‘How do you get to the centre?’ or ‘You buy bread at the baker’s’.
In Italian ‘you’ express this idea using the pronoun ’si’ and the third person singular form [...]
Here are some basic verbs and examples on how to use them in a simple sentence:
Click here for grammar rules
‘Can’ seems a very simple word in English, but it actually has a number of different meanings which are expressed differently in Italian:
Permission:
use the verb potere
posso aprire la finestra? (can I open the window?)
lei non puo’ venire (she can’t come)
loro possono arrivare alle 8 (they can arrive at 8pm)
Ability
use the verb sapere (to [...]
Definite article: ‘the’
The first thing to know is that the Italian language uses definite articles a lot more than in English when speaking generally. For example, where we would say beautiful women, Italians would say le belle donne (the beautiful women) or il cibo italiano instead of italian food
Next we should remember that articles have [...]
The continuous form is used to express an action in progress at a specified time, either in the past, present and future. Examples in English are:
When the phone rang I was watching the TV
At the moment I’m having dinner
This time tomorrow I’ll be sitting on the train.
Italian works more or less in exactly the same [...]
The verb andare (to go) is probably one of the most common you will use when speaking. It is an irregular verb, but it is definitely worth learning how to conjugate it in different tenses:
Present simple: (io) vado, (tu) vai, (lui/lei) va, (noi) andiamo, (voi) andate, (loro) vanno
Present continuous: verb stare + andando, eg sto [...]
The Italian present simple is quite a handy tense to know as not only is it used in the same way as the English tense, but it can also substitute the near future and the present continuous.
eg. I make the tea (faccio il te)
I’ll make the tea (faccio il te)
I’m making the tea (faccio il [...]
Where English uses a universal verb ‘to be’, Italian has two verbs: essere and stare. It also uses the verb avere (have) in some cases.
Essere is used as a main verb to express simple ideas such as ‘the grass is green’- ‘L’erba è verde’ or ‘I’m Italian’ - sono italiano.
It is also used as an [...]
Subject pronouns in English are I, you, he, she, it, we, you and they.
They are used before a verb to explain who is doing the action, eg I play, they play.
In italian this is already clear from the ending of the verb so often the subject pronoun is not specified.
Let’s use an example with the [...]
Prepositions are notoriously difficult to learn as they are one of the few elements of vocabulary that don’t have a straight translation from one language to another.
Don’t assume that because a preposition seems to have a similar equivalent in one situation that it will always be the same. Take the example of ‘in estate’ (in [...]
