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 [...]
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 [...]
If you have found work and are coming to live in Italy, you’d better get used to being a straniero (foreigner)!
Italians split stranieri into two groups: comunitari (those coming from member states of the EU) and extra-comunitari.
First of all you will need un posto da vivere (somewhere to live). The most logical solution is to [...]
If you are planning on visiting Italy, you’ll probably want to go out for a nice meal at some point. Here is a great opportunity to practice your Italian!
If you choose a trattoria or ristorante you will probably be given a menù (pronounced ‘menoo’), but in some more rustic establishments you may have to sit [...]
In Italian, if you look in a grammar book, there are a lot of tenses to talk about the past.
Here we are going to look at the most important and most used - the passato prossimo (near past).
This tense can be used in most situations, whether recently or quite a long time ago.
An example using [...]
First of all we should take a look at our own language - English has many ways of expressing the future.
Some examples are I will do, I am doing or I am going to do.
Italian is a lot simpler.
Italians either use the present tense (to talk about the very near future) or the future tense [...]
To learn how to use adjectives in Italian, it’s important to not follow rules as they are in English.
First of all you should remember that adjectives nearly always follow the noun that they are describing, e.g. una casa vecchia (”a house old”) not una vecchia casa (an old house).
Secondly, adjectives have to ‘agree’ with the [...]
Vocabulary is undoubtably the most fundamental aspect of learning to speak a language. You can make yourself understood with just vocabulary but not with just grammar.
There are no short cuts to learning vocab. It takes time and effort. Some methods will tell you to do strange-sounding things like “find a similar sounding word with a [...]
First of all, what exactly is a participle? Some examples of English past participles are gone, seen, spoken, eaten etc.
Past participles in English are used to form the past (I have eaten), the passive (it was eaten) or can be used just as adjectives (a half-eaten biscuit).
The good news is that they are used in [...]
Listening to songs is a great way to learn - especially listening to the music the Italians themselves love.
There’s nobody more popular than Vasco!
Voglio trovare
un senso a questa sera
Anche se questa sera
un senso non ce l’ha
Voglio trovare
un senso a questa vita
Anche se questa vita
un senso non ce l’ha
Voglio trovare
un senso a questa storia
Anche se questa [...]
