Not sure you want to receive e-mails from us? Check out the online archive of past mailings to see the fantastic material you would be missing!
New A1 Italian exercise: present tense of irregular verbs
January 28, 2015 By Daniel 20 Comments
Buongiorno a tutti.
Here’s today’s new free Italian exercise: presente verbi irregolari
It practices the present tense and conjugation of some essential irregular verbs.
You can see recent exercises in this series, and what’s coming next on our A1 Italian exercises page.
Or if you’re looking for something more challenging, check out the harder levels starting from our top-level Free Italian Exercises page.
P.S.
There’s always a P.S., isn’t there?
And usually it’s of, how shall we say, a ‘commercial nature’.
A link to our online shop, for example.
But not today.
Instead I want to sound out the idea of re-starting our ‘forum’.
A forum is the area of a website where you can participate in written ‘conversations’, organised by theme.
In effect, it’s the ‘community part’ of a site. A place to interact, but in a less controlled way than leaving a comment on an article like this one.
We used to have a forum – some of you might remember.
But there wasn’t a lot of interest, and the spam was overwhelming (like hundreds of fake registrations a day.)
However, this site IS called OnlineItalianClub.com, and it’s true we ARE missing the ‘club’ part…
Which brings me to the ‘sounding you out’ part.
Shall I reintroduce the forum?
Would you value the chance to interact with others learning Italian from around the world?
Would you be likely to use such a forum? Or at least read it?
Allora, by your actions shall you be judged…
If you’re into the idea, leave a comment on this post saying so.
If not, that is to say, things are fine just like this, no forum needed, then do nothing. No need to comment (though of course you can if you want…)
A sufficient number of enthusiastic comments and I will get the forum started.
None or few, and I will take that as a lack of interest and won’t bother.
(You have to scroll down to the bottom of the page and fill in the little box…)
How to say “I like” in Italian (I always get this wrong!)
January 26, 2015 By Daniel Leave a Comment
Today’s free Italian exercise is on piace/piacciono, the verb used to say “I like” in Italian.
I’m ashamed to say that I still get this wrong, even though I’ve been learning the language for over 15 years…
If you’re also having difficulty, think of it like this: the verb actually means ‘to please’ not ‘to like’.
So, IT pleaseS me.
But THEY please me.
Hence the 3rd person singular form ‘piace’ (it pleases).
And the 3rd person plural ‘piacciono’ (they please).
Easy to explain. Then it’s just a question of practice.
For which, click here for today’s free Italian exercise.
(We recently did a listening on this topic, so for some extra practice on this, go here.)
Or browse all of our free materials for learning Italian, roughly organised by level, on our Free Italian Exercises page.
P.S.
Thanks to all of you who bought the second in our ‘book of the film’ series of simplified e-books, ‘Divorzio all’italiana‘.
Don’t forget to leave a review!
So, what’s next?
Well, we’ll have another audio-book of a classic Italian movie for you in a few weeks, probably at a similar level. More details on that soon.
Also in the pipeline are two new, original stories written by first-time OnlineItalianClub.com authors, both at A1/2 level, so suitable even for those just starting out with Italian.
Which reminds me – you’ll have heard about the problems of the eurozone, and in particular its currency, now further weakened by the election result in Greece (the radical left won…)
The result is that the euro has slid in value against the US dollar, the British pound, the Australian dollar, and so on…
Check out, for example, the ECB (European Central Bank) 12-month chart for the euro/dollar exchange rate.
What does all this mean?
That it’s bargain time!
OnlineItalianClub.com members outside of the euro zone will find that the e-books for learning Italian and online Italian lessons in our shop offer excellent value!
At least until our European politicians can get themselves sorted out.
Don’t hold your breath for that, though.
Go here to browse our online shop.
