Buondì. As soon as I pressed ‘play’ on today’s free Italian listening comprehension task, I was like “OMG Stefi! What have you done?” My wife recorded the interview at our school, a historic building with high arched ceilings. Being covered in affreschi they’re very pretty, but they do rather reflect sound waves. Beh, you can […]
About motivation. And a new ‘Book of the Week’.
Buondì. As I’ve mentioned, I’m currently on holiday. We’re in Cornwall in the UK, so of course it’s raining. On the plus side, that means time to read. Browsing the bookstore in the nearest town, I came across ‘HELP! How to Become Slightly Happier and Get a Bit More Done‘, by Oliver Burkeman, who writes […]
Here’s a nice long Italian listening for you. And it’s FREE!
Buondì. Many thanks to June, who wrote in with this translation of the nursery rhyme from Wednesday’s article. Quando andavo alla Costa del Sole Incontravo un signore con sette mogline Ogni moglina avava sette borse Ogni borsa avava sette gatte Ogni gatta avava sette gattini Mogline, borse, gatte e gattinini Qnanti adavano alla Costa del […]
As I was going to St. Ives, (I remembered the ebook offer…)
Buondì. I’m in a hurry today as I’ve promised to drop the kids off in St. Ives. We’d stop there ourselves for the day, but I’m told parking’s a nightmare, so we’ve decided to leave the teenagers to their own devices and head for Penzance, over on the other coast. I read somewhere that Penzance […]
Free audio+transcript, and the ‘Book of the Week’ is back!
Buondì. Today’s free material for learning Italian is yet another native speaker conversation (with transcript), this time the topic being: ‘Passato e futuro’ Previous audio recordings in this series are linked to from our ‘New’ page, so if you need listening practice, go binge! Or, if this current material is too hard for you, check […]
Would you do it all again?
Buondì. Here’s a line from the transcript for today’s new audio of Italian native speakers answering questions from our free conversation prompts: Se potessi rinascere dopo essere morto, rivivresti tutto da capo? C’è qualcosa che vorresti cambiare? That is to say “If you could be reborn after death, would you live everything again from the […]
Hopefully, I’m having a lie in this morning!
Buondì. I’m writing this yesterday. It should get published automatically as, hopefully, this morning I’ll be having a lie in. Yesterday (Tuesday) evening we rented a car and drove through the night from London Heathrow to the beautiful, but distant, part of Britain where my parents live. My goodness, if I had driven that far […]
Excuse me, but how exactly should I learn Italian?
Buondì. Today is the first day of the summer, for me at least. There’s no school, my most urgent current work project is more or less complete, and tomorrow we set off on our holidays, a couple of weeks in the UK. So all I have to think about this morning is organising the kids […]
Have you ever read a newspaper or novel in Italian?
Buondì. Hope the studying is going well. If not, if say the weather’s too hot and you’re not feeling very motivated, well why not try something different? For example, I was at the doctor’s office this morning and had to wait for my turn. So I spent the time browsing the news in Swedish using […]
A set of free Italian conversation lesson prompts on Culture
Italians are very into ‘cultura’. Art, literature, opera, ballet, classical music, theatre, cinema and so on. Kids at school have to read ‘I promessi sposi‘, and worse. It’s a form of socialisation, like hazing in the military. Video games and rap? Right-thinking people wouldn’t regard either as ‘cultura’, I’m sure. I was trying to convince […]
