Archives for June 2018

Buondì. Now before I go on, a club member wrote to complain that ‘Buondì’ is not standard Italian, which is absolutely true. According to him, and the Italian friends he consulted, I should say ‘Buongiorno’, which IS standard Italian, but is not what people actually say. It’s way too formal. Yesterday, for instance, I was […]

So, I’m back from my holiday in Sweden (and briefly in Denmark, too). I’ve been studying Swedish fairly intensively since January, and more sporadically last year, so for around eighteen months. I’ve certainly done hundreds of hours in total, a mix of self-study and online conversation lessons. Looking at the CEFR level descriptors (find them […]

Buondì. For fans of our ‘Italian Native-Speaker Conversations’ series, here’s another: Superstizioni e credenze Just click the link to go to the page, which has both audio-player and transcript. The ‘conversation lesson’ on which this recording is based can be found here. Previous recordings with transcripts are here. And other ‘conversation lessons’, that is to […]

Buondì. I’m in Copenhagen this morning, yesterday I was in Malmo, and the day before in Gothenburg. It’s all a bit of a whirl, I admit, and hard to find the time to write much. I still haven’t had a chance to reply to all the kind club members who have emailed suggestions and feedback […]

Buondi. Today I have another recording of Italian native-speakers asking and answering questions from our series of free Italian conversation lessons. If you haven’t tried them with friends from your Italian class, you should! To get better at speaking, you need to speak. Over the last five or six months, I’ve been using this approach […]

Buondì. Lunedì again, though it doesn’t feel like it when you’re on holiday. Today is our final day in Stockholm, Sweden, but more about the road trip later. First though, here’s another of those conversations between Italian native-speakers, accompanied by a transcript so you can figure out what they’re saying. Today’s topic is ‘Emozioni‘. Click […]

Buondì. Over 500 people have already listened to Wednesday’s new audio. Well done to you guys! But the other nine-thousand five-hundred of you? Avanti, ragazzi! Don’t fall behind. The more listening you do, the better. Time and effort are required to develop the neural networks needed for processing speech. It’s not just some magic process […]

Buondì. First things first. Here’s the second in our new series of ‘Native-speaker conversations with transcripts’ for you. This one was recorded by my giggly daughter and her extremely-polite boyfriend (he called me ‘Sir’ at first…) Tu e la tecnologia It’s about, well, ‘You and technology’. Have a listen, it’s free, so what’s to lose? The […]

Buondì. Tomorrow we leave for Sweden. So today I’ve lots to do, packing and so on, and leaving the house in order so that the kids can trash it while we’re away. I’ll be brief then. Below is a new audio recording and a transcript. You’ll also find some guidance regarding how I think you […]

Buondi. Today I have the last from our ‘expressions with’ series (next week we’ll start something different…) And this time it’s Expressions with ‘casa’. For example ‘una casa chiusa’. Now what could that be? Some sort of youth institution, a sort of juvenile prison? Oh, I know! If you’ve been to Italy and looked at […]