Buondì. Can you lick your nose like a cow? The reason I ask is that Dante meets a condemned soul who can, and is quite repulsed! Though perhaps that’s because the guy was an usurer, it’s not clear. Here’s Dante’s description in the original: Qui distorse la bocca e di fuor trasse la lingua, come […]
Archives for August 2019
New Italian easy reader ebook, Inferno Canto XVI, and poems!
Buondì. First order of business today: don’t forget this week’s new easy reader ebook ‘Il mistero della quercia‘. The club has bills to pay. From Monday ‘Il mistero della quercia‘ will sell for the usual ebook price of £7.99 but get it this week and you’ll spend just £5.99! .pdf e-book (other formats – Kindle, […]
– 25% on B2/C1-Level easy reader: Il mistero della quercia
Buondì. As promised last week, today I have a new upper-intermediate/advanced-level Italian easy reader ebook for you. It’s ‘Il mistero della quercia‘. The writer is Francesca Colombo, who did the recent ‘Il bar‘ and ‘Prometeo e la guerra dei titani‘. So if you liked those, you’ll probably like this one, too! The story is set […]
Psst! Wanna hear some gossip?
Buondì. Today’s canto from Dante’s Inferno (Canto XV) is salacious, to say the least. Dante bumps into one of his former teachers, whose fate is to “vagare senza mai fermarsi per la landa desertica, sotto la pioggia di fiamme” (roam the desert without ever stopping under the rain of fire). But what’s the poor man […]
You impious blasphemer!
(This article contains ‘cuss words’. You have been advised…) Buondì. I’ve just spent the last half hour checking words I didn’t know from the latest installment of Dante’s Inferno, Canto XIV. (Catch up with the series so far on our new ‘Italian Literature‘ page.) ‘Empio’, for example, which means impious (like an imp, I suppose, […]
OnlineItalianClub (not OnlineItalianApp!)
Buondì. I have nothing against apps, and will happily use them for my own language-learning. But these days we’re so used to solving any problem by clicking on the relevant icon on our smartphones or tablets, that I begin to wonder… Would you expect, for example when browsing in a bookshop or library, that one […]
A fast-moving action movie with plenty of gore!
Buondì. Hope you had a nice Ferragosto. The 15th of August is a public holiday in Italy and represents both the apex and the last gasp of the summer. From today on, everyone starts thinking about the inevitable ‘rientro’ (return to work/normal life). But not to worry! Summer may be drawing to an end, but […]
Now here’s a winning language-learning strategy!
Buondì. I recently linked to one of my own articles, modestly entitled ‘How to learn Italian (or any language)‘. If you read it, you might have expected language-learning ‘tactics’, but in fact my experience of language-learning (and language-teaching, which is my profession) has been that, given that it’s a long-term activity, the ‘strategic’ side of […]
Guess which pizza?
Buondì. Hope you had a pleasant weekend. We were in Rimini at the in-laws’ place and out on the boat, which was fun. On Saturday evening the seven of us ate at my brother-in-law’s pizzeria in the historic centre of the city. I took a photo of the menu to show you… Guess which pizza […]
Avviso Sciopero!
Buondì. If you’ve spent much time in Italy, you’ll be familiar with the word ‘sciopero’, which means ‘strike’ in the sense of industrial action, downing tools, walking out and so on. And ‘avviso’ is ‘warning’. So be warned, OnlineItalianClub.com’s Deptartment of Silly Questions has declared a strike for today, Friday 9th of August from 2 […]
