Archives for December 2020

Buondì. (This article was first published at this time last year, during the January Sale. So if it sounds familiar, you’ll know why! I’ve added progress updates, in italics, so you can see how I got on with my own learning over the last 12 months. For your own purposes, just switch ‘2020’ for ‘2021’ […]

Buondì. And how nice that it’s a normal Monday, albeit an ‘orange’ one here in Italy. The shops are open, the sun might be shining later, the kids are slumped in front of the TV in their pyjamas – everything is well with the world. Except, it’s NOT a normal Monday… Because today we have […]

Buondì. I’m going to take a break from writing today and instead prepare the Christmas lunch – that’ll be tortellini in brodo followed by lenticchie and cotechino, then a dessert with mascarpone (desserts are my wife’s department). None of that’s suitable for vegans, by the way, but sadly our vegan is stuck in the UK […]

Buondì. Two brief ‘annunci’ today. First out, I had a polite email from Giovanni, one of our online teachers and author of our ‘Book of the Classic Italian Movie‘ series of ‘easy reader’ ebooks, gently reminding me that if I was going to promote Youtube videos for random strangers (Monday’s article) I might consider directing […]

Buondì. Heartfelt sympathies to everyone whose Christmas/New Year plans have taken a further blow with the newest restrictions here in Europe, and in the UK of course, which is soon to be no longer Europe but is so far just as badly off. Our eldest daughter was due home last night but only made it […]

Buondì. Many thanks to our regular writer (and online Italian teacher), Francesca Colombo, who has saved me a job today by emailing me her pronunciation tips: Ciao Daniel! I had a look at the last articles you wrote about the pronunciation (haven’t read them thoroughly, though). These are a few tips for the English speakers […]

Buondì. Friday’s article ‘How to improve your Italian accent, Part 1 (why bother?)‘ generated some interesting emails and comments. Club members responded to the ‘why bother?’ in a range of ways – some are like me, and don’t mind having a ‘loud’ foreign accent, as long as they can make themselves understood, while others aim […]

Buondì. Recently I asked for suggestions for our planned ‘How to’ series of brief articles, and one of the topics that many people mentioned they’d like help with was how to improve your accent when speaking Italian. Now I’ll confess, right out of the box, that I’ve been told many times over the years that […]

Buondì. It must have been about this time four years ago when I decided that, as I hadn’t done any significant language-learning for more than a decade, I would have a go at teaching myself Swedish over the Christmas holidays! Digging back through our archive of articles like this one, I found ‘How I started […]