Sorry to those of you in Australia, but today I am way, way behind.
It’s a public holiday here in Italy – the ‘Immaculate Conception‘.
Which meant getting up later than usual.
My teenager daughters explained the reason to me – Mary gets pregnant on the 8th and gives birth on the 25th, that way not having time to ruin her figure with the usual bump. Or having to deal with unreasonable men.
They’re wrong, apparently.
According to Wikipedia
‘The Immaculate Conception is commonly confused with the doctrine of the Incarnation and the virgin birth of Jesus, though the two deal with separate subjects.’
Yup, seems to be.
My fault, I guess. I shouldn’t have exempted them from religious education…
Anyway, it was handy to have a day off work, as it has given me the chance to prepare the final 17 texts in our ‘La grammatica ascoltata’ series.
This section in our series of ‘Italian grammar listenings’ deals with ‘Advanced Italian Tense Forms’.
Click here to see what’s due, other than the holy child, between now and Jan 14th.
And here’s the link for today’s grammar listening, the first of the final seventeen topics in the series: passato remoto verbi regolari.
Just the job for breakfast time on the west coast of the USA, bedtime in Australia, or mid-afternoon here in Bologna.
P.S.
Talking of Bologna, next week our sponsor Italian language school begins its annual December ‘best offer of the year’ promotion.
Naturally, we’ll be giving them the occasional mention here.
If you’re not already on their mailing list (why the hell not?), fill out the form on their home page to remedy that.
That done, not only will you not miss details of how to save big on your 2015 Italian course in Italy, but you will also receive (gratis) a sequence of fascinating articles on topics including:
- Why learn Italian, anyway?
- How long until I can hold a normal conversation in Italian?
- Demotivated at your lack of progress with Italian?
The fun starts tomorrow.
Go get on the list at Madrelingua Italian School for great articles by yours truly, and the money-saving offer, of course…