Buondì. I’m writing the first part of this (yesterday) on a high-speed train (Roomie and I agree that the black and red ones are very pretty) on the way to Torino, which is Turin in English and, according to Wikipedia, in the Piedmontese dialect. It’s been years since I’ve been anywhere new, mostly because of […]

Buondì. More from my muse, club-member Suzanne, who often emails interesting questions. Here’s her comment on my approach to learning vocablary, which I’ve paraphrased selectively: ‘I use EasyItalianNews.com and short stories in Italian to improve my vocabulary. It’s common pedagogy to use texts to learn at least 50% of the words used in them. Yes, […]

Buondì. Suzanne emailed in response to Wednesday’s article, Last night I went to a meeting with a bunch of Italians…, to ask this: “You must be extremely fluent in Italian to understand the “overview” of Italian legal history, as well as to be to be able to engage with Italians on such a specialized subject. How […]

Buondì. Yesterday evening I was at a meeting. More of a presentation, actually, by an Italian lawyer, who was supposed to be updating us on recent changes to the law, but insisted on filling us in on the legal background, basically starting with the Romans, then Napoleon, then independence, then WWI, then fascism, and so […]

Buondì. Yesterday evening it was sleeting where I live, in Bologna. Roomie and I are hoping for snow, so we can replicate some of the scenes from the movie Frozen (she’s Anna, the frisky younger sister, I’m Elsa, the gorgeous blonde.) But so far, no luck. The weather app on my smartphone accurately reported the […]

Buondì. I’m going to be breve, breve, breve, anzì, brevissimo, this morning, as I have a lot piled up, including proof-reading and finalising a new ‘opera’ easy reader for publication on Monday. So here goes: feedback received on watching movies in Italian tends to be of the ‘I didn’t understand anything’ type. That’s nonsense, as […]

Buondì. Apparently, most people rate themselves highly on their driving skills (even Italians), on being good in bed, and of course, on having a sense of humour. When you think about it though, most people can’t be better than average (depending on the type of average we’re talking about), so plenty of people likely overestimate […]

Buondì. I quite often get told, whether by students of foreign languages, or in learning material aimed at them, that I’ll know when I’m making progress when I can ‘think’ in the language I’m learning. Ergo, if I can’t ‘think’ in a foreign language, I’m doing something wrong, and/or still have a way to go. […]