Buondì. Many thanks to June, who wrote in with this translation of the nursery rhyme from Wednesday’s article. Quando andavo alla Costa del Sole Incontravo un signore con sette mogline Ogni moglina avava sette borse Ogni borsa avava sette gatte Ogni gatta avava sette gattini Mogline, borse, gatte e gattinini Qnanti adavano alla Costa del […]

Buondì. I’m in a hurry today as I’ve promised to drop the kids off in St. Ives. We’d stop there ourselves for the day, but I’m told parking’s a nightmare, so we’ve decided to leave the teenagers to their own devices and head for Penzance, over on the other coast. I read somewhere that Penzance […]

Buondì. Today’s free material for learning Italian is yet another native speaker conversation (with transcript), this time the topic being: ‘Passato e futuro’ Previous audio recordings in this series are linked to from our ‘New’ page, so if you need listening practice, go binge! Or, if this current material is too hard for you, check […]

Buondì. Here’s a line from the transcript for today’s new audio of Italian native speakers answering questions from our free conversation prompts: Se potessi rinascere dopo essere morto, rivivresti tutto da capo? C’è qualcosa che vorresti cambiare? That is to say “If you could be reborn after death, would you live everything again from the […]

Buondì. I’m writing this yesterday. It should get published automatically as, hopefully, this morning I’ll be having a lie in. Yesterday (Tuesday) evening we rented a car and drove through the night from London Heathrow to the beautiful, but distant, part of Britain where my parents live. My goodness, if I had driven that far […]

Buondì. Today is the first day of the summer, for me at least. There’s no school, my most urgent current work project is more or less complete, and tomorrow we set off on our holidays, a couple of weeks in the UK. So all I have to think about this morning is organising the kids […]

Buondì. Hope the studying is going well. If not, if say the weather’s too hot and you’re not feeling very motivated, well why not try something different? For example, I was at the doctor’s office this morning and had to wait for my turn. So I spent the time browsing the news in Swedish using […]

Italians are very into ‘cultura’. Art, literature, opera, ballet, classical music, theatre, cinema and so on. Kids at school have to read ‘I promessi sposi‘, and worse. It’s a form of socialisation, like hazing in the military. Video games and rap? Right-thinking people wouldn’t regard either as ‘cultura’, I’m sure. I was trying to convince […]

Buondì. I’m in a rush this morning as I have to go the book-wholesaler (don’t ask) where no doubt I’ll be kept waiting for ages while the guy behind the desk pokes at the keyboard of his nineteen-eighties vintage desktop computer with one finger in that time-honored way that Italian office-workers have of indicating that […]