Buondì. Today I have something difficult for you, but also something easy. Take your pick, or do both, it’s up to you! But that way, while being familiar with the mantra that you can’t please all the people all the time, I’m hoping to get as many club members as possible doing something useful to […]
Three exercises a week – is that IT?
People often tell me that they value these articles, delivered three times a week via email to nearly eleven thousand students of Italian from around the world. I suppose the ones who think I’m a bore unsubscribe, which is fine. If you’re not a fan, you’ll find a link to remove your email from our […]
Practice Italian listening in a really echoey tunnel!
Buondì. As soon as I pressed ‘play’ on today’s free Italian listening comprehension task, I was like “OMG Stefi! What have you done?” My wife recorded the interview at our school, a historic building with high arched ceilings. Being covered in affreschi they’re very pretty, but they do rather reflect sound waves. Beh, you can […]
About motivation. And a new ‘Book of the Week’.
Buondì. As I’ve mentioned, I’m currently on holiday. We’re in Cornwall in the UK, so of course it’s raining. On the plus side, that means time to read. Browsing the bookstore in the nearest town, I came across ‘HELP! How to Become Slightly Happier and Get a Bit More Done‘, by Oliver Burkeman, who writes […]
Here’s a nice long Italian listening for you. And it’s FREE!
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 […]
As I was going to St. Ives, (I remembered the ebook offer…)
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 […]
Free audio+transcript, and the ‘Book of the Week’ is back!
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 […]
Would you do it all again?
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 […]
Hopefully, I’m having a lie in this morning!
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 […]
Excuse me, but how exactly should I learn Italian?
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 […]