According to Wikipedia: Il bicchiere della staffa è l’ultimo bicchiere che si beve prima di congedarsi dagli amici, in genere per recarsi a casa propria per riposare. Si ritiene che l’espressione sia nata nell’Ottocento, quando i signori che si recavano nelle locande bevevano l’ultimo bicchiere quando già avevano un piede nella staffa, pronti per montare […]

Buondì. Apologies to everyone who has written to me since Monday without receiving a reply. I wrote back to the first couple of people who entered our ‘competition’, but then got overwhelmed! A valuable lesson was learnt, though. To get lots of people involved in something, make it easy! And another, I really mustn’t run […]

Buondì. After the end of the Easter Sale (thanks to everyone who participated), it’s back to normal here at OnlineItalianClub.com. Expect articles on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays with new materials or inspirational thoughts. But as today I’m all out of the latter, having worked hard all weekend, try this: La mela It’s the sixth in […]

Tomorrow I’ll be writing about something else, which will be a relief for all of us, I’m sure. Thanks, everyone, for your patience. And for your online purchases, of course. We’ve had about three hundred orders since the start of the sale on March 26th, which is respectable. Very approximately, that means that about three […]

Once, when I was a kid, perhaps about ten years old, we set off on a family holiday to one of Britain’s Channel Islands. This involved a short-ish drive to a nearby port, waiting in a queue with lots of other cars, and then driving up a ramp and into the belly of an enormous […]

(N.b. As with yesterday’s email, this one is a ‘repurposing’ of one I sent on the penultimate Saturday of last year’s Easter Sale, though I’ve changed it quite a lot…) Which time zone are you in? Here in Bologna, Italy, as I start writing this, it’s just after four p.m. (on Saturday.) I was teaching […]

(No, you’re not going crazy! I sent almost the same email on the penultimate Friday of last year’s Easter Sale. But it worked well then, so I thought I’d repurpose it…) We’re on the final lap of the Easter Sale, which ends on Sunday night. I thought I’d update my previous article on what’s been […]

A ‘bundle’ of sticks? A ‘bundle’ of rags? A ‘bundle’ of ebooks? Esatto! A bundle is a variation on the idea of buying in bulk. When I was in Texas last year and didn’t have access to a washing machine, I got by with ‘bundles’ of socks and underwear from Walmart (also very handy for […]

Buondì. It’s my birthday today, and also the anniversary of the day I met my Italian wife, twenty-one years ago! So we’re going out, just for a walk around the shops in Bologna, maybe to spend a gift voucher I received for a bookstore (remember those?) And for an ‘aperitivo’, of course! But it all […]

On Sunday I posted my suggestions for beginners or near beginners. Yesterday I recommended materials for those of you at A2 and B1 (pre-intermediate and intermediate) levels. So today, let’s look at the more challenging stuff! As previously mentioned, The Tenses You Need To Speak Italian is a useful read. And our five-level grammar workbook […]