Today his ot, so hi ham appy. Hit’s great to ave ha few more days hof ot weather before the hautumn harrives, hisn’t hit? /h/ his ha voiceless fricative. Hi hadmit to being vague habout what precisely that means heven hafter 20 years has ha language teacher, so hi don’t expect you to know. Owever, […]
Think Italian, Like an Italian – 3
Italian verbs. People do seem to have trouble getting their heads around them. Part of the problem is the tense system, of course (of which more another day). But there’s a much bigger problem, especially for beginners. English speakers quite reasonably expect the “who is doing it” part to go right at the front of […]
Think Italian, Like an Italian – 2
Mr Monday, Mrs breakfast, Mr son, MRS school, Mrs rain, Mrs clouds, Mrs week but Mr weekend, is that right? See? I’m still doing it. Trying to think like an Italian. Last time I decided to work on gender. You can read how here. Today being Mr Monday, I’m pressed for time, so I think I’ll […]
Think Italian, Like an Italian
It’s Sunday after lunch (breakfast time in Australia – “How ya’ goin’?”) I’m trying to “Think Italian, Like an Italian”, so as to cut out all those embarrassing errors when I speak and write. I’ve decided that the first thing I’m going to fix is “gender”. Nouns in Italian, for some reason that has always […]
A boring article about mailing lists, best skip it.
Seriously. I like giving stuff away for free, but sometimes things can get out of hand. So the fewer people that read this all the way through, the better. By far. Do you get multiple e-mails? Yeah. So do I. Every time I write something like this, I get about 8 copies. It’s because I […]
Learning Italian by learning phrases
Confession time: I’ve been so, so, busy lately that I haven’t had time to post here. Hope you noticed! I’ve found time today only because I promised to help Lucia (OnlineItalianClub.com) sell her e-book. That’s the confession part. But soon, soon, I’ll be writing regularly again. Promise! I’m planning a series called “Think Italian Like […]
Oops, let’s try that again!
If you’re the sort that opens your e-mails (lot’s of people don’t), you might have received one that looked a bit like this a few weeks ago… I’d added an offer to go out automatically 2 days after someone joins our mailing list. Everyone already on the list would have received it too. The e-mail […]
Would you pay €3200 to speak really good Italian?
It’s been a good couple of weeks since I posted here, and people are starting to nag… I noticed that, you are not writing recently.. Is there some problem or did you decide to quit the page? I hope you did not. Coz, I really benefit out of this super user friendly web site. Thanks, Aysegul, […]
Italian Prepositions Error Checklist
Thanks to everyone who responded to my call for examples of how prepositions are used differently in English and Italian. As promised, I’ve drawn up a checklist based on your suggestions. Scroll down to see it. It’s organised preposition by preposition, assuming you’ll be mentally translating from English into Italian.. P.S. This is not in […]
Wanted! Your help with Italian prepositions
OK, I admit it. I’ve never really gotten the hang of prepositions in Italian. It’s not so much that the prepositions themselves are hard to remember. For the most part, they’re straightforward. It’s the differences in use between my language (English) and Italian which always trip me up. Like a lot of foreigners, I’m prone […]