Buondì. It’s a common assumption amongst inexperienced language learners that a word that exists in their native tongue will have an equivalent in the language they are learning, so facilitating direct translation from one to another. Alas, that’s not always so. For instance, in today’s new episode of our FREE 30-part series on the Middle […]
Ever fancied being pope?
Buondì. The tenth episode in our free Summer Series (of thirty in total) is now ready for you to read and listen to. And if you’ve ever fancied being pope (‘papa’ in Italian), you should definitely take a look before emailing off your application form – today’s episode touches on some of the challenges of […]
How to find the conversation, if there is one
Buondì. Another short one today, in fact, just long enough to link to Episodio 09, Carlo Magno e i Franchi in Italia (VIII secolo) and to remind you that previous episodes in our FREE 30-part Summer Series of articles with audio are available on the History page over at the club website. My thanks, by […]
Catholic barbarians!
Buondì. A year or so, nearing the end of our free 30-part summer series on The Romans, so it would have been September 2020 probably, a Turkish club member who I’d got quite friendly with via email, became upset and flounced off, swearing never to darken our door again. My offence was that one of […]
Romans, Byzantines, Franks, Lombards? Che confusione!
Buondì. Episode 7 of our ‘Medievo’ series is ready for you to read/listen to: Il Medioevo, Episodio 07, Etnie, costumi e religioni. Gli abitanti della penisola nei secoli V, VI e VII It’s quite an interesting one, touching on how the invading tribes (Longobardi & Franchi) differed from each other, and from the existing Roman/Byzantine […]
Oops! Just skipped twelve Lombard kings!
Buondì. History is long, and potentially very confusing! Which is one of the reasons, perhaps the chief one, that I made every effort to avoid the Middle Ages while ‘reading’ the subject at a British university, thirty-five years back. While the themes of history – the conquest of power, the movement of peoples, developments in […]
Episode 5 of our FREE Summer Series on the Middle Ages
Buondì. Today we have Episode 5 of our FREE Summer Series on the Middle Ages. This one is rather long but, on the plus side, it’s about the colorful ‘Longobardi’ (Lombards), after which Lombardia, the Italian region where Milan is located, is named. The Longobardo leader was a bit of a type, apparently. He killed […]
A little art history (and can you spot the error??)
Buondì. Episode 4 of our Medioevo series is ready for you to read and listen to, and today we have a little art history: two famous Ravenna mosaics portraying Byzantine emperor Giustiniano (Italian spelling) and his wife Teodora. N.b. Our writer forgot to mention that the Teodora in the mosaic is the wife/Empress mentioned in […]
Welcome to the Byzantine Empire: plagues, famines and cannibalism!
Buondì. More from our summer series. Today’s third part is relatively short to read and listen to, but sure is packed with misery! Think a season of ‘Game of Thrones’, condensed into about a page… If you’ve fallen behind (already??), we’re in the first half of the sixth century and the Italian peninsula is independently […]
Part 2 of our free Medieval series of Italian texts with online audio
Buondì. Bologna, location of our Italian language school (which in these post-pandemic times would welcome a few more students…) isn’t such a long way from the historic city of Ravenna, famous for its mosaics. Ravenna features prominently in today’s second episode of our free series of Italian texts (with online audio) on the Medieval period […]