In a word, variety. Any one thing, done repeatedly for long enough, is likely to get tedious. And if you’re not interested any more, or not as interested as you were, your motivation will start to flag. What’s more, if you’re going to learn Italian to a good level, you’ll need to think medium-long term. […]
Great-grandma’s piadina receipe (and Italian listening practice!)
When I see my Romagnoli in-laws they’ll often proudly present me with plastic bag of frozen piadine and crescioni, a traditional local food made for them by the widow who lives downstairs. Don’t know what my father-in-law does for her, but she’s certainly very grateful. As am I. Piadine and Crescioni are not the sort […]
Three for the price of two
No, I’m not talking about the -30% offer on e-books in our shop (not this time, at least.) But about this useful exercise on compound words in Italian. ‘asciugare’ (to dry) + ‘mano’ (hand) = l’asciugamano (towel) See? Three words for the price of two!
Perfect your Italian prepositions
For those of you in the USA, Happy Thanksgiving! (For those of you in Australia, G’day!) May I suggest we give thanks that we’re not pupils at an Italian elementary school? Why? ‘Cos the poor kids get regularly blasted with Italian grammar, that’s why. I didn’t know what a preposition was until (shortly after) I became […]
Easy Italian verbs, harder Italian expressions
Venire, andare, fare, prendere, parlare… To come, to go, to do, to take, to speak. Takes me back a bit, to circa 1997, when I’d fallen in love with an Italian girl and started out memorizing verbs, shuffling flash cards on my London bus ride home from work each evening. And dreaming of a new […]
“Sex change” words in Italian
That got your attention, didn’t it? But seriously, check out these “gender-bender” Italian words, which can be both masculine and feminine, but with different meanings. Reading through the list, I realise how many of these I regularly get wrong myself. Sometimes then ending is different, which helps: il collo (neck) but la colla (glue) Other times, […]
Mica difficult
If you’re reading this article, you’re probably on the OnlineItalianClub.com mailing list, or someone you know is. You may also be a member of our club, though the two things are not the same. (It’s possible to sign up to receive articles from me by e-mail, but not join our club, and vice versa). It’s […]
Help me out, here
Ragazzi! There’s a project I’ve had in my head for ages now. I even hired someone to take it forward, but sadly, she quit. So, now it’s just us. Anyway, I’ve been working on this a bit in my free time of late and I’ve made enough progress to know that this is not going […]
Ciao from an airport hotel
It’s grey and windy outside my airport hotel window, which incidentally overlooks a carpark and is alongside a motorway (freeway, interstate?) My flight’s not until tomorrow morning, and the restaurant doesn’t open for another hour. So time for a quick post on how to learn Italian with music! If you don’t listen to Italian pop […]
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 […]