A classic false friend for Italians learning English (and vice versa) is ‘indicazioni’, which means ‘directions’ in Italian, but is often translated badly:
Excuse me. Could you give me indications for the railroad station, please?
If you got lost in Italy these days, you’d probably just pull out your smartphone and fire up Google Maps.
Problem solved.
But if you’d prefer a more traditional solution, then stop any passerby with a mustache and ‘chiedere indicazioni’.
I have a mustache, which must be why people are always approaching me to ask the way to Piazza Maggiore or wherever.
They’re always surprised when I reply in English!
Guess I must ‘look Italian’, which I’m taking as a compliment.
Anyway, today’s tidied up lesson from the vocabulary section of the club website is ‘Indicazioni / Directions‘.
And pretty disappointing it is too, at just a few lines of text.
I’m sure we could do better than that, and sooner or later will do, but there wasn’t time today.
So I added a link to one of our ‘Italian Conversations‘ on the same topic. These are dialogues with online audios and accompanying transcripts.
Given that the problem with asking directions is not so much the asking, but understanding the reply, you could do worse than practice your listening!
Buono studio, allora.
Start here | Vocabulary Section | ‘Indicazioni / Directions‘
P.S.
‘Mille grazie’ to everyone who bought a copy of our newest easy reader’2 giugno 1946‘ while it was on offer last week.
That promotion has now ended and I’ve sent out all the ebooks by email (within 24 hours, as promised on the website!)
What? Yours didn’t turn up?
Start by searching the spam and/or promotions folders in your email provider.
My emails with ebooks attached often seem to end up there, unnoticed.
Still no luck?
No problem. We’ll get it sorted.
Write to me and I’ll resend the email with the ebook attachment. If you have a second email address (Gmail and Hotmail are usually reliable) send me that, too.
A mercoledì.
2 giugno 1946 | Free sample chapter (.pdf) | Catalogue | Browse the shop