Today’s free Italian gammar exercise is on the passive and related forms.
If you haven’t studied the passive before, you’ll find notes to help you here and here.
By related forms, I mean the impersonal ‘Si’ which is covered here and here, and the variation of the passive with ‘venire’. We don’t seem to have an explanation of that one anywhere on our site, but this listening exercise has lots of examples to give you the idea.
So, now you’re suitably prepared, try today’s new exercise: Italian passive form.
P.S.
Thanks to everyone who supported us with their purchase of our latest Italian easy reader ‘Cena con delitto‘!
You’ll have heard me bang on before about how easy readers are such an excellent way to boost your knowledge of a language.
If nothing else, it’s how I learnt Italian myself – by reading simplified books and listening to the tape or CD that came with them (which tells you how long ago that was!)
While writing this article, I was trying to remember the very first one I bought: it was Rose rosse per il commissario. Click the title to take a look at it (but don’t be disappointed when you can’t buy a copy – as Cideb is an Italian publisher, their online shop is currently closed for the summer holiday!)
Reading ‘Rose rosse’ and listening to the audio gave me some confidence that I would eventually be able to understand Italian, which helped me to find the motivation to continue with the language at a time when I’d just arrived in Italy, without a job and with a pregnant Italian wife…
I bought and studied the other few readers that were available in our local bookshop, but when I’d exhausted those there was no option but to start on ‘real’ books.
The first novel I bought was one of those cheap translations with garish covers you see at news stands. The title was ‘La palude dell’odio‘. I remember asking my wife what ‘palude’ and ‘odio’ were… (‘swamp’ and ‘hate’).
Our eldest daughter is sixteen now, and the world has moved on somewhat.
Traditional book publishers are not much better than they were back in 1998 when I was a beginner in Italian, but the Internet has enabled other possibilities, so there’s no longer the necessity of relying on your local bookshop for easy readers, or being forced to move immediately onto full length novels as I was.
Instead, any time you want, you can simply download a .pdf file to save on your computer (or print out if you prefer).
Then, once you have the text, you can listen to the stories online whenever and as often as you wish!
Which brings me to the point…
In the last year or so we’ve had masses of fun publishing NINETEEN Italian easy readers, all of which are available for download from our shop (despite it being the summer holidays…)
However, the shop is a bit of a mess, so unless you know what to look for, there’s every chance that you might miss out on some ‘gems’.
Therefore, when we’re not busy publishing something new, like this week, I thought we’d have a ‘book of the day’ feature, to highlight some of the material you may have missed but would probably enjoy and learn a lot from.
Naturally, the day’s selection will be on offer for 24-48 hours, so you get to try ‘my way’ of learning Italian at an unmissable price!
The first ‘Book of the Day’ is below…
Save -50% on our Book of the Day!
The third Italian easy reader we published was written by my wife, Stefania.
So, naturally, it’s a romance, though also very professionally written!
‘Il campo di papaveri‘ tells the story of a struggling young artist who falls in love with a rich man’s daughter and…
The level is A2-B1, that is to say pre-intermediate/intermediate (ignore the cover which shows A1-B1 – that’s an error…)
You can see if it’s suitable for your current level in Italian by downloading the free sample chapter (right click and choose ‘save linked content as’ to save a copy on your computer.)
For the next 24-48 or so (depends on the time zone you’re in) ‘Il campo di papaveri‘ is on offer at HALF PRICE.
That’s just €4.99, instead of the usual easy reader price of €9.99!