No time to read this? Why not find something to study instead? A1 – Beginner/Elementary | A2 – Pre-Intermediate | B1 – Intermediate | B2 – Upper-Intermediate | C1 – Advanced | C2 – Proficiency | What’s my level? | Italian level test

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Buondì.

Over the past week or so I’ve been tidying up the club website, OnlineItalianClub.com, specifically the grammar exercises, of which there are more than four hundred, the idea being to remove some old advertising code, delete the contents of the page footer – which contained an invalid email address – and so on. Call it very belated spring-cleaning.

I downloaded the web pages, made the corrections, uploaded everything to the server again, and thought no more about it. Until…

Someone emailed to say the accented characters were all missing.

Oops! How did that happen?

Turns out that our pages were written in ANSI, which is a ‘character set’, the purpose of which being that web browsers and other applications know to display, for instance, an accented ‘e’ rather than a normal ‘e’.

Italian has, what, three different ‘e’s? And accents on the other vowels, too. So that’s important.

But the world moved on, leaving ANSI and me behind. The new default ‘character set’ is called UTF-8, apparently, which shouldn’t be a problem necessarily, except that the software I used to modify our webpages assumed they were written in UTF-8, even if they weren’t, so when I came to save my changes, BOOM, DISASTER, all the accented characters disappeared.

To cut a long story short, I spent the weekend fixing everything. The Italian Grammar exercises now hopefully have the necessary accented characters, many thanks to my son Tom (voice of EasyItalianNews.com), who’s studying ‘informatica’ at university so knows how to use Python (not a snake, apparently) to automate making the necessary changes to the encoding of the 400+ .html pages and updating ANSI to UTF-8, for your delight.

Anyway, apologies for the mess up. Do take a look at the Italian Grammar exercises, and do please let me know if you spot anything that still needs fixing. I’m sure there’s plenty.

Alla prossima settimana!

Already used the 33% ebook coupon code? If not, here’s how

Did you know that you can get a 33% coupon code to use on language-learning ebooks purchased from EasyReaders.org?

All you have to do is join their mailing list (for example here: https://easyreaders.org/mailing-list/.)

Students of Italian, Spanish, French, and German who get on the mailing list should be sent the coupon code.

N.b. This promotion is one-use-per-person, so if you’ve already discounted an ebook order with the 33% coupon code, sorry (but there’ll be a 25% Sale promotion soon, in January 2026…)

All that said, looking at the stats for this coupon code, there are many thousands of addresses on the ebooks mailing list but over the years only nine hundred and eighteen people have used the coupon code to save 33% on their ebook purchases.

So I thought I’d send a reminder: join the mailing list here if you’re not already on it.

What’s that you say?? You’re on the ebooks store mailing list, but you don’t remember having been sent or using the coupon code??

Oops.

They’ve had a few changes to their bulk mailing systems over the years – due to privacy legislation and so on – so it is possible that your email address was added to their mailing list without any coupon code being sent out. For instance when downloading a free ebook.

Never mind, let’s fix that right now!

Use the following coupon code to save 33% on your order, with no minimum or maximum spend (but only if you haven’t already done so in the past):

mailing-list-33%-coupon-code

First make your selection from their range of ebooks, which have been especially written to keep you interested and so making progress.

Then go to your shopping cart and carefully paste in the coupon code (it’s mailing-list-33%-coupon-code ), press the ‘Apply coupon’ button and then…

scroll down to verify that the cart total has been reduced BEFORE proceeding with your payment!

Ebooks for students of Italian, Spanish, French, and German can be found on the Catalog page, where everything is organised by language, type, and level.

Browse the Catalog now: Italian | Spanish | French | German

P.S.

And here’s a reminder to read/listen to Tuesday’s bulletin of news from EasyItalianNews.com.

Reading/listening practice will help you consolidate the Italian you’re studying, expand your vocabulary, and build vital comprehension skills.

EasyItalianNews.com is FREE to read/listen to.

Subscribing, and so receiving all three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news via email each week -on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays – is also FREE.

Just enter your email address on this page and click the confirmation link that will be sent to you.

+++

OnlineItalianClub.com | EasyItalianNews.com | Shop (ebooks) | Shop (online lessons)

OnlineFrenchClub.com | OnlineSpanishClub.com | OnlineGermanClub.com

No time to read this? Why not find something to study instead? A1 – Beginner/Elementary | A2 – Pre-Intermediate | B1 – Intermediate | B2 – Upper-Intermediate | C1 – Advanced | C2 – Proficiency | What’s my level? | Italian level test

+++

Buondì.

Many years ago my cardiologist told me to exercise every day, but absolutely not climbing mountains, running, or lifting weights in the ‘palestra’ (gym). Walking would be fine, but on the flat rather than up and down hills.

No problem, I thought. It’s all flat on the northern edge of Bologna, where I live. Only well-off or rich Bolognesi live near or in the hills on the southern side of the city, which is cooler in the summer, with fewer ‘zanzare’.

It took me a couple of years to get started with the cardiologist-prescribed minimum thirty-minute walk most days, but I did get into the rhythm of it in the end, and kept it up for a number of years, until…

Have you noticed that it’s way easier to get into BAD habits, for instance snacking and drinking beer at ‘aperitivo’ time (there wasn’t much else to do during the pandemic lockdowns), than it is to develop and maintain GOOD habits?

I expect you have. The number of people I know who used to be ‘gym bunnies’, keen joggers, faithful members of the neighbourhood ladies’ exercise group, and so on, until, one day, life got in the way.

Four and a half years ago, Stefi and I started hosting what – for purposes of privacy and discretion in this public domain – I describe as rescue animals. Pups, cubs, kittens and so on, often newborns, and needing temporary parents until a permanent home can be found.

There was a nameless male for five months or so, then Roomie (who I wrote about here often), then, not long after she was released back into the wild, newborn Bug, who’s been with us for over two years now.

All of them needed taxiing to the other (richer, cooler, few zanzare, but less flat) side of the city each weekday morning, and picking up again when the petting zoo closed in the evening.

Suddenly my nights were hell and my working days hours shorter than previously. Walking for thirty minutes a day was no longer high on the list of must-dos. There goes another good habit.

Reflecting on this recently, it occurred to me that, while I am unable to prioritise exercise from Monday to Friday when there’s work to be done, I have no difficulty taking Bug out in his stroller on Saturdays and Sundays, sometimes for hours, somedays both morning and afternoon, to give Stefi time to load the washing machine and knitflix a little.

Bug and I like parks. He likes running around, barking at and jumping on other animals, breaking things, and generally exploring. I like the fresh air, and chatting to other pet carers. Exercise is involved, certainly, but it’s peripheral, rather than being the main point.

The other day Bug and I walked to a distant supermarket, singing as we marched, and looking at earth-moving equipment (we live near one of Bologna’s two new tram lines in construction). We’re learning colors by looking at diggers: here’s a red one, now a white one, over there a yellow one! There are no blue, brown or black ‘escavatori, it seems. Perhaps that’s for safety reasons.

Hypothesis: exercising for the sake of it, or to cultivate a beach body, or because the cardiologist or your wife told you to, is logical, praiseworthy, but over the medium- to long- term, hard to be bothered with.

Whereas exercising when exercising is not really the point seems, ironically, to be much easier. When Bug and I are out ‘in giro’ (= going around, running errands, doing our stuff, so not home right now) we often meet the father of one of my daughter’s friends, a fit-looking pensioner being dragged along by Mara, his energetic young dog (an actual dog).

Mara pauses briefly to peer into Bug’s stroller and lick his face. Both dog and pensioner invariably look happy, whatever the weather. Sometimes we’ll bump into them multiple times over a weekend.

Get out of the house, spend time ‘in giro’, so moving around, doing things, meeting people, visiting the local shops to look for bargains. THAT sort of ‘exercise’ isn’t hard to do at all, though still harder on weekdays when the computer keyboard calls…

What’s the point of learning a foreign language, ‘invece’ (= conversely, on the other hand)?

People tell me all the time that they’re hoping to stave off dementia, that studies have shown that… and so on.

And/or that they were told as a child that they were useless at foreign languages, have lived with the humiliation for half a century, and have now decided to give it another shot!

And/or to ‘get citizenship and retire to Italy’. Live the dream!

Italians are proud of their country, its beauty and history, the food, the quality of life, and so on. But retire here? Pay taxes here? Compete for heathcare (in a foreign language) with twenty million other sharp-elbowed crinklies?

‘Ma scherzi?’ (= Are you kidding?)

Aspirational goals, long term goals, like good exercise habits, are hard to maintain. Whereas…

“My friend wanted me to come with her to an Italian class, so I did, and then we just kept going…”

Now that’s more like it!

If you REALLY have to bother learning to conjugate irregular verbs in multiple tenses and moods, not to mention gender, plurals, prepositions, and other Romance language tomfoolery, it really helps to be just doing it for a laugh with your mates, just to get away from the TV for a bit and out of the house.

Exercise is easier if there’s an immediate point to it (remove the howling cub from the irate wife, walk to the shop to buy beer – lots of it.)

A foreign language is basically a tool for socialisation and communication. A tool shared by a group of people, a group of people that those who don’t know the language are not and cannot be part of.

Arguably, if you’re learning Italian but have no one to talk Italian with, or worse, no interest in talking Italian at all, then you might as well spend your time on crosswords or sudokus. They’ll keep dementia at bay just as well.

No one to talk Italian to? Well, at least find something in Italian that you actually like to watch, listen to, or read – radio, TV series, newspapers, books, whatever. If authentic materials are too hard, still, start with the baby stuff (there’s a 33% promo below.)

Better still, make some Italian friends, or buy some, which is what I do for my Swedish: NativeSpeakerTeachers.com (online teachers), madrelinguaitalian.com (our school in Bologna).

One of the easiest and most satisfying foreign language-learning experiences I ever had was three years spent in bars and with local friends in Ankara, capital of what was then called Turkey. Foolishly, I married one of them (a girl, not a bar), a few years later we divorced, and that was the end of that. But for a few years becoming fluent in Turkish was a happy result, if not precisely the point.

Why bother learning Italian?

There are lots of reasons, but the ones that give immediate satisfaction are the most likely to help you keep at it.

Find something that makes you happy and do that. Personally, I like reading, listening to the news, and chatting to other pet-carers in public parks. But find your own way!

Alla prossima settimana.

Already used the 33% ebook coupon code? If not, here’s how

Did you know that you can get a 33% coupon code to use on language-learning ebooks purchased from EasyReaders.org?

All you have to do is join their mailing list (for example here: https://easyreaders.org/mailing-list/.)

Students of Italian, Spanish, French, and German who get on the mailing list should be sent the coupon code.

N.b. This promotion is one-use-per-person, so if you’ve already discounted an ebook order with the 33% coupon code, sorry (but there’ll be a 25% Sale promotion soon, in January 2026…)

All that said, looking at the stats for this coupon code, there are many thousands of addresses on the ebooks mailing list but over the years only nine hundred and eighteen people have used the coupon code to save 33% on their ebook purchases.

So I thought I’d send a reminder: join the mailing list here if you’re not already on it.

What’s that you say?? You’re on the ebooks store mailing list, but you don’t remember having been sent or using the coupon code??

Oops.

They’ve had a few changes to their bulk mailing systems over the years – due to privacy legislation and so on – so it is possible that your email address was added to their mailing list without any coupon code being sent out. For instance when downloading a free ebook.

Never mind, let’s fix that right now!

Use the following coupon code to save 33% on your order, with no minimum or maximum spend (but only if you haven’t already done so in the past):

mailing-list-33%-coupon-code

First make your selection from their range of ebooks, which have been especially written to keep you interested and so making progress.

Then go to your shopping cart and carefully paste in the coupon code (it’s mailing-list-33%-coupon-code ), press the ‘Apply coupon’ button and then…

scroll down to verify that the cart total has been reduced BEFORE proceeding with your payment!

Ebooks for students of Italian, Spanish, French, and German can be found on the Catalog page, where everything is organised by language, type, and level.

Browse the Catalog now: Italian | Spanish | French | German

P.S.

And as usual on a Wednesday I’ll remind you to read/listen to Tuesday’s FREE bulletin of news from EasyItalianNews.com.

Reading/listening practice will help you consolidate the Italian you’re studying, expand your vocabulary, and build vital comprehension skills.

EasyItalianNews.com is FREE to read/listen to.

Subscribing, and so receiving all three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news via email each week – on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays – is also FREE.

Just enter your email address on this page and click the confirmation link that will be sent to you.

+++

OnlineItalianClub.com | EasyItalianNews.com | Shop (ebooks) | Shop (online lessons)

OnlineFrenchClub.com | OnlineSpanishClub.com | OnlineGermanClub.com