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 in the Italian peninsula. Wikpedia has some nice pictures of the mosaics, if you like that sort of thing. There’s a Dante connection too, for literary types.
After living in the area for over twenty years, I guess I’d better go visit sometime…
Episode 2 of our series can be found on our History page, along with the previous one, if you haven’t begun yet. Scroll down to the end of the Romans.
Or click this link to go right to it: https://onlineitalianclub.com/il-medioevo-episodio-02-teodorico-e-gli-ostrogoti-fine-v-inizio-vi-secolo/
As I mentioned on Monday, this is free reading/listening practice, which is worth doing EVEN IF YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND EVERYTHING, OR MUCH.
Practice reading and listening is valuable, and if you do enough of it (there are 28 more episodes to come) you will improve.
Just hit the Soundcloud ‘play’ button and follow along in the text with your finger. No need to stop and look things up, just try to get to the end.
If you understood the general gist of what you heard and read, or even one or two snippets, then that’s an awful lot better than no practice at all. And it’s free, so what have you got to lose?
Così. Episode 3 will be along on Friday. You can see what’s next from the index on the History page.
N.b. I’m encouraging comments on these pages, trying to get a bit of a conversation going, create a collegial atmosphere appropriate to a ‘club’ of disparate people from around the world whose only shared interest is learning Italian.
Feel free to say ‘ciao’ (your email address is required but won’t be published), and/or ask a question, and/or share your notes, and/or scratch your head in writing about such Byzantine goings on.
A venerdì, allora.
Susan says
Absolutely brilliant site and resources!
At last … this is just what I have been looking for,
Thank you so much.