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Buondì.
(This part is boilerplate promotion stuff, which I send out before every offer. If you’ve read it before – perhaps several times – scroll down to ‘What I’m reading/watching this week’.)
Next week, from Monday April 6th to Sunday April 12th, NativeSpeakerTeachers.com, which offers one-to-one online Italian, French, Spanish and German lessons, will be having its 2026 Spring Sale.
I’ll be emailing multiple times to publicise their coupon code, which – if you apply it in your NativeSpeakerTeachers.com shopping cart – will save you 20% on your order total.
Practice with native speakers is an essential part of learning a language. So if you’re not already doing regular, one-to-one Italian/French/Spanish/German lessons (which can be conversation, grammar, whatever you want), why not take this opportunity to give it a try? And save a fifth on the regular price!
NativeSpeakerTeachers.com does promotions like this four times a year, in the spring, during the first week of July, in September, and at New Year. The discount is always 20%, which means anyone who plans when to purchase the lesson credits they need to continue taking regular online lessons throughout the year, will never pay the full price!
But what about those club members who are only here for the free stuff (which is fine), or who are no longer interested?
Two options:
1.) Any ‘bulk’ email, so like this one, will have an ‘unsubscribe’ link at the bottom. Clicking it will permanently remove your email address from the club mailing list. No longer interested? Prefer not to hear about next week’s promotion? Go ahead and use the ‘unsubscribe’ link (scroll right down to the end of this to find it.)
Really! You’ll be doing us a favour, as well as reducing the number of unwanted emails in the world. Having a large list costs us a monthly fee, which is money that’s wasted if we’re not a good match!
2.) Less drastically, just stop reading emails from the club until the sale ends, after which things will go back to normal, with just one regular email a week, on Wednesdays.
Alla prossima settimana!
What I’m reading/watching this week
Last week in this section of the Wednesday email, I mentioned that I was reading ‘Io, Claudio’ by Robert Graves. In Italian, as I got the ebook free from the Bologna public library service.
Careful: ‘libreria’ in italiano = ‘bookshop’ and ‘bookcase’/’bookshelf’ in English. The word for a place you can borrow books from, or just sit in peace and read them, is ‘biblioteca’. Library doesn’t equal ‘libreria’, nor does ‘libreria’ mean ‘library.
For foreign language newbies these two confusing words are known as ‘false friends’, cioè words which seem like they’ll mean the same as words in another language but, in fact, don’t. See, for instance, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:False_friends_between_English_and_Italian
Anyway, the library app allows just fourteen days to complete a downloaded ebook, which may or may not be available to renew after that period expires. Best not to rely on it.
Fourteen days isn’t long to read a four-hundred page historical novel in a foreign language, even a language you’re familiar with. But I managed it, with just a few hours to spare!
The story ended at an intiguing point. So, of course, I had to go looking for the sequel, ‘Io divo Claudio’ (English title ‘Claudius the God’). Another four-hundred-plus pages, deadline to finish them April 12th!
But now that I’m familiar with Graves’ style (and the way the translator rendered it into Italian), I’m confident. Funny how this happens, both with reading and listening/watching – once you’re familiar with a certain set of characters, and how they express themselves, it gets a lot easier! For this reason, I recommend TV series for language learning, rather than, say, movies.
Talking of movies, what have we been watching? As usual, endless hours of Bug’s Youtube kiddie crap (though it does marvels for his languages – mostly Italian, but also lots of English), plus a Netflix movie, ‘Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man’, which we spread over three separate weekend evenings as we were too knackered (= ‘distrutti’ in italiano) to watch it all the way through in one sitting.
E così. Buona Pasqua (= Happy Easter), by the way. Friday isn’t a holiday in Italy so our Italian school will be open as usual. We’re off to Rimini (in-laws, aunties and uncles, cousins etc.) on Saturday, big family lunch on Sunday, and back to Bo on Monday, which is, thankfully, a public holiday.
P.S.
And here’s the usual reminder to read/listen to yesterday’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.
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No longer interested?
All bulk emails we send (including this one) contain an unsubscribe link, usually at the bottom. Scroll down to find it, click the link and select ‘unsubscribe’. That will permanently remove your email address from our ebooks mailing list.
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