Buondì.
I’m early today, as we’re spending a couple of days in Edinburgh.
That is to say Edinburgh, Scotland, not the similarly-named city of Edinburg in Texas (just in case you’re a little behind on your reading.)
Anyway, it seems to get light really early around here!
And, as my Italian wife complained, the guest house doesn’t have SHUTTERS!
Italians and their shutters…
They don’t seem to be able to sleep without them.
But the problem is not just getting enough hours of shuteye.
As any Italian will tell you, if they spot you daring to sleep with your shutters open, not closing them tightly is asking for trouble.
Fresh air?
Don’t risk it, amico!
Open shutters are an INVITATION for nefarious people from the east to pump gas into your bedroom while you slumber.
The gas enables the criminals to enter undisturbed, and so steal your wife’s jewellery and whatever stash of untaxed cash earnings you happen to be keeping around the place.
You wouldn’t want that to happen, now.
What?
British/American/Australian houses don’t have shutters???
But how to you sleep soundly?
What’s to stop the light coming in??
Aren’t you worried about being robbed?
—
I’m sure you’ve already noticed that people are different, both culturally and linguistically.
For instance (changing the subject somewhat), when delivering a homily to my three teenagers, I’ll often begin with the phrase:
“When I was young…”
As in, “When I was young there was no lying around on your bed all day staring at Netflix on a tablet!”
An Italian father would put this differently:
“When I was small…”
Young/Small, different words.
But they have the same meaning, at least here.
There are thousands of these little differences, just waiting to trip you up!
Here’s another:
“What do you want to do when you grow up?” would be “Cosa vuoi fare da grande?” in Italian.
Personally, when I was “small” I wanted to be a pilot, like Tom Cruise in Top Gun.
(The link, by the way, is to the film’s memorable opening scene – definitely worth a look, if you’ve three minutes to spare and want to put off doing something useful…)
And now I’m “big”, am I sitting in the cockpit of a fast jet on the deck of an aircraft carrier, like Tom in the clip above, waiting to be ‘scrambled’?
Sadly not.
Though I am sitting in my shorts in a Scottish guesthouse bedroom, heroically blogging about language learning.
So, today’s free listening is entitled ‘Quando ero piccola’.
If focuses on the use of the ‘imperfetto’, which is level A2, the second out of six.
If you haven’t done this grammar yet, or just want to revise, check out the ‘lesson’ under ‘I’ for ‘Imperfetto’ in the alphabetical grammar index on the club website.
Buono studio!
P.S.
Thanks to everyone who, over the last week or so, supported the club with your purchases of half-price Italian/English parallel texts!
The offer is now ended.
But you’ll find plenty of original materials for learning Italian, and other languages, in our online shop.
A mercoledì.