Descriptive words in Italian

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We’re coving the 10 most important things to know to get by in Italian. First, we looked at Italian greetings, at the common courtesies, and asking questions. Last week, we looked at things you will need, numbers, and directions. And this week we started with some basic Italian verbs. Today, we’ll look at some descriptive words.

8. Descriptive words

The descriptive nature of adjectives, and their superlative forms the comaratives, makes them the necessary ingredient for expressing opinions, feelings, and sensations. These are the words that describe how you feel as well as how you feel about something.

più
more
meno
less
buono
good/well
malo
badly
bello
good/nice
cattivo
bad
migliore
better
peggiore
worse
carino
pretty
brutto
ugly
caldo
warm
freddo
cold
grosso
large
piccolo
small
alto
high
basso
low
lungo
long
corto
short
un po’
a bit

That’s probably all you need to learn, for survival in another country.

Notes

The first thing I’m noticing, now that I’ve actually started going through the work of spelling these out, is that this really could be #3 or #4, rather than waiting until #8. A person could literally just point at something and say bella (nice), or grossa (big), and the meaning would be immediately clear without any other sentence structure around it. Also, some of these words would make good general-use answers to basic questions like come sta? (how are you?)

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  • ielanguages

    One little typo: freddo

  • http://www.fluenteveryyear.com/ Randy (@Yearlyglot)

    Thanks! I guess if I would stop writing all this stuff from memory, I might stop having all the typos. But then again, given that it's from memory, I'm pleased that the number of typos isn't much more! :)

  • Benjameno

    Bisogna raddoppiare anche la 't' in 'brutto'!

  • Dominick

    Bisogna anche sapere ordinare dell'acqua “non gassosa”, un consiglio importante per la sopravvivenza.

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