Posts Tagged ‘verbs’
Feb
Feb
Italian verb conjugation
Verb conja-what? Conjugation? Isn’t that what people do in prison? Conjugating a verb simply means applying the correct form of a verb to the subject of a sentence. It’s not difficult, but it’s one more way that English speakers can often be confused when learning a new language.
Mar
Mar
To be or not to be, in Italian
One particular phenomenon I often encounter in foreign languages is their unusual treatments of the verb “to be”. We tend to generalize things in English. But Spanish, for instance, differentiates between temporary states (like emotion or location) and permanent states (like a career, or a physical trait). Most language prefer “I have hunger” over our “I am hungry”. And at least one language I know of (Russian) actually omits the verb “to be” completely from the sentence!
Mar
Mar
To be or not to be, in Russian!
Today, that means continuing the discussion of “to be” into Russian. This is a very exciting topic for me, because learning Russian meant learning a completely new way to think. You see, the English language uses the verb “to be” for almost everything, but the Russian language almost doesn’t use it at all. In fact, the present tense of the verb “to be” is so unused that it completely disappeared from the language over a century ago!
Mar
Mar
To be or not to be, in Spanish
Continuing along my “to be” theme, today I am going to discuss the difference in Spanish between ser and estar, both verbs with mean “to be”. After yesterday’s extended discussion of the Russian way, today will be a piece of cake! In fact, in Spanish, the difference is even easier to remember than in Italian!
Mar
Mar
I was just about to…
As we covered yesterday, there are a few special cases in Italian where we use the verb stare. Today I just want to talk briefly about one of those cases.
Mar
Mar
What are you doing?
In English, we use the continuous tense a lot to describe action in the present tense that is occurring right now. Today we’re going to continue exploring the Italian forms of “to be” by learning to form the continuous tense.
Mar
Mar
What the heck is a reflexive verb?
While the concept of reflexive verbs is mostly unused in English, it is a vital concept in almost all other languages. If you dont understand it or have never heard of it before, then today is your lucky day because we’re going to quickly look at what reflexive verbs are.
Mar
Mar
Conjugating reflexive verbs in Italian
Yesterday, we took a moment to understand reflexive verbs, and various ways in which they might be used. Today, we’re going to figure out how to do that in Italian.
Mar
Mar
What's done is done: Il Passato Prossimo
Last week, I showed you just how much you can actually say in a foreign language after only one month of study. It’s actually quite a lot, but one of things that held me back the most as I was writing was my desire to use the past tense. So today, we’re going to learn how to talk about things that are in the past.
Mar
Mar
Il futuro semplice – The simple future tense of Italian
After one month, I found I was already able to say a lot in Italian, but I lamented that it was all in the present tense! Last week, we started to fix that by learning il passato prossimo, the most common way to form the past tense in Italian. Now, it’s probably time to learn how to use the future tense.