Archive for the ‘Italian’ Category
Feb
Feb
Easily understanding Italian articles
What are articles? I’m not talking about the things you read in a newspaper or a magazine, I’m talking about those little words that are attached to every noun you use: “a/an”, and “the”. Articles serve the purpose of distinguish a general noun (one of possibly many) from a specific noun. They tell the difference between “a ball” and “the ball”.
Feb
Feb
Describing possession in Italian
Now that we understand noun gender and articles, the next thing to explore is possession, and the adjectives used to describe it. Fortunately, in Italian, possession is only described by way of possessive adjectives (similar to English). Unlike languages with noun declension (eg, German, Russian, Polish), I don’t have to worry about learning genetive cases and endings. Your mileage may vary.
Feb
Feb
Learn Italian vocabulary from Andrea Bocelli!
A few days ago, we discovered a way to use music to learn a new language. Today, we’re going to try it out first-hand, by examining an Italian song by Andrea Bocelli.
Feb
Feb
Fun ways to remember numbers
It’s so common for people to learn counting to ten when they start learning a new language, but as I’ve already discussed, this type of learning by memorization is actually bad.
Mar
Mar
Updated goals for Italian
When I started this blog, I made a point that it is important it is to have clearly defined goals by which to measure success, and then I laid out some goals for this year. As it turns out, I think those goals were a bit too easy.
Mar
Mar
Find vocabulary inspiration at a restaurant
Here in the United States, clever marketing people have learned to attach foreign words to products in order to make them sound more appealing, to the point where we imagine grand meanings in each of these names. But in reality, these foreign words are often nothing more than boring kitchen terms.
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
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
How much Italian can you learn in one month?
Okay, so what if you still don’t think it’s possible to be fluent in a new language in one year? Or, maybe you believe it’s possible, but just not possible for you. Or, maybe a year sounds fine, but you think anyone who claims to do it in two months is a pure genious… or just crazy. Right?
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.