I love chocolate. Yesterday, my boyfriend gave me a dark chocolate bar. Let’s say he knows the ways to my heart. Later he pretended to have stolen it and to have given it to the poor. He said, “Un bambino … Continue reading
I was studying Italian one morning, reviewing the notes I had taken from an Italian textbook written in the 1940s. The English translations of the Italian sentences sounded so quaint and old-fashioned. For example: “Good heavens! Whatever should I be … Continue reading
Italians have some funny ways of saying that something is impossible. One way is to say that the impossible task is like trying to asciugare i scogli, or “dry the cliffs”. This expression sure gets it right in the “impossible” … Continue reading
I saw this ad for an effervescent antacid in the supermarket and did a huge double take. The text at the bottom, La cena ti è rimasta sullo stomaco? is asking if your dinner (cena) has given you indigestion. I … Continue reading
Out of nowhere, when we were stopped at a red light, someone (who shall remain unnamed) reached over and grabbed my inner thigh and yelled enthusiastically “Morso del ciuccio!” Lower those eyebrows, dear readers. It was all in good, clean … Continue reading
I heard that on an Italian TV show, a little girl asked her grandfather to get up off a bench, saying to him, “Standupati!” What?!? That’s a regular imperative form of an Italian verb ending in -are terrifyingly impressively tacked … Continue reading
A friend in Perugia once tried to demonstrate the difference in pronunciation between the two Italian words pesca and pesca. Yes, they are spelled the same. The first one means ‘peach’ and the other ‘fishing.’ He repeated them a few … Continue reading
I chuckled to myself one day when I saw an Italian friend for the first time after returning from a trip to the States. I told him I was tired and he asked me if I was still recovering from … Continue reading
I like learning idioms and figures of speech in Italian. They’re important to know in order to speak more naturally and native-like. Think about how different ‘I am going to bed’ sounds from casually announcing, ‘I’m gonna hit the hay.’ … Continue reading
Walking home together from a group picnic, an Italian friend of mine asked me if I ever wore earrings because he had noticed my unadorned pierced ears. I asked him the same question, seeing a mark on his left earlobe, … Continue reading
