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by rebeccawinke | Wed, 04/14/2021 - 11:19

One of the pillars of daily Italian life can also be one of the most harrowing experiences for the uninitiated, a veritable minefield of potential cultural…

Language

Cool! Awesome! Enthusiastic Italian Slang

by rebeccawinke | Wed, 03/17/2021 - 01:47

I have two teenagers in my house, so I hear slang (in both English and Italian) a lot and I won’t lie: I can’t keep up with most of it. Slang is the spice of…

Language

How to Use Italian Accent Marks from Acute to Grave

by rebeccawinke | Thu, 03/04/2021 - 00:50

Just like the umlaut (those two dots over some vowels) in German and the tilde (the squiggly line over the letter n) in Spanish, Italian has a couple of letter…

Language

The End: Alla Fine, Finalmente, and Infine

by rebeccawinke | Thu, 02/18/2021 - 00:22

Usually, coming to the end of something is, if not sad, a bit bittersweet. But nothing has been usual about the past 12 months and I think we can all agree…

Language

The Language of Italian Politics: Words You Need to Know

by rebeccawinke | Thu, 02/04/2021 - 08:05

It’s Friday, so it must be time for a new government in Italy. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but Italy has had more than 60 changes of…

Language

Do You Know the Difference between Sapere (Know) and Conoscere (Know) in Italian?

by rebeccawinke | Thu, 01/21/2021 - 08:11

Years ago, when I was still reading aloud to my sons, we were deep into the Harry Potter books. After finishing the iconic chapter describing Harry’s first…

Language

An Interview with the Producers of Easy Italian

by james.appleton | Tue, 01/05/2021 - 04:04

Katie Harris and Matteo Alabisi are the smiling faces behind Easy Italian, a YouTube channel dedicated to giving viewers an authentic language-learning…

Language

Un Pensiero: Gift Giving (and Receiving) in Italian

by rebeccawinke | Thu, 12/10/2020 - 03:31

With December comes the most important month for gift exchanges on the Italian calendar, beginning with the Festa dell’Immacolata on December 8th - officially…

Language

Parecchio, Abbastanza, and Piuttosto: Three important quantifiers

by rebeccawinke | Thu, 11/26/2020 - 09:55

Once your language skills clear the initial hurdles of basic grammar rules and a vocabulary large enough to navigate daily life, it’s time to start working on…

Language

How Long Will It Take: Metterci and Volerci to Express Time

by rebeccawinke | Thu, 10/22/2020 - 04:22

Time may be relative, but 2020 has stretched, condensed, and emptied it of meaning like no other year. Months feel like years, days fly by in what seem like…