Italian Learning Tips

Why do women read more novels than men?  Francesco Alberoni, a great contemporary sociologist and psycologist, wrote an interesting article in the newspaper Il Corriere della Sera about this  phenomenon
Se una sera andate a cena da degli amici e portate come regalo un romanzo spesso il padrone di casa vi dirà: «Grazie, mia moglie ne [...]

 

 Standard Podcast [2:54m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We have already spoken about the improper prepostions with adverbs. Now we see adjectives and participles which have this peculiarity.
Italian adjectives that can be used as prepositions are: vicino, lontano, salvo, lungo, secondo ecc.
I can say:
Questa strada è molto lunga and in this case lunga is an adjective, but I can also say
lungo il [...]

In addition to the proper prepositions (di, a, da, in, con, su, per, tra, fra) we use in Italian other words which have the same function of a preposition but they can be adverbs, adjectives or participles. Therefore these words are named improper prepositions.
Now we see some adverbs that have this peculiarity.
Share This

Tags: preposition, verb

The present gerund is formed from the infinitive of the verb and its endings are:
- are > - ando [...]

The present and past gerund are invariable verbal forms (it means that are verb forms not related to time) and are used in the dependent clauses.
The meanings of the gerund forms are the following:
Share This

Tags: verb

We can use the Italian “si” in many cases:

as adverb of italin assertions, example:
“hai comprato il giornale di oggi?” - “Sì!”
as reflexive pronuon third person singular and plural, example:
il Sig. Rossi si alza presto la mattina;
i Signori Bianchi si addormentano sempre molto tardi la sera.
Share This

Tags: verb

The present conditional forms of verbs in -are and in -ere have the same ending:
-erei, -eresti, -erebbe; eremmo, -ereste, -erebbero
For verbs in -ire:
-irei, -iresti, - irebbe, -iremmo, -ireste, -irebbero.
The present Conditional is used in Italian for:

expressing a wish, example:
Mi piacerebbe andare la cinema oggi.
giving advice, example:
Se fossi in te prenderei il treno [...]

This kind of passive is formed with si + 3th person singular or plural of the verb. In this case the sentence has a general meaning (everybody, people etc.)
Share This

Tags: verb

I have already  spoken about the passive form with the verb essere, now I’d like to explain the passive voice with the verb venire + the past paticiple.
A characteristic: this kind of passive can be used only with simple tenses (like present, imperfect, historical past, future tense) and NOT with compound tenses (example: present [...]

In Italian we can express the passive voice in four different ways:

with the verb essere + past participle
with the verb venire + past participle
with si + 3th person singular or plural of the verb
with andare + past participle

Today, I’ll try to explain you the first case: the use of the passive with the verb essere [...]