Fun Translating Italian Songs & Names

Verdi statue, Bussolo. Wikipedia.

 I thought I'd try a game to help learning Italian.

1 Translate some Italian song and opera names

2 Find some place names

3 Translate some family names

Songs and Operas

Operas

1 Opera 

La Bella Dormente Nel Bosco  The Sleeping Beauty In The Woods.

Il Medico E La Morte - The Doctor And Death (actually a jolly fantasy about a cobbler and a fairy)

 

La fiamma - the flame

A basso porto - at the lower harbour

2 Place Names

 Ponte vecchio in Florence means old bridge. The adjective comes second in Italian after the noun.

3 Family Names

 Giuseppe Verdi Verdi is green.

Italian - English

a - at

bella - beauty

bosco - woods

dormente - sleeping

e - and

fiamma - flame

il - the (masculine)

la - the (feminine)

medico - doctor

morte - death

nel - in the

ponte - bridge

porto - port/harbour

vecchio - old

verdi - green

English - Italian

a - a

and - e

beauty - bella

bridge - ponte

death - morte

doctor - medico

fame - fiamma

green - verdi

in the - nel

old - vecchio

port - porto

sleeping - dormente

the - la (feminine) il (masculine)

 woods - bosco

You can visit the house where Verdi lived.

Useful Websites

duolingo.com

wiki operas

Verdi museum

https://www.villaverdi.org/

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Tricks and Tips For Remembering Italian Words With Tricky Spellings

I have been looking at the mistakes I made in translating from English into Italian. I have devised some ways of remeembering the Italian spelling. 

Italian - English

alla modo - fashionable (like the French a la mode, used in the American word for with ice cream, a la mode, which when it was itnroduced was the latest fashion

attrice - actress (move the letter c to the end of the word before the e)

cinema - cinema (The Italian pronuncuation of the c is like ch. I think of I saw the person's chin in the chinema.)

guardava - he was looking (guards are looking. Add v as in very long ago, shows the past tense)

l'immagine - the picture (not imagination but imagine an image. How do you remember the double m?, But you have two eyes and in Italian, an Italian man or woman has two eyes so double the letter m)

libro- like library but o on the end for one book, compare with biblioteca, library, like the French word, and like the English word for biblliography which is a list of several books)

tomburo - drum (the word in Italian look like tambourine with a u in the middle but it has the vowel o twic like tomfacendo tom)

tre - three (like the word three, shortened)

facendo - doing (like facility, but continuous with no end)

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Italian words

Italian - English

cinema - cinema

danza - dance

dentista -dentist

galleria - gallery 

 poeta - poet

poesia - poetry (I think of poetry and prose to rmember to add the letter s to distinguish the word fro what is written from the person doing the writing)

Useful websites

duolingo.com

Italian words which are easy and difficult - easy quiz

On a hiking holiday to Spain I met a fellow hiker who was ordering food in Spanish. I asked him if he had learned Spanish in school. No, he had taught himself Spanish, every day for a year, ready for his holiday.

I was inspired by his success and dedication. I decided I would learn Italian for my next forseeable trip the following summer. 

I learned Italian on Duolingo. Each time I started a new set of exercises, I began to make two lists of words I learned on Duolingo, the easy ones, which is encouraging, and fun. Then the harder ones which I need to practise. 

You might like to test yourself, from your own list, or mine, or both. Make two columns of words in any language you are learning, a minimum of 5 to 15, a maximum of twenty to thirty.  

Then cover each column and test yourself. Keep repeating your self-administered quiz until you score full marks once, after some hesitation and thought. 

Then repeat another time or two until you get 100 per cent right. Instantly and effortlessly. 

At the end of the day, or week, or month, look back over the previous lists, or my posts. Duolingo will help you learn the grammar and sentence construction. My lists simply help you with the vocabulary for reading comprehension. 

Easy Words

Italian - English

classico - classic

fame - fama

familiare - familiar (adjective, not the noun family)

finendo - ending

fisica - Physics

foto - photo

immagini - pictures (like images)

muro - wall (like mural)

sezioni - sections

stile - style

studi - you study

video - video 

English - Italian

finding- trovando - like a treasure trove ando is an ing ending, going on AND on n END (other words end endo

sections - sezioni

wall - muro

Difficult words

Italian - English

mostra - exhibition (I thought it was a mosque wrong. more like a demonstration)

placo - stage (like a platform, or place to perform not

 a park)

English - Italian

exhibition - mostra (think mounting pictures)

pictures - immagini

Italian Words discovered

It is Sunday and tonight on Duolingo the top learners in the Leaderboard go up to the next level. So I am learning extra new words.

Italian - English

architetto - architect

architettura - architecture

Cinema (ponounced chin ay -ma) - cinema 

circo - circus

concerto - concert

classico  - classic

dentista - dentist

elefanti - elephants

galleria - gallery

gallerie - galleries (feminine plural ends in e)

idea - idea

locale - local

medicina - medicine

nuovo - new (like the English word novelty)

romantico - romantic

scena - scene

speciale - special

vestito - dress (as in the old-fashioned word vestment, still osed to describe the dress of Roman Catholic clergy)

voce - voice

English - Italian

architect - architetto

architecture - architettura

classic - classico

cinema - cinema

circus - circo

concert - converto

dentist - dentista

dress - vestito

elephants - elefanti (plural ending in Italian is i, like the word spaghetti)

gallery - galleria

galleries - gallerie

idea - idea

medicine - medicina

new - nuovo 

romantic - romantico

scene - scena (prounounced shen -uh) 

special - speciale

voice - voce

Websites

duolingo.com

wikitravel. com prhasebook

Clocks Change Today in the UK

UK

 Clocks change on the last Sunday in March in the UK and much of Europe. The clocks march forward in March. This chance is also called Daylight saving time. Or British summer time. 

The clocks change after midnight during Saturday night, so when you wake up in the morning, any clocks which co-ordinate with a rddio controlled system are automatically updated. 

You need to check your watch, microwave, old fashioned battery operated wall clocks. And your car clocks. 

With most systems such as a laptop, you have a setting for time and date, so you can change to the local time when travelling.

So, in the UK, in springtime, my watch tells me it is 8 am, time to get up. The Kitchen clock has re-set to 9.

I used to go to a book group on the last Sunday in the month. In Springtime, if I went by my watch on the old time, I was late, because at 4 pm when the meeting started, my watch said it was 3 pm. 

You lose an hour of sleep if you get up at the new time. But you catch up later, because the new clock time is already midnight when a watch set to yesterday's time tells your body clock it is only 11 pm.

The clocks are re-set on Sunday, or course, to you can get up when you like, and don't risk being late for work, so long as you don't work on a Sunday.

USA

The Americans have a rhyme to help you to remember which wasy the clocks go. Spring forward, fall back.

The Australian and New Zealanders down under have winter in the UK's summer snd summer in the UK's winter. One might hope that they would change their clocks in the opposite direction on the same day. No. The same day as who? Australis and New Zealand are a day different, especailly if you fly in their diection from the UK.

Useful Websites

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Summer_Time

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time_by_country

Are you bilingual? If so which of these kinds?

French

At school I learned French, for O level and A level. I concisdered myself bilingual. When I went to Belgium, I found a bilingual country, with signs in French and Dutch.

Spanish

At my late parents' second home in Spain I picked up a little Spanish vocabulary. Is there a word for this basic knowledge?

Tests Of Language Levels

What about the tests administered by universities and employers and language courses. Levels A B and C? 

Singapore - Chinese

In Singapore, hearing four languages on the trains inspired me to start trying to learn to recognize Chinese signs. Signs everywhere were in four languages, English, Chinese, Malay, Tamil.

Finally, in Singapore I started an online Toastmasters club and learned a few words of a new language every week for a year.. 

Chinese was challenging. So were Japanese, Korean, and Indian languages. Suddenly, Spanish seemed easy.

Baack inBritain, I speak French fluently, and can translate signs in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese. But, am I bilingual in French? 

Words For Multingual Learners

When I was employed to translate packaging for a cosmetics company into French and German, I spent a week hunting for the French translatoion of the word for nail file. So, at that time, I was not really bilingual. I was what? I just found out, in March 2025, that there are several handy words or labels for succinctly describing the type of bilingual I am. 

I did know that I am a native speaker of English. 

But what about my knowledge of other languages? How to describe it accurately, without making false claims, nor belittling myself?

1 Aspiring Learner

Firstly, I am an aspiring bilingual speaker of Italian. My first aim is to be able to read signs and menus.

I have learned new words to describe my aims and achievements in learning this year's new language, which is Italian. I am an emergent (still learning).

Reader - Receptive

My first aim is to be able to read menus and street signs to get to a restaurant, hotel, or museum. And find the toilets and exits.

The magic word describing this level is receptive (understand spoken and written words) bilingual. Not yet proficient in speaking and writing, but able to read menus, streets signs and newspaper headlines.

Productive - Producing Writing

If you can spontaneously speak and write, you are a Productive bilingual. You produce thoughts in the other language so you speak without hesitation.