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Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Daily Dose of Italian Words

Problem
How to remember Italian words?

As my family say: It is not a problem; it is a task.

Flag of Italy

Answer
Write down Italian words, keep saying them, and look for some Italian words every day.

Here are some you already know, especially the ones from music and food.

Italian - English
al dente - literally to the tooth, raw, hard to bite on, lightly cooked, may be cold or warm or hot and hard
al fresco - in the open air, so dining al fresco, seats outside a home or restaurant or building, eg picnic
barista - bar person but now usually not a wine bar but a coffee bar
broccoli - a green vegetable
ciao - goodbye (note that the c is pronounced Ch, and the iao is pronounced ee-ow as in the saying 'how now brown cow'); also used for hello and in other languages
cello - stringed musical instrument in the violin and guitar family but bigger and low notes
concert - concert
dolce - sweet (as in the title of the film La dolce vita, meaning the sweet life)
diva - imperious singer or personality
folio - papers, hand written or printed text of play such as first folio of Shakespeare
forte - strong or loud
la - the
maestro - master or expert
opera - work, musical
operetta - short opera
piano - quiet
Pianoforte (abbreviated to piano) - keyboard instrument with keys changing sound from loud to soft
prima donna - first lady or singer, prima being first, donna being lady, ma donna being my lady
replica - convincing reproduction, usually of a 3d (three dimensional) object, such as a sculpture rather than a painting
solo - single or alone. A soloist sings alone, all or most of the performance of an event such as a piece of music or whole evening, without a choir, with or without a band or backing group for the chorus, with or without an orchestra



strada - street, as in the title of the film (movie) La Strada
vista - view, wide view, beautiful view
vita - life
volcano - mountain which has a hole in the middle which erupts fire or gases and may later become a dead volcano. Interesting the Chinese symbol (writing is pictorial) is fire-mountain.

English - Italian
alone - solo
dolce - sweet
expert - maestro
first - prima
goodbye - ciao
life - vita (as in the Italian film title La Dolce Vita and English words vital, vitality and vitamin)
loud - forte
open air - al fresco
quiet - piano
street - strada
the - la
woman/lady - donna

Wikipedia has a list of everyday words, useful conversational phrases, days of the week and months of the year and question words.

Tips
Useful conversational words and phrases in
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_language
www.duolingo.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, teacher of English and other languages. I have many more posts on languages and destinations. Please bookmark and share links to your favourite posts.

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