Words which are the same in Spanish and Italian - and almost the same as English

 

English - Spanish - Italian

art - arte - arte

bank - Spanish el banco - Italian la banca

book - libro - libro (memory aid: library book)

centre (center in the usa) - (el) centro in Spanish - (il) centro in Italian

coast - costa (as in Costa Brava) - costa

if - si (Spanish, without an accent)

minute - minuto - minuto

music - musica - musica (in Spanish la musica is music but el musico is a musician)

no - no - no

note - nota - nota

one - uno - uno

problem - problema - problema

serious (adjective) - serio/seria - serio/seria

shy - timido/timida - timido/timida

stop - stop - stop (road traffic sign)

theatre - teatro - teatro

valley - valle - valle

The same in Spanish and Italian

song - canto - canto (like the English word cantor meaning singer)

Useful Websites On Translating Spanish And Italian

AI / Google search

translate Google

Lingo

https://lingo-apps.com/same-words-spanish-italian/

chat gbt

https://chatgpt.com/translate

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Easy and Obvious Spanish Words Translated into English

 Spanish - English

centro - centre

la clase - the class

colores - colours

curso - course

escribir - to write (sounds like the English words inscribe, a scribe, script, scripture, description. )

escuelas - schools

los libros - the books

mucho - much / a lot

nota - note

Pizza - a large) pizza

pizarra - chalkboard (not pizza, though that might be written on the board)

profesor - professor

taxi - taxi

English - Spanish

the books - los libros

centre - centro

la classe - the class

colours - colores

course - curso

flowers - flowers

much / a lot - mucho

note - nota

professor - profesor (NB only one s in the Spanish word)

schools - escuelas

taxi - taxi

to write - escribir

Useful Websites

duolingo.com

translate google

wiki voybage phrasebook Spanish

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Italian Words which are almost the same as English

I am 'ploughing ahead - There's an English idiom - with learning Italian on Duolingo. Many Italian words end in o, for the masculine,  for feminine, or e. Plurals may end in i.

I also looked at a bilingual brochure from Commune di Cannara. It is pretty obvious - another English idiom - that via is way or road, ponte is bridge

Flag of Italy. 

Italian - English

aeroplano - aeroplane

causa - cause

Centro - centre

Fertili - fertile

dignita - dignity

importante - important

Lago - lake

minuti - minutes (i is plural, like spaghetti)

passageri - passengers

poverta - poverty

recente - recent

ricchezza - wealth - a richness of letters c and z

successo - success

timore - fear - like timit

viso - face - like visor

Useful Websites

Learn Italian for free online

duolingo.com

Italian words you already know

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

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Tips For Travel Writers and Photographers - on how to centre your photos

Problem
How do you centre a photo? You'd think it would be easy. Tap on the photo. Up comes a set of choices. Choose centre. Your photo disappears.

Luckily you can restore it with the combination of command and Z. But you are still left with the problem of how to move your photo from left to centre.

By trial and error I found the answer. I eventually tried to centre both photo and caption by choosing the way you cetnre text, selecting the bank of horizontal lines in the bar across the tap of the text area.

That worked! I wondered what would happen if I tried using that with just the photo, without the text. Yes, it did!

Author
Travel writer and photographer, author and speaker, Angela Lansbury. Please bookmark and share links to your favourite posts.

How To Learn Portuguese From Earworms

Problem
How to learn Portuguese fast - when your time is spent driving.

Answer
Use Earworms, a short, quick audio derivative of the full Berlitz programme, no stress because it's set to soothing music.

I bought volume 2 on Ebay and was worried it might not be useful without volume 1, or that the booklet might be missing, which happened once before. However, this time I had the booklet. Even without the disc, the booklet was very good. I am delighted.

The booklet print is small. But I knew that. (I also have the German and Japanese.)

When I put the disc into a laptop, the laptop asks if I want to copy the disc. I do. Saves me carrying ten discs around for all my languages.

I'll tell you more about the words and how I remember then in a later post tomorrow.

I am also learning vocabulary from Duolingo tinycards, but earworms is giving me whole phrases so I can recognize them when I hear them.

Let's learn a few words:
Portuguese - English (Ten words)
adeus - goodbye (( like the Spanish adios - but add u for PortUgUese!)
amigos - friends
aqui - here
bom / bem - good / ok
centro - centre
espero - I hope
horas - time (hours)
onde - where
semana - week
vivo - I live

English - Portuguese (Ten words - Dez palavras, according to Google translate.)
centre - centro
cheers - saúde (to get the accent, hold down the letter u on your laptop and tap the number 4)
friends - amigos
good - bom
here - aqui
I hope - espero
I live - vivo (like the English word vivacious, meaning lively)
time (hours) - horas
week - semana

you - você (for e with the hat, hold down the letter e and tap the number three and you'll get ê)


Useful websites
https://itunes.apple.com/us/author/earworms-learning/id116220206

visitportugal.com

visitbrasil.com

http://www.visitmadeira.pt/en-gb/homepage

duolingo.com

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

How I Photograph Through Windows On Bus Journeys

Problems
You can't take good photos because you are at odd angles, traffic gets in the way, you get reflections, and the windows are likely to be smeary.

Solutions
EDITING PHOTOS
Angles
You can adjust the angle of the photo afterwards. If that cuts out half the signpost, the elegant chimney, or the pretty tree, leave the photos which are diagonal at the corner of the page as the angle is deliberate.

Mounting
The picture is out of focus? Put it behind the bolder headline as a faded background.

Crop
Crop the picture to remove unwanted litter, people, modern signposts spoiling the view of ancient buildings. On my laptop I get a grid dividing the picture into six or nine. Moving the focus of the picture into the middle sometimes improves it no end. The same goes to people. But occasionally I find that the trees or buildings on the left and right provide a good frame. So I go back to the original which is always there.

I used to duplicate pictures to keep the original beside the cropped version and compare them. when cropping and later Now I have so many pictures that it takes hours to find anything. I have to spend more time labelling the 'Information' on every picture to be able to find distant or detail or even a person and a place. Also too many pictures takes up space and costs money in more storage.

Overlap
If cropping the bottom right cut out something important at the top right, overlap the pictures so the next picture obliterates the corner. Nobody knows what they don't see. Yes, it takes time.

Cut it to the part you want. Overlap pictures to cut out the corners.

WINDOW CLEANING
Clean the bus windows. Why doesn't the bus company clean the windows?

Maybe they do. Even if they did, the first kid eating ice cream or sweets and stand up to look out, bracing against the window when the bus jolts or leaning forward to look out smears sticky all over the window.

Inside or outside? In theory, I could do the outside of a window when the bus is stationery before it departs at the start and end of the journey.

Probably if If I were to do the journey again, I would carry window cleaner. Maybe not. Perhaps wet wipes would be lighter and less bulky.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.
I have other posts on photography, destinations, learning languages, London, worldwide. Please follow, bookmark and share links to your favourite posts.

France where you can eat a Madeleine for Breakfast and follow the Proust trail

A madeleine is traditionally eaten in France for breakfast, with coffee, and it's claim to cultural fame is that it is eaten by Marcel Proust at the start of his trilogy A La  R e t o u r Du Temps Perdu, translated as (recalling or returning to) Memories of Times Past. 

I ate a madeleine for the first time at breakfast at a small hotel in the Loire valley, not knowing I was a short distance from the factory, which you can see from the packet is on Contres which is Centre, the centre of France.

I was given the Madeleine on the French stand at the World Travel Market exhibition at Excel in London in November 2015. Now, I am surprised but  pleased to see there is no need to travel all the way to France to enjoy a Madeleine. You can order them online from Waitrose (their online website is confusingly called Ocado), as well as buying madeleines from Tesco and Sainsbury's. 

The cakes cost is currently (November 2015) about £2 for 7 pieces. The little sponges come in two flavours, plain and chocolate.

Of course there is something very satisfying about eating a Madeleine in France. 

If you are interested in Marcel Proust, you can visit, eat in or stay in the Grand Hotel in C a b o u r g where he lived from 1907 to 1914, and follow a Proust trail nearby around the clifftop coastal road where plaques at various points relate to Marcel Proust. Proust is known as the father of the modern French novel.

It's handy to have a reminder of some French words, translating the nutritional information on the packet.

arome - aroma / flavour

b e u r r e - butter

blé - wheat

bonne - good

energie - energy

farine - flour

f r a i s - fresh

nutrionnelles - nutritional

o e u f s - eggs

poudre - powder

sucres - sugars

http://en.normandie-tourisme.fr/articles/cabourg-387-2.html (Grand Hotel, C a b o u r g, Normandy.)

(Spell check note: The spell checker tried to turn C a b o u r g into cyborg and R e t o u r into detour. That is why I have needed to insert spaces.)

If you are interested in French, I write a post on French language two or three times a week. Please follow my blogs, like me on Facebook and link to me on LinkedIn.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author, speaker, teacher of English and French.