Learn Italian Plurals - with help from the Medici family in Florence

 

I started an Italian course with Duolingo but had problems with plurals. I could follow that a word ending in o is masculine and a word ending in a was feminine. But the plural. It ends in i. I kept forgetting.

Today I solved the problem. It happened in a roundabout way. A chance surprise - there's a word for that, serendipity.

Learning Beginning with Benedict

My hop around the internet began with a search for the origin of the name Eggs Benedict. (I had written a post about breakfast eggs with smoked salmon at a kosher restaurant in London called SoYo.) 

Learning Following With Florence

From the wikipedia article I went onto Eggs Florentine, with spinach. So I then researched the origin of that, under the word Florentine in cooking.  Florentine means from the city of Florence, not a place I associate with spinach. Well, one does now. The traditional story, which is disputed, says that Eggs Forentine were supposedly introduced to the French court when Catherine de Medici of the Medici family in Florence arrived. One of her favourite, dishes, or a dish which was unusual to the locals, was called Florentine style. 

The meaning of Medici

Then I wondered about the meaning of Medici. The Medici famly were infamous. Rich, powerful. Murderous? What did their name mean?

Quite the opposite of murderous. Life-saving. Medici means doctors, the plural of medico which means a doctor. In modern English we might talk about a medic. (At least, an American would.)

Now I know that medici is plural of medico, whenever I want to think of the Italian plural, I can think of Medici. I also have the pronunciation. Emphasis in Italian of the last syllable but one.

If you have a chance to travel to Italy, you can visit the Medici palace in Florence. If you can't travel but are keen on learning Italian, you could practise every day with duolingo.

Useful Websites

duolingo.com

https://www.duolingo.com/enroll/it/en/Learn-Italian

http://www.palazzomediciriccardi.it/en/palace/

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

I hope this helps you. I have several more posts in this blog on learning languages.

Please save in bookmarks and send links of your favourite posts to your favourite friends and family.

Where To Find Italian Chianti And What To Notice

Problem
Where does Chianti come from and how will I find one I like?

Answer

Chinati has been called, "The unmistakable Taste of Tuscany". Tuscany is the area on the West coast of Italy.

I went to a guided tasting at Prowine Singapore in 2018 when we tasted six different wines, with information from speaker Edwin Soon. He told us that the Chianti region has hills to catch the sun, and terraces to stop erosion. A river keeps the temperature even, not too cold in winter, but cools the vineyards in summer. Too much water leads to watered down wine.

Where Is It From

Chianti comes from a region stretching between Rome and Pisa and Florence. A prime attraction in Tuscany is the leaning tower of Pisa, leaning like a tipsy bottle of wine. Since these are some of the most popular tourist destinations, if you've been to Italy the chances are you have drunk wine from the local Chianti region, whether or not you knew it, chose it and liked it.

In the old days there was plenty of cheap Chianti, drunk young and not necessarily good, in a bulb-shape bottle, so it had not established a great reputation. However, local producers got together to enforce standards and classify the wines so buyers knew which was which.

The locals wanted to protect their regional name and identity.  Now you will see D.O.C . , quality wine from a specified region the Italian equivalent of the French AOC, Appelation or name, of Origin Controlled, in Italian D.O.C. Denomination of Origin Controlled.

Chianti Classico
I assumed that Chianti Classico was old style, like Classic Coc Cola. I was wrong. Chinati Classico is a region.

What about D. O. C. G?  The extra G for some wines shown on the labels? G stands for guarantia, guaranteed, the upper stratum, or very best of the DOCs.

What is the difference between a co-operative and a consortium? A co-operative is a group which co-operates, operates together, to make wine. A consortium is a group, a trade body, people who have already made wine who come together to market and sell it.

If you get a chance, on holiday or business, go to a place which offers tastings so that you can compare wines, or order two different wines or glasses of wine with a meal and make a note of which you prefer and why?

Red and White
For years I did not drink red wine. It tasted sour and gave me headaches. Later I larned this was due to tannins. Is it an allergic reaction, or just an intolerance? An allergic reaction would make my eyelids and mouth swell up. Panic-stricken. An intolerance just makes me feel headachey and nauseous. Unhappy.

Dry or Sweet?
Do you prefer a dryer or sweeter wine? Can you tell the difference when drinking a wine of a specific good year? I discovered that I like sweet wine and if it's dry the year doesn't matter to me because I don't like it anyway so no point in paying more for myself.

I tried five dry wines, and the Chianti Rùfina D O C G Riserva 2011 had a distinctive aroma. If I had to choose a dry wine to please others or to go with savoury food or because I had no chance to choose a sweet wine, this is the one I would go for.

Colours of red wine.

Compare the colours of two wines of different ages. The one on the right is browner and older. Wines deepen in colour as they age, like apples going brown. Like ripening fruit, the wines from late-picked grapes are sweeter.

Many people would choose a sweet wine only to go with sweet food, with dessert. My firm favourite was the sweet Chianti - I had not even known anybody made sweet Chianti. The one I sampled was Vin Santo del Chianti Monespertoli D O C Riserva 2007.

How can we remember the name? Vin Santo means holy wine. Del Chianti means of the Chianti region. Monte - mountain. Spertoli - that's the only hard part to remember. I'll just think of myself and the wine maker as experts. Montespertoli. It is a riserva, reserved from 2007, not just bottled early and sold off cheaply when it was plentiful, but has already spent more than ten years maturing.

Italian - English
colli - hill
del - of (the)
consorzio - consortium
Fiorentini - from Florence
Superiore - superior or better
Riserva - reserved or saved - extra special, worth your time and money reserving it and storing it to sell later
santo - saint
vin - wine
vin santo - holy wine
vino - wine (noun)

Useful websites
WINES FROM CHIANTI IN ITALY
General Information
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chianti
Information from the Chianti suppliers
www.consorziovinochinati.it
READING WINE LABELS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_wine_terms
TRAVEL TO ITALY
http://www.italia.it/en/home.html
WIKIVOYAGE
Information in the free encyclopaedia without the advertisements.
https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Chianti
WIKITRAVEL
The free travel website which also carries advertising which could be handy if you are ready to book and need companies and prices.
https://wikitravel.org/en/Chianti
TRIPADVISOR
Reviews from members of the public plus travel ads and price comparisons.
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Travel-g187895-c3060/Florence:Italy:Tuscany.Chianti.html

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share links to your favourite posts. See later post on tannins and quality.

How To Find Toastmasters In Italy (and worldwide) and translate Italian (and other languages)

Problem
I'm probably going to Italy in the next year and would like to find some people who speak English and attend a social and networking meeting. Are there any Toastmasters clubs in big cities or near holiday destinations? Any point looking now, when I don't yet have a trip planned? (And the same goes for a couple of other countries.)

Yes, because :
1 SAVE TIME & MONEY
When I do plan to go to Italy or another country I shall be in a rush so researching the Toastmasters clubs several months in advance will come in handy. It's a rush at home to research when you are busy at the last minute booking hotels and travel tickets. It's a rush to research on the day when you should be catching a coach tour or co-ordinating meeting colleagues.

2 LANGUAGE PROBLEMS SOLVED
Last time in a hotel I found I had to pay for the three-day internet access to go onto a website in a hotel for three minutes to get a phone number. Finally, the websites assume you are Italian (or German in Switzerland) and send everything in a foreign language so you will wish you researched earlier at home in an English speaking country.

Looking at a website in English, one club has said it meets Giovedi. Help! I know hundreds of Italian words and can read whole pages of Italian and get the gist but I am suddenly stumped. I could be missing breakfast in a hotel trying to check all this before a 15 minutes free internet session times out. Giovedi is Thursday.

I have also learned or been reminded about placenames: that the Italian for Florence is Firenze. Milan is Milano. Rome is Roma. Genova is Genoa. I have noticed some abbreviations. RM is Rome. MI is Milan. TO is Torino. GE is Genova. VI is Vicenza. CO is Como. FI is Florence.

Veneto is not the city of Venice but a region of Northern Italy.

I have picked up some general vocabulary. Costa is not cost but coast. Di is of.

I clicked on some placenames and up came Wikipedia in Italian. No sign of the English flag or the word English which you might see on the top of page one of a tourist site or hotel website or a blog or blog post created in Wordpress.

So I googled 'translate Wikipedia into English'. It said look on the sidebar (on the left of the screen). Nothing useful appeared in the first few lines.  I had almost given up when, at the end of the column, I found:

In altre linge (meaning in other language)
Deutsch
English (Hurray! We found it.)
Hrvatski (I looked that up. It's Croatian.)
Portuguese (It appeared with an accent too small for me to identify so I have given the English.)

2 TRIP PLANNING
It could help you re-route your trip before booking. Just looking at the website has already taught me some handy things, such as that there are four clubs in Milan - which would make it worthwhile staying overnight in Milan on a side trip from Switzerland (which I did to see opera at La Scala).

If I had told my family the days of the week when I could visit Toastmasters, and written to the clubs to find out if they were still meeting, I could have told my family that a Toastmasters meets in Milan on Thursday. Then we could have booked months in advance for expensive opera seats when they were still available at the cheaper price which we were willing to pay, for the in demand day, Friday.

Answer
Using the website Toastmasters International Find A Club I found twenty clubs in Italy. 20! If you are alone in Rome or nervous in Naples, go to a club which welcomes and helps potential speakers. (Do you have to give a speech at a wedding? Here's the place to go for help.) It's great entertainment. In Rome there's one every Tuesday.

How To Make Contact
No need to hunt for the right person in the club to contact. On the Toastmasters International website you just click on email.
That's the theory. Sometimes it works like a dream and if you've included your own phone number they ring back five minutes later!

However, I suggest you do this at least a week in advance, not on the day. You occasionally find a club where the person listed is away on business. Or the committee has just changed and they have not updated the website. You might find the club has closed for Xmas or summer holidays or forever.

If I don't get a reply from a club within 24 hours, I email another club in the area. I sometimes end up going there instead or in addition. You might even hear of a new club which is starting and not yet listed on websites.

I have listed the following in alphabetical order by city:

BOLOGNA
Toastmasters Two Towers, Bologna, BO, Italy. 6.30. One Monday our of three.

COMO
The Como Lakers, Como, CO, Italy. The first and third Thursday of each month at 7.30-9.30 pm.
Lake Como is a tourist destination in summer.

FLORENCE
1 Firenze Toastmasters, FL, Italy. On the second and fourth Thursday at 6.45 pm.
2 Toastmasters Academy, Florence, FI, Italy, 7.30pm -9pm Wednesday. I presume that's every Wednesday and not just one Wednesday a month but you'd better ring to be sure.
Florence, known for art and the bridge.

GENOA
Erzelli Toastmasters, Genova, GE, Italy. First and third Wednesdays from 6 to 8 pm.

MILAN
1 The Milliners, Milan, MI, Italy. Every other Monday at 7 pm.
2 Milan-Easy Toastmasters Club, second and fourth Tuesday at 6.45 pm.
3 Navigli District Toastmasters, Milano, Ml, Italy. 7.30 every other Monday.
4 The Xplorers, MI, Italy. 6.45 Every month, first and third Tuesdays.
MONZA
Next to Milan, 9 miles from city centre of Milan but the outskirts of the two cities are only three miles apart if you are driving. Speaking of driving, Monza is famous as the centre for Italy's Formula one.

NAPLES
Naples Toastmasters Club, Naples, NA, Italy. On the first and third Tuesdays at 6.30 pm.

ROME
1 Toastmasters INAIL, Roma, RM, Italy. 12.30-2.30, 1st and 3rd Wednesday.
2 SPQRs, Rome, RM, Italy. On Wednesday lunchtime, 12-1 pm. Sounds like a company club.
3 Toastmasters Roma, RM, Italy. 6.45 every Tuesday. Contact them through the website.

TURIN
1 Radiant Rhetoric, T o r i n o, on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday at 7.15 pm.
2 Toasting in the Sky, Torino.
3 Trucks and Tricks in Torino.
4 Toastmasters Torino, Giovedi (Thursday) first and third Thursdays at 7 pm.
It took me a while, plus a few searches, to find out that Torino is called Turin in English - and it's famous for the Turin shroud, reputed to show Jesus! Four Toastmasters clubs in a tourist destination.

VERONA
Toastmasters Monza, The Verona, San Massimio, (VR), Italy Milan-Easy Toastmasters Club.; Vicenza Toastmasters Club, Costabissara, VI, Italy, second and fourth Thursday.

Toastmasters in Italy and Worldwide
If you are already a Toastmaster (many clubs many members worldwide, you could start a club with the help of a new members' pack available free from head office if you can muster about twenty potential members from your company or just by advertising and getting everybody together at a restaurant or coffee bar. A good place to advertise is on MeetUp.

If you are on holiday or business anywhere in the world, you can join a Toastmasters club, attend a meeting, mentor a member by Skype, go to the annual contests for serious speeches in autumn and humorous speeches in Springtime.

Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, member of HOD and Harrovians in London, England and Braddell Heights Advanced club in Singapore. I am the winner of more than 50 ribbons for Best Speaker, Best Evaluator and Table Topic (impromptu speech). I won three ribbons in one evening this month at Harrovians. I have judged competitions and run workshops on public speaking and attended meeting in China, the Czech Republic, Singapore, Thailand and the UK and attended the world finals in Las Vegas, USA.

Speakers' contest at the Business School near Baker Street station in central London, England.

This post was compiled Feb 2018. Please bookmark this page but update on the Toastmasters website if you wish to attend a meeting. Share your favourite posts with friends. I have several more posts on Toastmasters on this website and on my Toastmasters blogs, and posts on Italy, St Valentine in Terni and waterfalls, and the Osteria Modigliani Restaurant in London, England. Also see my other websites: Luxury for less and luxury travel for less.

Italian regions: eg Liguria, Christopher Columbus, Genoa and Portofino

Problems
Which regions of Italy contain which well known town?

Answer:
Here's a summary and some mnemonics or memory aids.
First which region is where?

I could look at them north to south.

For convenience I have put them in alphabetical order.

	North-West Nord-Ovest	Aosta Valley Liguria Lombardy Piedmont	Milan
	North-East Nord-Est	Emilia-Romagna Friuli-Venezia Giulia Trentino-South Tyrol Veneto	Bologna
	Centre Centro	Lazio Marche Tuscany Umbria	Rome	1
	South Sud	Abruzzo Apulia Basilicata Calabria Campania Molise	Naples
	Islands Isole or Insulare (adj)	Sardinia Sicily	Palermo

ABRUZZO
AOSTA VALLEY
APULIA
BASILICATA
CALABRIA
CAMPANIA - (Positano, Amalfi drive; I've had a painting of pretty Positano on the kitchen wall for decades!)
EMILIA-ROMANA
FRUILI-VENEZIA GIULIA
LAZIO
LIGURIA - Genoa (Portofino, San Remo)

LOMBARDY
MARCHE
MOLISE
PIEDMONT
SARDINIA
SICILY
TRENTINUO-SOUTH TYROL
TUSCANY - Florence
UMBRIA - Perugia
VENETO

Regions[edit]

Flag	Region Italian name							Capital city				Metropolitan cities
	Abruzzo Abruzzo							L'Aquila				-
	Aosta Valley Valle d'Aosta							Aosta				-
	Apulia Puglia							Bari				Bari
	Basilicata Basilicata							Potenza				-
	Calabria Calabria							Catanzaro				Reggio Calabria
	Campania Campania							Naples				Naples
	Emilia-Romagna Emilia-Romagna							Bologna				Bologna
	Friuli-Venezia Giulia Friuli-Venezia Giulia							Trieste				-
	ITALY							Rome
	Lazio Lazio							Rome				Rome
	Liguria Liguria							Genoa				Genoa
	Lombardy Lombardia							Milan				Milan
	Marche Marche							Ancona				-
	Molise Molise							Campobasso				-
	Piedmont Piemonte							Turin				Turin
	Sardinia Sardegna							Cagliari				Cagliari
	Sicily Sicilia							Palermo				Catania Messina Palermo
	Trentino-South Tyrol Trentino-Alto Adige							Trento				-
	Tuscany Toscana							Florence				Florence
	Umbria Umbria							Perugia				-
	Veneto Veneto							Venice				Venice

Here are my memory aids for the major cities and regions:
AA Aosta is in the Aosta Valley.
FT Florence is in Tuscany.
GL - GenoA is in LiguriA.
ML Milan in Lombardy; MiLan in LoMbardy.
NC - knackered and camping outside Naples in Campania; good and bad Company in Campania in Naples.
RL Rome is in Lazio. rOme is in laziO. Roaming through lazio, I am lazing oh.
UP - Umbria is the region whose capital is Perugia; UmbrIA and perUgIA
PS - Palermo is in Sicily
PT and TP - Piedmont you'll find Turin; Turin in Piedmont; Turin, turning in at the foot of the Mountain; pIedmoNT -TurIN
TTT Trento in Trentino-South Tyrol. TRENTO in TRENTinO- sOuTh TyrOl.
VV - Venice is in Veneto. VENice is in VENeto.

Story
The Liguria Tourist board PR company sent me a story about Liguria having lots of highly rated blue flag beaches. I frowned at the email. I'd never heard of Liguria where was it. Why hadn't she sent me a map which showed the location Liguria and some well known towns.

LIGURIA
Where is Liguria? Do I know it?
Of course the tourist board's job is to pump out focused stories. My job as a journalist to to research the area and make it popular and snappy and visually appealing and exciting. As Gandhi said, 'be the change you wish to see'. I looked up Liguria. Of course I know Liguria.

My next question is, anybody famous, any famous historical event connected with the area. Genoa. Birthplace of Christopher Columbus. You can't get more famous than that! You can't miss Columbus. You fly in to Christopher Columbus airport in Genoa.

Now I have set myself the task of memorising all the regions of Italy.

More story and pictures about Genoa and Christopher Columbus, including pictures, are in the next post.

Tips
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liguria
http://wikitravel.org/en/Genoa
http://www.italia.it/en/discover-italy/liguria.html

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