King Charles spoke in Italian to the Italians - you can too!

King Charles III on a British ten pound note.

The Italian name equivalent to Charles is Carlo.

 King Charles spoke in Italian to the Italians in Rome, the eternal city, in April 2025. I am learning Italian on Duolingo and you can, too. 

Here are some of the phrases I have learned

Italian - English

aspetto che - I am waiting for

bello essere qui - good to be here

mio marito - my husband (the one I am married to)

e importante - it is important (you need to put the accent on the solo e to change the letter e from 'and' to 'is')

causa - because (the second half of the English word is almost the same, cause)

tutto sara facile - everything will be easy

vero - true (agreeing with somebody) Nod and you have 'that's true', raise your eyebrows and you have, 'really!' or ironically,'NO! You don't say!'

At breakfast, the word for honey is mela

Ho bisogno de - I want/ I have need of

voglio - I want

non voglio - I do not want (v and w are pairs, twins, but you need to tell them apart. v and w are interchangeable in some languages, for example, in German the word wilkommen is pronounced vilkommen)

voglio che - I want that (eg I would like something to happen)

mela - honey

imparare - to learn

To learn Italian you can use Duolingo. 

To find handy phrases and sentences for travelling, you can use Wikivoyage Phsebook Italian.

To translate words you can use Translate Google.

To translate an entire speech you can save sections in Translate Google.

To practise speaking, you can attend an Italian speaking club of Toastmasters International. There is an online club in Rome. I prepared a message for them.

I am learning Italian on Duolingo.

Sto imparando l'italiano su Duolingo.

I would like to attend an online meeting.

Vorrei partecipare a una riunione online.

Useful Websites

duolingo.com

Please follow my blogs and share with your family, friends and colleagues the links to entertaining and instructive posts.

How to learn the German umlauts

German flag.

The signs above the letters in German are there to help you with the pronunciation. So in that respect German is easier than English, which adopts words and prinunciations from all over the world. In German what you see is what you say.

Two Germans told me:

There is only one sign above the letters in German, called the umlaut, like a small circle. There are only three letters which have the umlaut in German.
 ⟨ä⟩, ⟨ö⟩ and ⟨ü⟩,

A
The first is a small circle above the a. It turns the a as in the English word apple into an ay as in the English word maid and the German word pronounced maid-shen meaning girl.

O
The second umlaut is above the o.
Schönberg (German: beautiful hill)
Alternative spelling: Shoenberg. Pronounced like Shern-berg.

U
The third umlaut is above the u.

Useful Website for travellers:
https://www.amazon.de/German-All-One-Dummies-CD/dp/

About The Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, is a teacher of English and other languages to colleges, students and businesses.