The words in Italian are in bold so you can re-read and learn them. Mano of the words simply add o to create the masculine in Italian, for bambino, mano, medico, parco, telefono, vino. Add the feminine ending e (like our English word feminine) to aprile, credere, impossibile, and simile. Watch out for the double letters in infatti, in fact the letter t appears twice, like in the words letter and fatter.
EASY WORDS
aprile - April (No capital letters starting months in Italian)
bambino - baby
credere - believable
durata - duration
infatti - in fact
impossibile (im-poss-ee-bill-ay) - impossible
mano - hand (like manual labor, hand work)
medico - doctor
parco - park
(il - the masculine) progetto - project
simile - similar
telefono - telephone
televisione - television
(il) trena - (the, masculine) train
vino - wine
CONFUSING WORDS
ragioni - not regions but reasons, rationality. The i at the end is a plural, like the word spaghetti.
These are todays words from my Duolingo exercises. I used Duolingo for free for a year learning Spanish.
Now I am doing Italian. This was for a proposed holiday in Spain which has now been cancelled. Never mind. My project for the year is to learn Italian.
Advertising On Duloingo and Websites
Duolingo is no longer the same as before. It has turned more commercial, like Facebook and the Daily Mail, everything on the internet seems to be bombarding me with advertising. I can't afford to buy another garment from Shein every hour. No point sending me cat food ads when I don't have a cat. I already have installed Grammarly.
Leaderboards On Dulingo
I am addicted to the Leaderboards on Duolingo. You can't be bored with the Leaderboard. It gives you points for every exercise completed. You compete with up to thirty others on your level. If you are in the top half dozen (the exact number varies from fewer in the lowest to more the hightest leaague) you go up. Conversely, if you are in the lowest of your league you slip back to compete with those who spend less time and effert.
Competing For Position
You do an exercise and add points. Go away for an hour or two, to do something useful, cleaning and tidaying the house, calling a friend, calling family, writing a book, answering mail, paying bills. You come back and somebody else has been busy and caught up right behind you in points or overtaken you.
Blocked By Duolingo
Then, last week, March 2025, I kept getting signs that I had run out of hearts and could not do any more exercises. Maybe, last year, I had not reached this limit. Maybe, this year, they have changed their system.
Resisting Paying
At first I resisted paying. I am in a system which advertises itself as free. I have been promoting it in my blogs as free. I am a loyal long term member.
I was afraid of being sucked into paying a big sum later, or small sums forever, even after I die. (I am in my seventies.)
The system promised that I would start getting hearts again if I came back after three hours. Two hours, one hour.
Agreeing To Pay
I thought again. Let's at least check the prices. I have had a year's worth of value from them. I get hours a day from them. I owe them something. I'd pay for food, clothes, entertainment.
Comparative Costs
The amount asked was less than UK one hundred pounds. (Some of my travel websites are quoting hotels in NZ currency because of my February trip to New Zealand when I set my laptop to the local currency.) If you are being quoted in another currency, or in your own currency and you want to tell a friend or readers another currency, you can look for the flag or currency abbreviation on the website page, click on it and change it, instead of having to go into another website to get the day's currency exchange rate and echange table column.) The answer was sixty pounds.
Family Budget
I thought, that's doable. I told all the family in a whatsapp group chat. They did not objects. They were all spending far more on other activities overseas.
Commitment and Cancelling
I now have two weeks to cancel. Then I will be committed to sign up to premium for the year.
Any Advantage To Premium?
I must admit I am a bit disappointed because don't find that premium is doing me much extra good.
I was expecting to be given the grammar clues about what I had done wrong. But I am getting most answers right. I am writing down the correct answers in an A6 notebook labelled Italian.
Self-Checking Translation Answers
My hand-written pages listings are no longer in alphabetical order, dictionary style That used to delay me in writing, while I looked for a page which still had an empty line for that letter of the alphabet. Instead, I write down in the running order of the day's words and sentences learned.
Some of the exercises are timed. I keep Google translate open to check the spelling.
Mistakes Allowed
f I am tired from not enough sleep, or over-confident, I get impatent and make a silly mistake. Sometimes if I mistype, or use a spelling closer to the English sound, a instead of e, or vice versa, the system just warns me of a typo.
No time is lost on Duo.
But I take time to check and if necessary correct that spelling in my hand-written list, or underline the vowel or double letter as a memory aid.
Time Lost On Mis-Translation
However, if I am hasty and careless, I might miss out the word not, or only, having grasped the subject object and verb. So I slow down and check both all the words in the Duolingo suggestions. Then I re-read all the words I have typed, to see if I am missing any extra word.
Word Order And Alternative Words
I use Google to select the word order.
Sometimes google translate gives me another similar word which is not acccenpted by the Duolingo system. Is that unreasonable? I can flag this in the choice of comments as 'my answer should be accepted'.
But I now realised that there is a good reason for me to be using the suggested word in the Duolingo exercise. The reason is because it was teaching me a particular word and I have not learned it.
Conclusion - For You
So, hey, ho, off to study I go. I hope this has helped you, or at least entertained you.
Useful Website
Please follow my blogs. Here on blogspot you can find my blogs on travel, languages, dress of the day, and comic poetry, and wine and dine. The first three are the most active with new blog daily.
If you want to make a suggestion for a subject, you can contact me through here or another medium. I am on Facebook, linkedIn when I can recall my password after changing my email, but that's another story. Meanwhile, I'm off back to Duolingo.
Have a nice day. In Italian that's buona giornata.!
Please, share links to your favourite posts, with your friends.
Per favore, condividi i link ai tuoi post preferiti, con i tuoi amici.
See you again, soon.Ci rivedremo, presto.
Maybe tomorrow.Forse domani.
I hope so!lo spero!
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