Italian For Dummies®

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Looking for world-class training material to help you make a breakthrough in your language learning? This was centuries ago. But, in many ways, Italy and Italian politics still seems the same. Give them TV shows and full shelves at the supermarket and they won’t doubt. They won’t doubt the government nor its politicians. If Italian politics seems confusing, it’s time to unravel the skein. And even at home, learning Italian will allow you to discover more about the country's culture and history. And it’s not as complicated as it seems. Most verbs follow one of 4 patterns, which don’t take too long to learn. It’s true that thereare quite a few irregular verbs, but many of these are similar to other irregular verbs, so you can learn them together in groups. In Italian, the present indicative tense works much like the present tense in English. To conjugate Italian verbs in the present indicative tense, you first need to understand that Italian infinitives (the “to” form, as in to die , to sleep , to dream) end in one of three ways — and that you conjugate the verb based on that ending:

The following table shows how you can combine nouns and articles. Pay attention to the beginning letter of masculine nouns because the article changes according to this letter; this is why you see four versions of masculine nouns in the table.The Video above from Giorgio Gaber accurately describes Italian Politics. The main parties in Italian politics

Phrases like“where is…”, “how much…?” and “can I have..?” will take you a long way.Once you learn the basic structure, you can adapt them to say loads of different things in Italian. Practise speaking with a language exchange partner or conversation tutor. If you don’t feel comfortable attempting conversationyet, you can tell them about new words or grammar points you’ve learnt and ask them to give you examples of how they’re used in real life. If you want to be able to use Italian in real life situations, you need to practise first. Practising helps you turn the Italian words and phrases you learn in books into active knowledge that you can use to communicate with Italians. Ci fa il conto, per favore?/ Ci porta il conto? (chee fah eel kohn-toh pehr fah- voh-reh/chee pohr-tah eel kohn-toh) (Will you bring us the bill please?)For example, in the word “respons ible”, the letter “i” is pronounced as a kind of lazy “e” sound, which is produced with the mouth and tongue in a completely relaxed position. In the phonetic alphabet, it’s represented with the upside down ə sound (called the schwa). Take the new words and grammar points you learn in your textbook and try using them to write sentences about your life. I'm such a big believer in the power of StoryLearning® to enable you to learn a foreign language. That's why I've created an entire beginner course dedicated to learning Italian by immersing yourself in an engaging story. Another Italian sound which may be new to you is the smiley L (known formally as the palatal L). When you see the letters gli together , as in fami gl i a, it’s pronounced similar to an L sound, but instead of putting the tongue tip behind your teeth (like in the English one) you spread the whole tongue out across the roof of your mouth. If you smile when you say it, it helps to put the tongue in the right position, which is why we christened it the smiley L.