Italian Greetings
October 14th, 2008 at 11:36 pm (Italian)
I listened to a few more lessons from learnitalianpod.com. I like the dialogue, but the female speaker is much clearer than the male speaker so I tend to prefer listening to her. Also, three (slow) repetitions of everything is about one more than I need at this point (this may change as we move away from cognates :) ). And finally, I really wish that the transcripts of the dialogues were freely available; to get access to them, you have to pay a monthly fee. This means I (instead) end up digging around to find how to spell everything, since I’m definitely a visual learner and I don’t remember things well unless I know how they are spelled. That isn’t necessarily bad, since the extra searching provides additional reinforcement. However, it did lead to a mistake I made in my last post: “Pleased to meet you” should have been “Piacere di conoscerti” (the informal version), not “Piacere di conoscerla” (the formal version). This explains the apparent inconsistency in the level of formality. Personally, I’d rather learn the formal since it is more likely to be useful. But I’ll try to be patient and wait for it. :)
New phrases today include:
- Buon giorno! Good day!
- Arrivederci! Goodbye!
- Come ti chiami? What is your name?
- Io mi chiamo Kiri. My name is Kiri.
- Così e così. So-so. (Response to “come stai?”)
- Io sono ocupado. I’m busy.
- Io sono felice, perché mia mama è a Venezia. I’m happy, because my mother is in Venice. (That’ll be handy!)
I also got the full “to be” conjugation:
| io sono | noi siamo |
| tu sei / Lei è (formal) | voi siete / Loro sono (formal) |
| lui/lei è | loro sono |
Michelle’s comments on my previous post now make more sense. :) Interestingly, capitalization matters here — the formal “you” pronouns get capitalized regardless of sentence position. (That way you can tell them from the third person pronouns, presumably.)
Another useful resource: italianlanguageguide.com.
Heuristics Inc. said,
October 17, 2008 at 8:54 am
Just a few notes – most of the time, like in Spanish, Italian leaves off the subject, e.g. “Io” is dropped unless there needs to be special emphasis on it. Yes, even though you won’t be able to tell if sono’s subject was Io or loro. You get that from context – like so:
Sono stanco. – “I am tired”, because stanco is singular.
Sono stanchi. – “They are tired”, because stanchi is plural.
I am totally a visual learner too; the Pimsleur lessons are great but really only if I’ve already seen the words, because I have a heck of a time trying to visualize the words if I can’t tell how they’re spelled.
Also, a small thing, but I’ve always seen “così-così” without the e; probably both are correct.
-bill
wkiri said,
October 17, 2008 at 9:07 am
Thanks for the tips, Bill! I really appreciate it. Grazie!