Italian speaking practice and grammar tutoring
It was my first day at college and I was unpacking my suitcase when I asked my roommate “Scusami, dov’è la rumenta?”. She gave me a weird look and she told me she had no idea what I was talking about.
As you may already know, the only rule I follow is that the Italian books I write about here must be available in English as well because I want to give people who are interested in Italian literature the chance to enjoy interesting books even if they cannot read Italian.
This is something that drives my students crazy and so I thought it could be another interesting topic for a blog post. As I always do for this type of post, I have also created a downloadable pdf file for you to keep for future reference.
But if this is your first time here, let me tell you a bit more about it. Basically, Pausa Caffè is a challenge to help you practice your Italian every day for a month.
I read his book Lacci in 2019 and wrote a post about it. In fact, I’ve enjoyed that book so much that I have been meaning to read another title by him for ages.
As I always do when I select topics for this section of my blog, I have picked this specific aspect of the Italian language because I have noticed some of my students struggle with it a little bit, especially with the use of the conditional to express the future in the past.
I started the tradition of the Advent Calendar last year with a series of videos about the Italian traditions for Christmas: it was so much fun that I simply had to do it again. The topic I chose for this year is Italian verbs that could be used during the Christmas season.
As you may know very well since I constantly repeat it in my posts, I am always on the hunt for good Italian books to recommend here on the blog and, when I find one, I am truly delighted.
And by doing so, I have noticed some recurring patterns: students tend to make the same mistakes and usually struggle with more or less the same grammar topics.
He is not a scholar nor has any knowledge of the language, he just finds that Latin is a more elegant and austere language than Italian so he throws Latin words here and there, in his conversation.
