Italian lesson 1 – masculine and feminine endings

Did you know that most men’s names in Italy end in a ‘o’ and women’s in an ‘a’? Think Marco, Angelo, Roberto, Stefano for men and Maria, Valentina, Giulia, Sofia and Stella for women. There are exceptions of course – Luigi, Giovanni, Beatrice and Nicole. If you’re taking Italian lessons the good news is that the same general rule holds true for masculine and feminine nouns.  Examples are il capello nero (masculine, the black hair) or la bella macchina (feminine, the beautiful car).

Italian lesson 2 – language roots

Keen language aficionados will recognise strong similarities with Spanish and this is because both languages have roots in Latin. Unsurprisingly, of all the Romance languages, Italian is closest to Latin. Latin is currently taught in about 700 state secondary schools and 450 independent senior schools – a doubling since 2000, according to the University of Cambridge Schools Classics Project. If you studied Latin at school, you will find making the switch to Italian particularly easy.

Italian lesson 3 – easy alphabet

Even if you didn’t study Latin, Italian is a delightful language to learn. And there is an added bonus for quick and easy learning – there are only 21 letters in the standard Italian alphabet compared to the 26 in English. The Italian alphabet doesn’t have the letters J, K, W, X or Y.

Italian Tourism and Pizza

June is a very popular month with savvy visitors as the temperature is pleasant and the July and August tourists haven’t yet arrived. So it’s possible to walk the streets of Rome, Milan, Florence and so on without pushing through the crowds or queuing for hours at popular attractions such as the Vatican. This is also the month of the Naples ‘Pizza Village’ when 50 of Naples’ most renowned pizzerias run pop-up restaurants over 10 days, in an imposing village of 30,000 square meters. In addition to eating, there are spectacular ‘pizza performances’, workshops, a world championship, music and shows all contributing to making this an entertaining – and tasty – event revolving around pizza. And, as you can work out now, pizza is a feminine noun so it’s ‘la pizza’.

Join us for our Italian language courses so that you too can get the most from the Pizza Party. For more details on Italian classes and Italian tuition give us a call on 0161 491 1444!