If you’ve been taking lessons for me for a while, you should be pretty familiar with the choice of the auxiliary verb in the passato prossimo tense. However, there are a few verbs that are tricky and use both auxiliaries, depending on the...
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I often ask my students how their weekend was or a particular event I knew they had, and the answer always gets very confusing. This is where we step into one of the many cultural aspects of the language. The question, “how was it?” and the...
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There is a lot of confusion with the word “time” since in Italian there are three words that it translates into: ora, tempo and volta. Ora means “hour” and “now,” although in English it also translates as “time.” It is used to refer to a: –...
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Let’s learn! Potere vs. Riuscire The verbs potere and riuscire both mean “can” and “to able to”; however, they are almost never interchangeable. Potere is used when the subject has a choice on whether he/she is...
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We get asked the difference between the verbs “essere” and “stare” all the time and, as always, while there are rules, there are also many times in which the two are interchangeable and things can get confusing. Main uses...
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If you are bilingual or have ever studied a foreign language, you probably know how many idiomatic expressions each language has that you simply cannot translate. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that some phrases exist because...
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As much as I love the United States and its amazing people, I have to admit that there is something that bothers me a little. I should be able to go to a supposedly Italian restaurant and order a bruschetta without having to make the -sch English...
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