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Italian books
OK, got two books from the bookstore and three from the stacks. The course's textbook is Italian in 10 minutes a day, which is printed in that big font used for easy-reading books, where the r's and a's and y's have little balls on the ends of the sticky-out bits which just DRIVES me INSANE. I can't really explain my loathing for this font. I mean, I hated it as a kid and I hate it now. The book itself is written in language that's probably a 4th-grade reading level, and it's got colorful pictures and stickers that you can stick on things around your casa.* But it came in handy during our three-hour network outage this afternoon, when there was literally nothing else I could do but play around with vocabulary because everything on my to-do list required a network connection.
Uno due tre quattro cinque sei sette otto nove dieci undici dodici tredici quattordici quindici sedici diecissette dieciotto diecinnove venti.
Vorremo due tazze di tè. I can order between two and twenty-nine cups of tea, but I cannot order one.**
The library haul includes Basic Converstional Italian (the misspelling is on the book's spine, when it was re-bound), which is a more traditional textbook full of fascinating conversations about the weather and everyone's health, starring Laura, a coquettish American student in Italy and Giacomo, her suave Italian friend.***
Then I have the enthralling 201 Italian verbs fully conjugated in all the tenses and an Italian reader with excerpts from various works of and about Italian culture and history.
The other book I got from the bookstore is Better reading Italian, which is a reader that includes excerpts from not only essays and stories and poems, but websites (useful!), and has questions about the passage, extra vocabulary, and short lessons. It's really way above my reading level, but I did manage to translate most of the first line of the first poem. Which has five words in it.
Sotto i portici di Torino - Under the something-or-other of Turin. I think that portici might refer to the city gates - portico means, well, 'portico', and the poem seems to talk about Turin in general.
* It does point out that sticking a sticker onto il gatto might be a bit challenging, and encourages you to be creative.
** David Sedaris has an essay where he talks about how, when he moved to Paris with his boyfriend and started learning French, he bought two of everything because he didn't know how to ask for one. I totally understand.
*** I am guessing at their personalities. The only conversation I've read is when Laura called Giacomo's house to see if he was home and his uncle, Signore Fini, answered the phone, said he was fine, and that Giacomo was at his English lesson. Laura said it was too bad and promised to call back later. I'll keep you up to date as the situation develops.
Uno due tre quattro cinque sei sette otto nove dieci undici dodici tredici quattordici quindici sedici diecissette dieciotto diecinnove venti.
Vorremo due tazze di tè. I can order between two and twenty-nine cups of tea, but I cannot order one.**
The library haul includes Basic Converstional Italian (the misspelling is on the book's spine, when it was re-bound), which is a more traditional textbook full of fascinating conversations about the weather and everyone's health, starring Laura, a coquettish American student in Italy and Giacomo, her suave Italian friend.***
Then I have the enthralling 201 Italian verbs fully conjugated in all the tenses and an Italian reader with excerpts from various works of and about Italian culture and history.
The other book I got from the bookstore is Better reading Italian, which is a reader that includes excerpts from not only essays and stories and poems, but websites (useful!), and has questions about the passage, extra vocabulary, and short lessons. It's really way above my reading level, but I did manage to translate most of the first line of the first poem. Which has five words in it.
Sotto i portici di Torino - Under the something-or-other of Turin. I think that portici might refer to the city gates - portico means, well, 'portico', and the poem seems to talk about Turin in general.
* It does point out that sticking a sticker onto il gatto might be a bit challenging, and encourages you to be creative.
** David Sedaris has an essay where he talks about how, when he moved to Paris with his boyfriend and started learning French, he bought two of everything because he didn't know how to ask for one. I totally understand.
*** I am guessing at their personalities. The only conversation I've read is when Laura called Giacomo's house to see if he was home and his uncle, Signore Fini, answered the phone, said he was fine, and that Giacomo was at his English lesson. Laura said it was too bad and promised to call back later. I'll keep you up to date as the situation develops.
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sounds dirty.
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PS. Did you get my essay?
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My feline overlord is never so cooperative for pictures.
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And Oh noes you had better no stick the stickers to your cat, she might get mad!
and "Better reading Italian" kinda sounds like bad engrish there, the title anyway...
Once again good luck!
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I would be to. I would be to.
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And oh my! "Dov'e la caramella? Ecco la caramella!" Because that is what is on my desk atm :P
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Would BPAL be masculine or feminine? "Dov'e la BPAL? Ecco la BPAL!"
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I think it would be masculine? Il BPAL? Maybe...is computer?
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I recall from the Italian-English dictionary in the reference section I pulled off the shelf, that "lesbian" has two forms: lesbica and lesbico. What it didn't explain was in what circumstances you'd use the masculine form and in what circumstances the feminine. I wonder if it's a butch/femme distinction?
And I found it when I was looking up lepre, honest. :D
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And ether you were really looking-up lesbian, or people are going to ask why Telo was looking up lepre in the first place......
You should look up gay, or homosexual, so we can find out seme/urk X3
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And I have a perfectly good excuse for looking up lepre!
che della lepre, rifà il musetto?
Which didn't help me any, until I found out by reading the commentary that rifà il musetto? means "to imitate the hare's face" and is used as a pun on "to imitate someone's voice/to mock one's manner of speaking." Not that it made that passage any clearer, mind you.
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And I was thinking leper like someone with leprosy O_o;
And no that is a wonky type meaning.