Italians love coffee. They drink as much as 14 billion espresso coffees per year, and all over the globe, you can find Italian-style coffee houses. But where this obsession for Italian coffee came from? In this article, we are going to look at the history of coffee in Italy. Words such as barista, cappuccino, and espresso (be careful, no 'x' in it!) are used everyday in England and in the US. You might have your daily latte at Costa, or Nero, and sipping at it while you imagine yourself walking on a busy street in Roma or Firenze! But why is that so? Let's find out a bit more about the connec ..read more

The Italian language offers a wide variety of tenses, aspects, and 'modi', but sometimes you have to deal with two past tense forms at the same time! In this article, we are going to talk about the main functions of the imperfetto. I will tell you a story, it is not necessarily a good one, but it is useful to our purpose : C'era una volta un ragazzo italiano che passeggiava su una spiaggia inglese. Il tempo era abbastanza brutto e lui era un tipo freddoloso, ma nonostante tutto ha deciso di comprare un cono gelato. Mentre era in fila ha incontrato un suo vecchio amico. I due andavano insieme ..read more

It's a beautiful evening, you are on holiday in Rome, and you find on the street an invitation to a theatres premiere at the 'Sistina', one of the most exclusive theatre in Rome! You get dressed, wear your best perfume and you are ready to go. Almost. What are you going to say? Will you just get there shouting 'ciao'? The location requires something more formal. Learning a language is more than just grammar, and it often requires us to adjust ourselves to cultural specific behaviours, we have to learn not just how to read words but also situations! As an Italian, I'm willing to admit that we ..read more

Everyone loves Italian food, pasta, pizza, and good vino. But there's a more obscure side in Italian cuisine not known by tourists and made of guts, blood, and crawling insects! Keep reading if you are brave enough.. In the previous articles of this series, we talked about the history of caffè and bolognese, but it's time to move onto less mouth-watering options, and discover delicatessen that would make raise lots of foodies' eyebrows. Each Italian region has its own unique set of traditions and dishes, here's an unbelievable list of recipes : Pani câ meusa (Dialect from Palermo)The first c ..read more

And 1...2...3... here's the second article on the Italian music of the 70s! Spoiler alert: part of it was kind of trashy! Worldwide, the 70s were years of extreme creativity in music. The Rock'n'roll and the psychedelia from the 60s muted into hard rock thanks to bands such as the Black Sabbath, progressive, art rock, and metal. The ballrooms got filled with the newborn disco music, funk, and soul, and between folk, blues, and pop music the punk was born. The music industry became huge and the hottest places were of course London and New York, but what about Rome and Milan at that time? Let's ..read more

Languages are filled with tiny words. In Italian, some of these words are called prepositions and are constantly used to connect various parts of sentences. Prepositions connect nouns, adjectives, or phrases to express directions, possession, limitations, and much more. In this article, we will focus on the preposition 'di'. One of the first prepositions presented to new Italian learners is the preposizione 'di'. This monosyllabic word is used in basic questions such as : 'di dove sei?' [where are you from?] or 'di chi è questo...?' [ Whose is this...?], and many others. It is also one of the ..read more

Subjunctive? Congiuntivo? oh no, another tense! And the worst thing is that you find different names based on the book you're reading - even online is a mess! Let's make a bit of clarity starting with a new 'modo verbale' and a new set of tense with this introduction on the modo congiuntivo. Today we're diving into the wild world of the 'modo congiuntivo' (often described as subjunctive in grammar books). This mood is a set of verbs both fascinating and a little bit intimidating: the modo congiuntivo. If you're an Italian learner, you've probably heard of this elusive mood, but may not be ent ..read more

Some rules are generally known, and sometimes there are procedures to follow. Let's pretend you want to learn how to make pizza. You will likely look for a recipe and (if it is a good one!) you will have to read it in Italian. There are several ways to explain processes, or give indications in Italian, and one of these is the use of the impersonal si. When do we use it? This structure comes really handy when you have to explain general rules or, as you've already read, procedures such as recipes. To give you a clear idea of what we are talking about, let's consider two different situations ..read more

This time we will explore another aspect of the ninth art, the more introspective but still highly enjoyable world of the graphic novels in Italian. Zerocalcare is the most known Italian comic artist and brought to the mainstream public the joy of reading comics! In this article we will continue our journey through the world of Italian 'Fumetti', a tradition more than a simple genre, that helped to shape the Italian pop culture of the last century. Zerocalcare is a popular Italian comic artist and writer whose works have gained immense popularity in Italy and around the world. Born as Michele ..read more

When learning Italian is important to become able to express the idea of possession of something. It would be almost pointless to learn how to describe objects if we are not able to attribute the property of those to someone, right? In this article, we are going to talk about the use of possessives in Italian. You love Italy (that's probably why you ended up here!). Let's imagine you are at the airport in Rome and you can't find your luggage! How could you ask for that? Let's take a step back what are the 'aggettivi possessivi'? This grammatical category includes words that are used to determ ..read more