Italian Phrases for Dummies (Paperback)

You may have heard words from areas other than the kitchen, such as the following:

Words that sound familiar

In addition to the words that have crept into the language directly, Italian and English have many cognates. A cognate is a word in one language that has the same origin as a word in another and may sound similar. You can get an immediate picture of what cognates are from the following examples:

You probably understand much more Italian than you think you do, because Italian and English are full of cognates. To demonstrate, read this little story with some Italian words in it. They're so similar to the English words that you can easily understand them.

It seems impossibile (eem-pohs-see-bee-leh) to him that he is now at the aeroporto (ah-eh-rohpohr-toh) in Rome. He always wanted to come to this città (cheet-tah). When he goes out on the street, he calls a taxi (tah-ksee). He opens his bag to see if he has the medicina (meh-dee-chee-nah) that the dottore (doht-toh-reh) gave him. Going through this terribile traffico (tehr-ree-bee-leh trahf-fee-koh), he passes a cattedrale (kaht-the-drah-leh), some sculture (skool-too-reh), and many palazzi (pah-laht-tsee). All this is very impressionante (eem-prehs-see-oh-nahn-teh). He knows that this is going to be a fantastico (fahn-tah-stee-koh) journey.

Popular expressions

Every language has expressions that are used so often that they become routine. For example, when you give someone something and he says, "Thank you," you automatically reply, "You're welcome." When you familiarize yourself with these expressions and how to use them, you're on your way to becoming a confident speaker.

Table 1-1 shows you some of the most popular expressions in Italian.

CULTURAL WISDOM

Italians use the expression Permesso? every time they cross a threshold when entering a house or when passing through a crowd. A more familiar equivalent for "May I?" is Posso? (pohs-soh) (May I?; Can I?).

Mouthing Off: Basic Pronunciation

Italian provides many opportunities for your tongue to do acrobatics. In this section, we give you some basic pronunciation hints that are important both for surfing through this book and for good articulation when you speak Italian. (If you tried to read and pronounce Italian words in the English manner, Italian speakers would have problems understanding you, just as you may have trouble understanding Italians when they speak English.)

We'll start with the tough ones: vowels. Vowels are difficult because you have to cope with new sounds. Well, the sounds aren't that new, but the connection between the written letter and the actual pronunciation isn't the same as it is in English.

Italian has five written vowels: a, e, i, o, and u. The following sections tell you how to pronounce them.

The vowel "a"

When foreigners try to learn English, they are shocked to discover how many different sounds the English a can have. In Italian, the letter a has just one pronunciation: Think of the a sound in the English word far. The Italian a sounds just like that.

To prevent you from falling back to the other a sounds found in English, we transcribe the Italian a as (ah), as in casa (kah-zah) (house).

The vowel "e"

Forget all you know about the English e. Think of the sound in the French word gourmet (you don't pronounce the t). This sound comes very close to the Italian e. In this book, we transcribe the e sound as (eh), as in peso (peh-zoh) (weight).

The vowel "i"

The Italian i is pronounced (ee), as in the English word see. Here are a couple of examples:

The vowel "o"

The Italian o is pronounced as in the English (from the Italian) piano. Therefore, we list the pronunciation as (oh), as in dolce (dohl-cheh) (sweet).

The vowel "u"

The Italian u sounds like the English (oo), as in zoo. Therefore, we use (oo) to transcribe the Italian u. Here are some sample words:

Consonants that sound the same in Italian as they do in English

Italian has the same consonants that English does. You pronounce most of them the same way, but a few have noteworthy differences. We start with the easy ones and look at those that are pronounced identically:

Some consonants don't really exist in Italian, except in some foreign words that have entered the language:

The consonant "c"

The Italian c has various sounds depending on which letter follows it:

This pronunciation scheme sounds terribly complicated, but it really isn't. Here we present it in another way:

casa colpa cuore che chiave = k cena cibo certo cioccolata ciao = ch

The consonant "g"

The Italian g behaves the same as the c. Therefore, we present it the same way:

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