Colloquial Italian 2

The Next Step in Language Learning

Sylvia Lymbery, Sandra Silipo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317305255
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Languages
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Do you know Italian already and want to go a stage further? If you're planning a visit to Italy, need to brush up your Italian for work, or are simply doing a course, Colloquial Italian 2 is the ideal way to refresh your knowledge of the language and to extend your skills.

Colloquial Italian 2 is designed to help those involved in self-study; structured to give you the opportunity to listen to and read lots of modern, everyday Italian, it has also been developed to work systematically on reinforcing and extending your grasp of Italian grammar and vocabulary.

Key features of Colloquial Italian 2 include:

• Revision material to help consolidate and build up your basics
• A wided range of contemporary authentic documents, both written and audio
• Lots of spoken and written exercises in each unit
• Highlighted key structures and phrases, a Grammar reference and detailed answer keys
• A broad range of situations, focusing on day to day life in Italy.

Audio material to accompany the course is available to download free in MP3 format from www.routledge.com/cw/colloquials. Recorded by native speakers, the audio material features the dialogues and texts from the book and will help develop your listening and pronunciation skills.

1 Presentiamoci!

In this unit you will

• ◗ meet some Italians
• ◗ check your knowledge of the form and use of the present tense:
• ◗ regular verbs
• ◗ look at the use of da and the present tense
• ◗ revise numbers and dates
• ◗ practise talking about yourself

Dialogues

Sandra interviews two fellow Italians living in England.

Exercise 1

The interviews which follow are recorded and can be accessed through the companion website. We suggest you:

• read the questions below
• listen to the recording once or twice without looking at the written text
• try to answer the questions
• listen again, this time looking at the text

You can check your answers in the Key to exercises at the back of the book.

1. Whose family name doesn’t sound Italian at all? Is it?
2. Which speaker knows three foreign languages?
3. Which speaker has been living in England for less than a year?

Dialogue 1 (Audio 1: 2)

TERESA Mi chiamo Teresa, sono italiana, sono di Napoli, sono nata a Napoli, e adesso vivo qui a Norwich da più di cinque anni, in Inghilterra. Studio all’università dell’East Anglia e faccio un dottorato.

SANDRA In che cosa?

TERESA In traduzione letteraria.

SANDRA Quindi conosci le lingue?

TERESA Conosco l’inglese, il francese e il greco moderno.

Francesca

Dialogue 2 (Audio 1: 3)

FRANCESCA Mi chiamo Francesca, Francesca Tonzig, sono di Padova, ho 28 anni, e vivo qui a Norwich per studio, per motivi di studio.

SANDRA Da quando?

FRANCESCA Da Pasqua. Quindi sono . . . quanti? . . . sei mesi.

SANDRA II tuo cognome non suona italiano.

FRANCESCA Allora il mio cognome . . . come primo impatto non sembra italiano. E’ perché viene da una città che si chiama Gorizia, che è vicina al confine con la Slovenia. Quindi ha qualche radice slava, croata. In realtà ci sono molti cognomi di questo genere nell’area di Trieste, Trieste e Gorizia. Finiscono in ’ich’. Adesso non mi viene in mente nessun esempio . . . Ah sì però, tipo Sgombrovich. Sgombrovich è un giocatore di pallacariestro, che è italianissimo, però ha questo cognome che sembra quasi russo . . . in quell’area geografica, che è di frontiera, ci sono molte famiglie che sono completamente italiane, però il nome . . . sembra più slavo. In realtà sono famiglie italianissime.

Vocabulary ◆

ho 28 anni avere x anni	I am 28 (years old) to be x years old
non mi viene in mente	I can’t think of one (lit. one doesn’t come into my mind; ‘one’ being an example of a name)
tipo Sgombrovich	like Sgombrovich (tipo used instead of come is common in spoken Italian)
nome / cognome	first, given name/surname

Language points ◆

Revision of the present tense: form

Exercise 2

Check your knowledge of the present tense by completing the following sentences about the people you met above. Use the verbs listed in the box. They are not in the right order and can be used more than once.

Example: Teresa _____ italiana.
Teresa è italiana.

vivere conoscere venire finire essere fare avere sembrare chiamarsi studiare suonare

1. La prima persona _____ Teresa. _____ di Napoli ma adesso _____ a Norwich. _____ all’università, _____ un dottorato in traduzione letteraria, quindi _____ le lingue. _____ a Norwich da più di cinque anni.
2. Francesca un cognome che non suona italiano. Questo perche il suo cognome da Gorizia. Nell’area di Trieste ci molti cognomi che quasi russi perche in ’ich’. II cognome di Francesca in ’ig’, che e simile.

• • Check your answers in the Key to exercises at the back of the book. The present of regular verbs should be familiar to you. There are three main types, classified according to the ending of the infinitive: -are, -ere, -ire. The -ire group subdivides in the present tense. In the Grammar reference, in addition to a table showing the three types of verb, there is a list of common -ire verbs of each subgroup.
• • Verbs are traditionally set out in tables vertically in columns. We usually learn a verb ’going down’, e.g.: parlo, parli, parla, parliamo, parlate, parlano. Some people find it more useful to consider them ’going across’, e.g.: parlo, scrivo, dormo, finisco. This highlights the similarities and differences between the various types of regular verb.
• • Working across, you can see that there is no difference between the endings of some persons of the verb from one type to another:

1st person singular:	always ends in -o
2nd person singular:	always ends in -i
1st person plural:	always ends in -iamo

• You may find it helpful to highlight the differences between the verb types and concentrate on them.
• An important point: the verb ending carries information about the subject of the verb; in other words, it does what the words I, you, we, etc. do in English.

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