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Lesson Introduction
You know that place, you know, the one we used to go to? The one with the awesome, you know? That one...? As you may have guessed today's lesson is about, well, nothing, but you'll learn some important questions that you can use in just about any situation!
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billkaulitzlover says
September 3, 2008
That "Boh" sounded really funny hahaha
i didn't know what that mean until now :D
sonobono says
September 4, 2008
When I lived in Baltimore, Maryland, they had a local beer called Boh, short for National Bohemian; ciao, Al
xtna says
September 5, 2008
Hi, all. New to the boards, totally new to Italian, but happy to be here! :)
I have a newbie question about the letter "c." Listening to the dialogues, "veCCHia," "Come," "CHiama," "CHi," "Cosa"...these all have a sound resembling the letter "k" in English. But "diCe" has a "ch" sound. If I'm reading the material without listening to the dialogue, how do I know how it's supposed to be pronounced? Initially, I thought that if the "c" is followed by a vowel, it'd be a "k" sound, but "come" and "cosa" disprove that. Is there a rule that I should be following regarding this?
Thanks!
Cornelia says
September 6, 2008
Hi xtna,
yes, there is a pronunciation rule: it depends on the sort of vowel following the "c": a/o/u result in "k"-pronounciation, e/i in "ch".
BTW it is the same for Spanish and (supposedly) Latin.
This is the reason why you sometimes have to insert an additional letter in conjugation: you want to retain the pronunciation, but with the usual ending it would change to the other variant.
Example: cercare=to search (first "ch", then "k").
I search = cerco (first "ch", then "k")
you search = cerchi: ending is 'i', but then it would become ci="ch"-pronunciation, so you put h in between, because Italian written-ch ist always "k".
Sorry maybe I should have picked another example.
xtna says
September 6, 2008
Cornelia: "vowel following the "c": a/o/u result in "k"-pronounciation, e/i in "ch"."
No worries, that was a great explanation (and very succinctly put)! Thank you! :)
galeacharles says
September 15, 2008
Sono un studente. Provo di imparare l'italiano e sto leggendo la tua noti.
catherinem says
September 15, 2008
Benvenuto, galeacharles! Spero che il nostro sito ti possa aiutare!
I'd like to add that you should say sto leggendo i vostri commenti to mean that you're reading (our) comments.
Catherine
acroft says
January 30, 2009
Hmm. . . Exercises 2 and 3 seem to be missing. Nothing there except the initial direction at the start and the "view score" at the end. Content-free!
Does something simple need to be done by ItalianPod to restore access to questions that are probably not actually missing but just disconnected?
I value all parts of these PodCasts. The exercises are easy, but still manage to keep me alert through the Expansion section.
Alice
carasusanetta says
August 22, 2010
Boh suona come un rutto!