Unlocking Italian with Paul Noble: Your key to language success with the bestselling language coach
“Naples” in Italian is:
Napoli
(nap-oh-lee)
So, with this in mind, how would you say “I have visited Naples”?
Ho visitato Napoli.
(o visit-art-oh nap-oh-lee)
The word for “Rome” in Italian is:
Roma
(roam-er)
So how would you say “I have visited Rome”?
Ho visitato Roma.
(o visit-art-oh roam-er)
Now, if I were to ask you how you would say simply “I visited Rome” rather than “I have visited Rome” you might not think you knew how to say that yet. However, you will be glad to hear that I would disagree with you because, in Italian, talking about what has happened in the past is far easier than it is in English. This is because “I visited Rome” and “I have visited Rome” are said in exactly the same way in Italian. I’ll show you what I mean.
Again, how would you say “I have visited Rome”?
Ho visitato Roma.
(o visit-art-oh roam-er)
I want you to now try to say “I visited Rome” bearing in mind that what you’re going to say is exactly the same as what you just said for “I have visited Rome”. So, “I visited Rome” will be:
Ho visitato Roma.
(o visit-art-oh roam-er)
As you can see, it is exactly the same. Italians do not make a distinction between the two. Effectively, you have got two English past tenses for the price of one. And actually it is even better than that.
You can now already correctly say “I have visited Rome” and “I visited Rome” because they are exactly the same in Italian. With this in mind, do you think you can make a lucky guess about how you might say “I did visit Rome”? Just take a wild guess!
Ho visitato Roma.
(o visit-art-oh roam-er)
Once again, it is exactly the same in Italian. “I have visited Rome”, “I visited Rome” and “I did visit Rome” are all said in precisely the same way. In fact this is one of the many wonderful things about Italian: you get three English tenses for the price of one Italian one! “I have visited Rome”, “I visited Rome” and “I did visit Rome” are all simply:
Ho visitato Roma.
(o visit-art-oh roam-er)
Let’s try this 3 For the Price of 1 Special Offer again now but this time with a different example.
To say “I have spent” in Italian, you will literally say “I have passed”, which in Italian is:
Ho passato
(o pass-art-oh)
“The weekend” in Italian is:
il weekend
(eel weekend)
So how would you say “I have spent the weekend” (literally “I have passed the weekend”)?
Ho passato il weekend
(o pass-art-oh eel weekend)
And how would you say simply “I spent the weekend” / “I passed the weekend”?
Ho passato il weekend
(o pass-art-oh eel weekend)
Just as “I visited Rome” and “I have visited Rome” are no different from one another in Italian, so “I spent the weekend” and “I have spent the weekend” are also no different from one another.
How do you think you would you say “I did spend the weekend”?
Ho passato il weekend
(o pass-art-oh eel weekend)
Again, you have three English past tenses for the price of one in Italian.
“I spent the weekend”, “I have spent the weekend”, “I did spend the weekend” – it’s all the same in Italian: “Ho passato il weekend”.
“In Rome” in Italian is:
a Roma
(a roam-er)
So how would you say “I have spent the weekend in Rome”?
Ho passato il weekend a Roma.
(o pass-art-oh eel weekend a roam-er)
And how would you say “I spent the weekend in Rome”?
Ho passato il weekend a Roma.
(o pass-art-oh eel weekend a roam-er)
And “I did spend the weekend in Rome”?
Ho passato il weekend a Roma.
(o pass-art-oh eel weekend a roam-er)
Time to steal some words!
Word Robbery Number 1
Let’s forget our weekend in Rome for just one moment now and start stealing some words. Around half the words in modern English have come into our language via Latin languages, such as Italian. Once you can identify them, you will have a large, instant, usable vocabulary in Italian. After all, why bother learning Italian vocabulary when you can simply steal it?
The first group of words we are going to steal are words that end in “ic” and “ical” in English.
Words like “romantic”, “fantastic”, “political”, “illogical” and so on.
There are around 750 of these in English and they are largely similar in Italian, except that in Italian they end in “ico” (pronounced “eek-oh”), becoming “romantico”, “fantastico”, “politico”, “illogico” and so on.
Let’s now see how we can use these to begin expanding our range of expressions in Italian!
Words stolen so far 750
Bearing in mind what we’ve just learnt in the Word Robbery above, let’s change the “ic” on the end of the English word “romantic” into “ico”.
Doing this, what will “romantic” be in Italian?
romantico
(roe-man-teek-oh)