Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
Luca Zingaretti, known for his playing Salvo Montalbano in the TV series based on Camilleri's detective novels, makes an appeal to prevent drilling in the Mediterranean. The World Wildlife Fund message was prepared for the 2016 referendum. Voters chose to ban drilling.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Italy
Claudio is given a list of Italian places and has to say whether they're in the north or the south of Italy.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Italy
This is a great chance to practice bone and muscle vocabulary, since that's what the pairing is about in this episode. The first contestant is named Santo. "Santo" means "saint," so there's some joking about it being just his name, not a description. Carlo, contestant number two is a musician and works in music therapy. He sings a few phrases of an aria from the Puccini opera Tosca.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Italy
Confindustria is the main trade association for Italy's manufacturing and service sectors. This inspirational video was produced for its annual meeting, and Italian luminaries from Marco Polo to Renzo Piano are invoked to tell the story of Italian innovation.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Italy
We can see that the battle against using "Lei," the common, formal, second-person form of address, was taken very seriously by the fascists. In fact they went too far when it came to a popular women's magazine called "Lei" (she, her).
Difficulty: Intermediate
Italy
Mussolini continues to get rid of any traces of foreign words, and even mounts an exhibit against the use of the common formal second person singular address "Lei" (you) in favor of "Voi." See this lesson about "Voi" to get some background.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy Sicilian
Together with his dog Zara, Adriano commemorates Mother Teresa of Calcutta and her teachings on animals. Mother Teresa was canonized by Pope Francis on September 4, 2016.
Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
Italy
Sara, an attractive girl from the province of Perugia, is up next. In the pairing game, she has to determine whether a traditional dish is cooked or raw.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Italy
A great deal of effort went into purging foreign words from the Italian language under the fascist regime. Newspapers, magazines, and book publishers were at the forefront of the effort and were tasked with finding Italian replacements for foreign words and expressions. Many fascist-era terms have fallen by the wayside, but some succeeded and are still in use today. As an example, the word manifesto [poster] was successfully introduced to replace the French term affiche.
Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
Italy
Francescopaolo, the contestant, is presented with a long list of Italian winners of either a Nobel Prize or an Academy Award Oscar, and has to choose which prize they were awarded.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Italy
Arianna starts work at Phones and More. Her first task is to call a list of publications to find out about ad space. When she gives her email address, she uses the word chiocciola [snail] for the @ sign. Koreans also say "snail shell" when they see an @ sign, while the Dutch see a monkey's tail, and the Norwegians see a pig's tail.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Italy
The segment looks at how Mussolini patterned his fiercely nationalist rhetoric after poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, while harkening back to the glory of Imperial Rome. The song in the segment refers to Balilla, an 18th century Genoese boy. In 1746, Balilla threw a stone at an Austrian official of the occupying Hapsburg Empire, which led to the War of the Austrian Succession.
Difficulty: Advanced
Italy
L'Eredità [Inheritance] is an immensely popular daily quiz show on the RAI [pronounced rye], the Italian public TV and radio network. This episode benefits the Telethon Foundation, which provides funds for research into genetic diseases, and is based on Jerry Lewis's Telethon. To understand the play on words they use at a certain point, see the various meanings of macchina here. Learn more about this Italian game show here.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Italy
Arianna is on tenterhooks waiting for the phone call that could change the course of her life. When she can't bear it any longer, the phone rings. No caller ID.
Difficulty: Adv-Intermediate
Italy
In World War I, Italians who up until then had spoken their regional dialects, found themselves fighting side by side against a common enemy. But Mussolini was interested in fighting the internal enemy.
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