Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
Relative pronouns — such as "who," "that," and "which" — connect a main clause to a subordinate clause, which in this case, is a relative clause. Here, relative pronouns function as pronouns and conjunctions at the same time. In Italian, some relative pronouns vary according to gender and number, and others don't. Daniela guides us through.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
Daniela shows us how to use the relative pronoun che. In English this can be translated as either "that," "which," or "who," depending on various English grammatical factors.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
Today the lesson is about Lombardy. Anna is well-prepared, but her maestra seems to be affected by la nebbia (the fog). Is it the Milanese climate? Or could it be something else?
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
Daniela introduces the relative pronoun "which." It's handy to know because it doesn't change according to gender or number.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
Daniela introduces relative pronouns il quale, la quale, i quali and le quali (that, who, which) that are a bit tricky to use because they have to agree with the gender and number of the nouns they refer to. We need them when, otherwise, the sentence would be ambiguous.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
These relative pronouns can be very tricky for English speakers. Daniela gives us some good reasons (with examples) to prefer the more difficult, but more specific il quale, la quale, i quali and le quali, which can all mean "that, "which," "who," or "whom," depending on the context.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
Idiomatic expressions are often difficult to translate or to find in a dictionary. Marika helps us out, using clips from La Ladra already present in Yabla's library.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
To finish up about relative pronouns, Daniela illustrates how we can use the adverb dove (where) to replace the relative pronoun in cui or nel quale, both of which mean "in which."
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
Here are some more idiomatic expressions from La Ladra. They involve music, horses, and sweets.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
Daniela explains how to turn a positive statement into a negative one, and how to form a negative question and its negative answer. The magic word is non (not).
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
In the last lesson we learned to place non (not) before the verb in a negative sentence, but when there are other words involved, it gets a bit more complicated, especially when we have object pronouns in the mix.
Difficulty: Intermediate
Italy
The popular TV series Commissioner Manara takes place in Tuscany, so in this video, Marika explains some of the peculiarities of Tuscan speech. She also gives some important tips about using articles when referring to family members.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
To express negation, the adverb non (not) can precede not only nouns, but verbs, adjectives, pronouns, prepositions, and adverbs, as well. Daniela shows us how.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
There are a couple of words in particular that Italians like to repeat over and over again to forcefully encourage an action. Marika talks about these and other repeated words in the Commissioner Manara series.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
Double negatives are, in fact, allowed in Italian. And Daniela shows us how there can be multiple negations in one phrase. In English, where double negatives are not allowed, we have extra words to get around this rule. We use, for example, "it's not anything" or" not ever," instead of the incorrect "not nothing" or "not never." But it's important to be able to manage all these negatives in perfect tenses where we have a conjugated auxiliary verb and a past participle, and that is what Daniela explains in this lesson.
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