Marino and Giuditta tell us how they ended up getting Covid, and what their symptoms were.

What symptoms did Giuditta and Marino have? And how did they handle their family duties?

Coronavirus affects people in different ways. Marino and Giuditta share their experiences and recount what they did on their own, to try to get better.

If you have never been tested for Covid-19, Giuditta and Marino give a good description of the process. And their youngest son had to be very brave.

It was a tough 72 days, but, as the title suggests, the family recovered, luckily. They think back on their time in isolation and what it felt like to come out the other side. Their story even made it into a local newspaper.

Daniela explains how some adverbs, depending on how they are used, will be regular or irregular in the comparative form.

Daniela discusses how journalists and the mass media often tack on -issimo to nouns and adverbial expressions, something which is not strictly correct but is prevalent nonetheless.

Daniela explains what are called "indefinite modes." They are indefinite because they don't refer directly to a person or object. They commonly occur in a subordinate clause, and we need the context of the main clause to give us that information. There are three forms: the infinitive, the past participle, and the gerund.

In Italian, there's not only a past participle, as in English, there is also a present participle. Many nouns and adjectives we use every day come from this tense, as well as from the past participle.

In this segment, Daniela talks about the gerund. As you will see, in Italian, the gerund is often used by itself, whereas in English we need an extra word before it — a conjunction or preposition. We are on more familiar ground when Daniela talks about using a gerund with the verb stare (to be) to form what we call the present continuous or present progressive.

Daniela gives us some more examples of gerunds used in subordinate clauses. Asking ourselves what questions the gerund answers can help us understand its role in a sentence.

After summing up about the passive voice, Daniela goes on to talk about some other related constructions. It's important to remember that the passive is formed with transitive verbs only. But when we don't have a named subject or agent, we have a few other ways to make a sentence passive-like. One way uses the famous particella (particle) si. Si is used for so many things in Italian that it is bound to create confusion for learners, even advanced learners. Don't worry, part 3 of the lesson will explain further. Another way uses the verb andare (to go) to indicate something that must be done. Here too, the stress is on the action, not the subject or agent.

In a sentence, the main clause can stand on its own, but there can also be a subordinate or dependent clause. Today's lesson addresses the causal subordinate clause, which gives the reason for the action in the main clause. Conjunctions such as perché (because) dato che (given that) are used to join the two clauses.

Don't be scared off by fancy names of clauses and parts of speech. Daniela is just showing us different ways of saying the same thing, but sometimes one way is clearer than the other, especially when the subject changes from main to subordinate clause.

Italian has an amazingly long list of conjunctions or locutions that mean "although," "despite," and similar words. Daniela explains what a concession subordinate clause is and gives us several examples.