Daniela teaches Italian in a classroom, complete with blackboard, chalk, eraser, and students. Her lessons are very popular and people love her spontaneity and teaching style. She addresses grammatical topics one by one, geared to both beginning and intermediate level students.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy Neapolitan
Daniela continues her lesson on necessity or need, providing examples with an impersonal subject. In English the impersonal can be expressed with "one" in the third person: "one needs," or by using the passive voice:"Something needs to be done." And in informal speech, we might use "you" or "we.": "you need to..."
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
Daniela discusses the imperfect tense for verbs ending in -are, -ere, and -ire.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
Daniela concentrates on the modal verbs essere [to be] and avere [to have] in the imperfect tense.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
Daniela discusses how the imperfect is used to describe actions in the past that are happening contemporaneously.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
Daniela shows us how to conjugate the imperfect tense of the following irregular verbs: dire (to say), fare (to make, to do), bere (to drink), condurre (to drive), and porre (to pose). She gives us a helpful tip for remembering how.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
Daniela starts her four-part series on the passato remoto [remote or absolute past] verb tense. This tense is broadly used in the south of Italy, and infrequently in the north.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
Daniela discusses the verbs finire [to finish] and essere [to be] in the remote past tense.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
Daniela explains how to conjugate the remote past of the verbs avere (to have) and prendere (to take).
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
Daniela explains three situations in which the remote past may be used and gives us examples of each situation. But don't worry, this tense is not mandatory and Daniela suggests the passato prossimo (present perfect) as a valid alternative. Note: The passato prossimo is constructed like the English present perfect tense (with a helping verb and past participle), but is used more like the English past simple.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
In this lesson we start looking at the comparative forms of adjectives. Unlike English, where we have a dedicated comparative and superlative form, Italian makes use of adverbs più "more" or meno "less" and the prepositions or conjunctions di (of, than) or che (than, that) in addition to the adjective itself. Daniela shows us how this works.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
Daniela talks more about when to use che (that, than) or di (of, than) as comparative words.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
When two like things are compared, as in the sentence "You are as old as I am," it's called a comparison of equality. Daniela explains how this works in Italian.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
Daniela continues with examples of how tanto and quanto are used together in comparisons, as well as the pairing of così and come. She also provides examples involving quantities, where the word sets are not interchangeable.
Difficulty: Beginner
Italy
Daniela explains how adverbs tanto and quanto are always used together in comparisons. Likewise, così and come are always paired together. “Billy is as tall as Tom” would be an equivalent construction in English. She also focuses on adjectives that have 2 comparative forms like buono (good), cattivo (bad, nasty), and grande (big).
Difficulty: Intermediate
Italy
Daniela explains how some adverbs, depending on how they are used, will be regular or irregular in the comparative form.
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