August article of Italian School NJ for We The Italians: "Let's go sea”

It’s finally August! Time to rest and go on vacation. This year has been a crazy mess, and probably some of you won’t be able to go on vacation, and many people won’t be able to come to Italy, so I thought I’d bring the Italian sea to you. Let’s take a look at some of the many Italian expressions with mare, “sea.”

The most common is probably un mare di – a sea of – which means “a lot of.” It can be used to describe a situation, like when it’s hot and humid out and there are tons of mosquitoes, you can say there is un mare di zanzare. You’ll often hear as essere un mare di guai – a sea of troubles – Read more…

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Natalia Bernini
June article of Italian School NJ for We The Italians: "Ne – Yeah, “about that…” It is time to talk about grammar again

t’s time to talk grammar again. This time I would like to tackle a topic that seems pretty hard to grasp if you are learning Italian, but it comes natural to Italian speakers, even though the majority of us would not know how to explain it. “What is it?”, you ask. It’s Ne.

I must say that this topic is pretty advanced, so if you’re a beginner, don’t worry, it’s normal if you don’t fully understand how to use it. But I still suggest you read the article, because you will be more acquainted with this subject when you finally encounter it in the wild, and it will be easier to feel comfortable using it. read more…

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May article of Italian School NJ for We The Italians: New Italian-glish words

Today, I am going to talk about a topic that’s a bit controversial, but very current: the Italianization of words. I’m talking about the current trend many Italians have of inventing new Italian words in order to replace existing words with “Italianized” English words. In this article you’ll find some examples that will help you better conceptualize what I’m talking about.

Let’s start with some verbs. As you know most verbs in Italian end in -are, -ere, -ire. When dealing with loan words and adaptations, all languages have a preferred form to imply. And in Italian, the go-to form is -are. So, as you’ll see, most English words adapted to verbs end in -are. read more…

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April article for We The Italians: Tuscan Tune

I Welcome back to our tour of Italy. This time we are landing in Tuscany, the beautiful hilly region famous for its charming hills and bucolic landscapes. But if you ask me, it’s for its absolutely lovely way of speaking and accent.

As I told you a long long time ago, when I first introduced the Italian language to you, Italian comes from the Tuscan dialects. This makes it a little difficult to define read more…

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Are you sure you are just going “to”?

People probably have been telling you how Italian is hard because of its verbs, tenses, endings, and articles. But what about prepositions? Has anyone ever told you anything about them? Well, well, well. Let me just tell you about them.

            To begin with, what are prepositions? They are usually short words that precede a noun or pronoun and that express the relation with another word or element

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