Italian Grammar Archives | SempreLearn | Always Learn New Things Everyday

How to introduce yourself in Italian? | Come ci si presenta in italiano? | Giới thiệu bản thân bằng tiếng Ý

By admin on Wednesday, August 7, 2019

Today we will learn some basic expressions to introduce yourself to Italian. We will cover the following main points in this unit:

Introducing your name
Exchanging “nice to meet you” after self-introduction
Asking “Where are you from”

Let’s get started.

Introducing your name

To ask the name of someone, you can say:

Come ti chiami? (informal)
Come si chiama? (formal)

And they can reply accordingly:

Sono [name] – I am ….
Mi chiamo [name] – I am ….

Exchanging “Nice to meet you” after introducing your name

After introducing names, you usually give a hand shake in exchange to people while saying one of the following expressions:

Piacere!
Piacere di conoscerti!
Piacere di conoscerla! (formal)

Where are you from?

Asking the origin of someone can be expressed in 2 different ways with respect to the main verbs are used, “essere” or “venire”.

Di dove sei? (informal) / Di dov’è? (formal)

Sono [nationality]

Sono di [city/ region/ country]

E.g.

Sono Vietnamita.

Sono italiana.

Sono di Roma.

Da dove vieni?

Vengo da [city]

Vengo dal/dalla [region]

Vengo dalla/dall’ [country]

Note: we must use the article before the names of countries or regions in Italian in the answer with verb “venire”

E.g.

Vengo da Roma.

Vengo dal Lazio.

Vengo dall‘Italia.

Summary

In this tutorial, we learn how to introduce yourself and express kindly greetings in the first meeting. We also learn some useful phrases to ask the origin or provenance where people are from. This question is commonly used in the first meeting to break the ice while you can also prevent making too private questions or you are too nervous to talk. The reason is that each region or province in Italy has its own unique culture as well as dialect and Italian people are very proud of their origin and their province. After Italian give an answer where they are from, they usually keep talking lots of things related to their origin places. And if you have some background about their places, you will communicate easily with them. This is also proven that Italian people are considered very friendly.

If you have any questions about this tutorial, please feel free to write your comments below or send us an email to info@semprelearn.com. We will do our best to reply you as soon as possible. We hope you enjoy this tutorial and remember semprelearn. Always learn new things everyday.

About the author

Nguyen has studied in Italy since 2012. She is very passionate in learning Italian by exploring Italy’s rich culture, nature and local products. She finds herself fortunated to study and live in a beautiful country in the middle of the Mediterranean sea where it shares many similarities in culture with her homeland. She, therefore, launched this educational blog semprelearn.com to share her experience in studying Italian and other things.

Italian Grammar

How to say “hello” in Italian |Come si dice “hello” in italiano? | Nói “chào” trong tiếng Ý như thế nào?

By admin on Tuesday, August 6, 2019

In this post, we will introduce some useful phrases to greet and say goodbye people in Italian. The greeting phrases should be selected carefully depending on what time of day. Moreover, we should pay attention to the level of formality which is dependent on either an occasion or whom you are talking to. In this tutorial you will know about:

When to use formal/ informal speech
How to say greetings
How to say goodbye

Let’s get started.

When to use Informal/ formal speech

If you meet a friend, a colleague or a little boy or girl, you use informal expressions. However, if you go to a service location, for e.g. a bar, a restaurant, a hotel, you should use formal expressions to talk to the staff working there. This rule is also applied when you go to public administration offices, such as a hospital, commune offices, or when you talk to a senior person at your workplace or to a person you meet for the first time.

Salve/ Buongiorno/ Buon pomeriggio/ Buona sera/ Ciao

Salve literally means “hello”. “Salve” is used for greeting people in a formal way at any time of day.

Buongiorno literally means “hello” (formal) or “good morning” (informal). Buongiorno is commonly used from morning until after lunch. In particular, buongiorno with the meaning “hello” is used as a formal way to greet people for the first meeting or for a situation in which the formality speech is preferable, such as, a bar, post office, hospital, etc. On the other hand, buongiorno is also used to informally express “good morning” to friends, colleagues, family, etc..

Buon pomeriggio is used to say “good afternoon” from 13:00 to 17:00. In the South, it is commonly used after finishing lunch.

Buonasera is used to say “good evening” from 17:00 or 18:00 to 21:00.

Ciao, which means “hi” or “bye”, can be used to greet and goodbye people informally at any time of day.

Buona serata/ Buona notte/ Arrivederci/ ArrivederLa

Buona serata is used when saying goodbye in the evening when the time is still early with respect to the bed time.

Buona notte is used to exchange “good night” before going to bed.

Arrivederci is used to say “goodbye” in a formal way.

Arrivederla also means “goodbye” but it has an extra polite. This way of saying goodbye is primarily used in the shop, restaurant, and other public places.

Ciao, which means “bye”, is used to in an informal context.

Other words “a dopo” or “ci sentiamo/vediamo dopo” are commonly used to say bye and they will meet again shortly later in the same day.

Summary

In this tutorial, we have learnt several useful phrases for greetings in Italian. We also distinguished the level of formality in some Italian phrases and how to use them accordingly. In the next tutorial, we will show how to introduce oneself in Italian.

About the author

Italian Grammar

The Italian alphabet | L’alfabeto italiano | Bảng chữ cái tiếng Ý

By admin on Tuesday, August 6, 2019

As with many other languages, the first lesson we would like to start with is about the Italian alphabet letters. There are 21 Italian letters, namely 5 vowels and 16 Italian consonants. Besides, there are other 5 special letters that are used to express words originated from Latin and other languages. In the following, we present 26 letters in both uppercase and lowercase written forms; and their corresponding sound (IPA). Usually, one letter corresponds to one single sound. However, there are other letters that can represent more than one single sound, such as e, o, c, g, s, and z. Specially, for five foreign letters, j, k, w, x, and y, we pronounce them as their phonetic sounds in the languages from which they are originated.

Foreign letters j, k, w, x and y are pronouced with the corresponding sounds in their original languages as follows,

J, j (i lunga): it is pronounced as /dʒ/ for English words such as jeans /dʒinz/, jeep /dʒip/. Meanwhile, j in words originated from French is pronounced as /ʒ/ as in abat-jour /aˈbaˈʒur/.
K, k (cappa): it is pronounced as /k/ as the letter c in casa /ˈkasa/. The letter k can be found in many foreign words, such as karma /ˈkarma/, kayak /kaˈjak/, kaki /ˈkaki/.
W, w (doppia vu or doppia vi): it is pronounced as /v/ for words orginated from German, for instance, würstel /ˈvyrstəl/ . Meanswhile, we pronouce it as /w/ for english words, such as, welfare /ˈwel.feər/.
X, x (ics): it is pronounced as /ks/ , for e.g. taxi [ˈtaksi].
Y, y (ipsilon): it is pronounced as /j/, for e.g. yogurt /ˈjɔgurt/, yoga /ˈjɔga/. We sometimes find it pronounced as /ai/ in some English words, such as by-pass /ˈbaɪ.pɑːs/, nylon /ˈnaɪ.lɒn/.

Summary

In this tutorial, we learn twenty one Italian alphabet letters and other five extra foreign letters. We also show their corresponding sounds (IPA) and present some examples for the foreign letters whose sounds are determined by the languages from which they are originated.