Introduction to Italian: Lesson 2

You have to change that o to a when there is one but there are cases when there is no o so you don’t change anything. For example:

English in Italian is inglese.

Englese. It doesn’t matter whether you are male or female, you still say:

?I am English.|Sono inglese.

Same for French:

French in Italian is francese.

Say as woman:

?Are you French?|Sei francese?

Say as a man:

?Are you French?|Sei francese?

That’s good. Let’s now talk about speaking.

To speak in Italian is parlare.

You can remember this from words like parol or parole which exist in English.

Now, look at the word for you are which is sei. The ending is i. This is the ending for the you form.

If you apply the ending to the word parlare, you remove the ending of the infinitive which is are and add i so you get parli which is you speak.

Try saying:

?Do you speak Italian?|Parli italiano?

What about:

?Do you speak English?|Parli inglese?

Italian for to learn is imparare.

I don’t know why but I would always think of the word emperor to remember this word. Maybe you could think of learning to be an emperor or learning as a thing that emperors do. Alternatively, you could associate imparare with improve to remember it. Whatever floats your boat.

The ending is again are. How you would say:

?You learn French.|Impari francese.

Cool. Now, let’s look at words like the word sono. It has the typical ending for the I form. So, if imparare becomes impari for you because the ending for you is i, knowing that the ending for me is o, guess what I learn would be:

?I learn Italian.|Imparo italiano.

How would you say:

?I don’t speak English, I speak Italian.|Non parlo inglese, parlo italiano.

Italian for it is lo.

You use lo like you use it in usual sentences except you have it before the verb. How would you say:

?I learn it.|Lo imparo.

?I don’t learn it.|Non lo imparo.

Finally, when talking about things you speak, you might smuggle bene in the middle to say that you speak it well. Say:

?I speak Italian well.|Parlo bene italiano.

Just because bene is such a cool word.

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