toms

Started learning maybe a week ago, got a book a few friends recommended to me (Hugo in 3 months) just spent a few weeks learning about the grammar, verbs etc doesnt look too bad to be honest But expect many many questions from me haha

lindaf

How can I learn to prounounce the rolling r in Italian!!

Arrivederci, forno, carne to name but a few - I can't roll the r the way the Italians do. It wouldn't be so bad but lots of Italians keep trying to help me by getting me to repeat and repeat the words

indiebird

hmmm I can't do it either, or say 'gli' as a stand alone word. Apparently it's ok when i say 'aglio' but not on it's own. Any suggestions would be appreciated by me too.

PAT M

Gli - It was likened to the sound hall-yard (the middle part ll followed by y) when I was taught it, the rolling r is very difficult, you sort of trill your tongue.

Lorna at Vicenza

I never ever liked saying gli as I knew it never came out just right. I'd hear other girls in the office saying things like "glielo passo" on the phone and I never did.
I always used to say something different like - "wait just a moment please."

indiebird

ah well I'll just keep saying hotel and three and thrifty and hefty which i love the sound of and the italians cannot say for toffee. I wonder if we just need to stick to what we do and not worry about all those things we can't do.... my daughter at 6 can do all these things and sound native when speaking english but also native when speaking italian too. Lucky madam!!

.Ariel.

It's the first time I read this thread

I always had great difficulty saying "glielo" too

Gordoc

I have been learning for 3 weeks (just moved down to Marche regione).
I go to a local language school and write phonetically each word or phrase.
For Gli I think of Yeast = Yea(st)

Its the artciles which get me de+il etc etc
I have an Italian fiancee and all of her non english speaking friends are brilliant and so kind in helping me with my italian, but i am realising that there are SO SO many ways of saying different things with teh same words I get very confused very easily.

Funny though...
I was confused between Pomereggio and Pomodorro and spent a few days saying Tomorrow Tomato... lol

PAT M

My daughter in law made me roar with laughter when visiting a paediatrician called Dottoressa Scatolini and asking for Dottorina Scatoletti. It was a very unintentional put down. She had only been in Rome for a few months and was still learning Italian when she walked into a shop to buy a cable for her PC and asked for a cavolo, she now speaks better Italian than I ever will now though.

indiebird

Fear not!! I make an idiot of myself nearly every day with my crappy italian and I've been here two years. I remember telling someone 'Sono stanca oggi perché ho bevuto troppo sta sera' this was in the morning and it was my neighbour. She looked at me a bit strange and nodded. It wasn't until afterwards I realised what I'd said and meant 'ieri sera'!!

If you think about it there are loads of ways in English to say the same thing too and we have loads of little phrases that are nonsense if you think about them logically. My italian friend kept a list of things that her English mother-in-law said that to her were nonsensical and then she looked them up in her English Grammar books and couldn't find them and then declared to me that her mother-in-law was ignorant. I can't remember them all but one was 'We're waiting on you.' She reckoned it didn't make sense to say this but it should have been 'we're waiting for you'. She wouldn't have it that it existed in English as it wasn't in any of her books!! Made sense to me though.... oh and her favourite was 'many happy returns of the day'. Her inlaws are highly intelligent people and I don't know why it annoys her so much, but it does, Maybe it's cos it makes her feel stupid, but I think all they are trying to do is enrich her English and sometimes they forget that things don't always compute when speaking to a non mother tongue speaker!! Frustrating isn't it though!!??

Beep

We want to change our garden a little and get rid of some of the grass and cover the area in tiles...I also want to plant a hedge..however when the garden man was here I told him we wanted to cover the garden in pipestrelle(bats) instead of piastrelle and plant a seppia(cuttlefish) instead of siepe...........I will remember those words now!!!

Gio

Yes...my OH said they lurved figi...... instead of fici ......hm. It caused an uproar An honest mistake gov....

Lorna at Vicenza

just as a written uproar - it is "fichi".

debra

that has given me the best laugh of the week, its nice to know I am not on my own. My biggest problem (apart from being lazy) is that in my town the locals all speak Sardo which is completely different to Italian and if I go to the next village it is a completely different dialect

Lorna at Vicenza

That's brilliant