Far be it from me to criticise Italians for their English, this one comes from the locals themselves. I have been an English teacher in Italy and congratulate myself that none of my students would produce anything quite as creative as this (or perhaps just a few…). The photo forms part of a new series for our friends at 06blog.it, a blog dedicated to life in Rome.

This funny photo comes from a sign in a toilet of a restaurant in via della Pace, in the heart of one of Rome’s tourist districts. Our Italian colleagues are describing it as a “linguistic fantasy”, but one that we appreciate for amusing us.

Source | 06blog.it

Continue reading: Italian English: "customers gentile" and other fables

This is an oldie but a goodie: Monty Python Italian lessons. In hyperbolic style, Giuseppe answers all the questions in fluent Italian and translates, and there’s an interruption from a German getting the wrong class, before someone pulls out the guitar for the stereotypical serenade. If you’ve got any funny Italian videos, send them on!!

Continue reading: Video: Monty Python Italian lessons

We were going to write some stuff on Italian men and women, but until we get around to doing that, we may as well examine the gendered nouns of the language. For English speakers learning the Italian language, there are many hurdles to get over.

While Italian verbs are a mine field of complications, nouns also provide their own little tricky elements. English is great - everything is neutral (which perhaps reflects something about our sex lives too), but in Italian as in other romance languages, you have to get used to the idea that a chair is female, but a cat is male.

So as a review: feminine singular article is “la”, plural is “le”. Masculine singular is “il” and plural is “i” and then there is also “lo” and “gli”, but we’ll get to that another time. While the rule is actually that the article and not the ending of the noun determines its gender, you can often look a the ending (”a” for feminine, “o” for masculine) to understand in which camp you’re standing.

But there are always exceptions to the rules and sometimes there are more exceptions to rules. So what do you do? Learn by heart: it’s “la” radio, and “il” cinema. The biggest problem is when the nouns choose to swap gender halfway through. So you can have one masculine arm (il braccio) but two feminine ones (le braccia). And the same goes for fingers, ears etc. You gotta love learning Italian.

Photo | Flickr

Continue reading: Learning to speak Italian: guide to gendered nouns