Italian Language

ART + CULTURE

COMMUNITY

What does the name Florence/Firenze mean?

A look at the etymology of Florence and Firenze.

NEWS

Scuola Leonardo da Vinci wins international prize as Best Italian Language School in Italy

An Italian language school in Florence has been awarded as the best place to learn the language. Find out more.

NEWS

Work to begin on Italian Language Museum in Florence

The museum will celebrate the long history of the Italian language, from 960 to Dante and Petrarch and the modern day.

COMMUNITY

What’s new at Europass Italian Language School in Florence

Italian-Brazilian Rafael Tronquini, communication manager at Europass Italian Language School, talks to The Florentine about what’s new at the popular institution in Florence, including reduced class sizes, online offerings and ...

COMMUNITY

The joy of learning Italian well

The Italian Dream   Close your eyes and try to imagine how nice it would be to be able to understand and speak Italian once and for all, just as ...

ART + CULTURE

Saving Italian words in piazza Santa Croce

The #paroledasalvare campaign is attracting word lovers to Florence’s piazza Santa Croce, the latest stop on Bologna-based dictionary publisher Zanichelli’s nationwide tour. The aim is to save more than 3,000 ...

COMMUNITY

Learning Italian: more than a language

Italian, like all languages do for their respective cultures, conveys an essence of what it means to be Italian that cannot be fully understood using other languages.

NEWS

On the name “Blue”

On May 22 in Milan, Justice Paola Barbara Folci ruled that a child will be allowed to keep her name: Blue. This was by no means a foregone conclusion.

COMMUNITY

Accent chameleons

Accents have never been my forte. When I was 13, a haughtier, more New Yorker version of me, charged with the occasional cawfee and wata slip-ups, took off for summer ...

COMMUNITY

Taking my Italian from zero to hero

For the months leading up to my studies in Florence, I crammed Italian vocab, conjugations and grammar without a teacher or practice partner.

FOOD + WINE

On “gottino”

There’s a pocket-sized enoteca in NYC’s “the Village” that serves Italian wines by the glass: its name is Gottino. In Pontassieve, my hometown that regularly sleeps, miniscule pizzeria Da Sandrino ...

FOOD + WINE

On “mescita”

If you’ve ever eaten in San Niccolò, likely it was a hearty Florentine affair among amici at the Osteria Antica Mescita. On the table a fiasco flowing with rough-around-the-edges red ...

COMMUNITY

How learning Italian made me “pazza”

It is not just the Italian language that has made me crazy: some responsibility has to go to Florence.

COMMUNITY

Bischero

The Tuscans talk, Bob Hesse believed, the way most people spend money. And whether the speaker is stingy or lavish, they are always clear about how much their words are ...

ART + CULTURE

How to talk like an Italian millennial

If you are new to town, have happened to eavesdrop on young Italians chatting away and heard the same phrases used over and over again, then you are probably wondering ...

COMMUNITY

Ancestors

The Flintstones are known as “Gli antenati” in Italy. And though half of the Hanna and Barbera duo was of Italian descent, their cartoon dubbers were apparently unaware that “ancestors” ...

COMMUNITY

The difference

There is something about the phrase “I live in Italy” that makes amicable strangers act like you’ve just announced you’ve won the jackpot. After their excitement dies down, the “inevitable” ...

COMMUNITY

A horse is a horse

Francesco is a filmmaker and he and I have a good working relationship, unless you count the fact that he is the parade and I am the rain. A peaceable ...

COMMUNITY

Go figure

Life in the bel Paese begins with appreciating la bella vita. You know you’re an advanced student of Italian integration, however, when you’ve grasped the concept of la bella figura. ...

ART + CULTURE

Creative literal translations of Italian idioms

Director of The Florentine Marco Badiani speaks great English, but, when it comes to idiomatic phrases, his choice is to be the king of the “detto non detto”, offering creative ...

COMMUNITY

The sarebbe spectrum

That third person singular, conditional tense sarebbe did not fill me with confidence.

COMMUNITY

Some say love

I spent February 14 in a banquet hall in Venice’s campo San Samuele, across from a palace whose facade Casanova once climbed to reunite with the neighborhood’s most ravishing Rapunzel. ...

COMMUNITY

Rosewater and the Seven Dwarves

At the age of 22, Italian citizenship in hand, I decided to apply for my very first concorso statale. If you don’t know how to feel about this first sentence, ...

LIGHT MODE
DARK MODE