1. Education

Italian in English, English in Italian

Italian words have been migrating to English over the course of many centuries, so you'll be happy to discover that you already know quite a bit of Italian. And because of the growing influence of American culture, it's a two-way linguistic street.

Italenglish / Anglitaliano
Italian Language Spotlight10

Verbi Difficili

Friday June 14, 2013

Is the imperfect form of benedire benedicevo or benedivo? What is the correct form of the past participle of esigere? When should stare be used in place of essere? The Accademia della Crusca attempts to resolve questions concerning verbi difficili—Italian verbs with irregular forms or perceived as tricky. Many of the issues concern the passato remoto and participio passato forms of certain verbs as well as the use of verbs such as affacciare, iniziare, and soddisfare.

Adotta una Parola

Wednesday June 12, 2013

La Società Dante Alighieri, in accordo con quattro dei più importanti dizionari dell'uso dell'italiano contemporaneo, lancia sul proprio sito una campagna per adottare le parole della lingua italiana.

Ogni partecipante, registrandosi sul sito, può candidarsi come custode di una parola a scelta. Lo scopo dell'iniziativa è quello di sensibilizzare il pubblico ad un uso corretto e consapevole delle parole, favorire una conoscenza più ampia del lessico, monitorare l'uso di alcuni termini, e più in generale promuovere la varietà dell'espressione nel mondo della comunicazione globale.

Un'Analisi della Blogosfera

Tuesday June 4, 2013

If you're captivated by big data, or are curious about the Italian blogosphere, social media analyst Vincenzo Cosenza has released his State of the Net 2013. Using data visualization, Cosenza provides an overview of the Internet in Italy, including infrastructure, users, blogs, and social media.

Previously, he conducted an analisi della blogosfera that aimed to understand the "information ecosystem" formed by the connections between blogs in Italy, producing a series of visualizations that mapped relationships between blogs and color-coded them by theme.

Alteration

Tuesday May 28, 2013

In Italian, alteration (alterazione) is a specific type of suffixation, in which the basic meaning of the word does not change in substance, but rather some particular aspect (quantity, quality, judgment of the speaker). Examples include: casetta, casona, casaccia (all are derived from the term casa—house).

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