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all beginner students of Italian tend to have the same questions and so here I am trying to answer the 10 most frequently asked questions I get as a teacher of Italian and hopefully they will be helpful to you now you've been watching our mini series for beginners and you have come to basically the end almost the end and you have learned a ton but there are things that keep coming to me as a teacher and let's see if I can answer one of your questions and keep in mind that the questions I'm going to answer are generic the question might look specific but the idea is that it applies to the whole topic the whole broader topic anyway let's begin with the first question
do I say bonjorno or bonjourna if I'm a woman so this question is generic about gender and it is confusing and let's deal with it quickly you need to understand what needs to change gender so let's let's go through the elements of the language now we have the vocabulary the words the nouns that refer to things you know like physical things chair house car and also abstract things like love and compassion all those are nouns they have their own gender and it will not change based on the user or the person who's been you know referring to that thing so you wouldn't change those words now let's look at bonzoorno that's a specific example but let's look at bonzerno why is bonjourno word that you wouldn't
change well because bonjour means good day if you look break it down it's one means well or good and then Jordan I mean today and so it's it's a phrase that refers to the day and the word for day is Journal which happens to be masculine it will always be masculine even if you're a woman but let's keep going with when you should do this so what other components do we have in a language well we have conjugated verbs we don't change those for the moment we don't change those so then we have those little bits and pieces like prepositions in two at four those ones they are just a little element of the language we don't touch those we have articles in Italian you've seen so many
we don't change those so what is left just adjectives oh we'll also have adverbs things like quickly or a lot we don't change those either so you really all you need to change is the adjective so you got to be aware of what is an adjective it's a quality there's something that describes something so I'll throw it past at you so let's think of the word when you meet somebody you will say piacere does that change well that wouldn't change for two reasons one is that it's a word that ends in a and therefore we don't change it because it applies to both genders but also we don't change it because a noun that means pleasure to meet you so you're actually saying a word that is a noun you're not describing yourself
it's not the same as I am pleased to meet you in that case we actually would change and I'll give it to you so the way we say that in Italian is Sono Nieto is an old-fashioned word for pleased if I'm a man I would say liato because that pleased is about me being pleased to meet you it's about me in that case as a man I would say sonolito the feminine version would be sonoliet right let's take the word for Bravo when would you say Bravo when somebody has performed something and has done a good job right then you got to be careful you are referring that adjective that quality to a human who could be either gender right and so you would have to say Bravo if the performer uses the masculine or Brava if you need to
use the feminine and that is the answer to do I use doesn't exist because we don't change the gender of Journal when do I use un and when do I use ill great question and this one is more it's basically about articles when do I use the definite articles those ones or the indefinite article and so on it's a matter of I'll do I'll give you two steps here one is kind of works is often the same as English and so here's an example in Italian Persona is a person que parla who speaks Italiano Italian right so the fact that you know a person in Italian is very similar it's una persona it's one person right it's a any person right it's generic which is different from I introduce you to la persona the person who speaks Italian now we have a
specific person so overall it works the same as English but here's the point the thing that I may have not told you in the lesson because it's just an introductory course here is that Italians tend to use the article the definite article a lot more than in English and so if in doubt my suggestion would be just use the article here are some examples where you always must use the article the definite article when with your English brain you wouldn't want to it's with verbs such as prendre so we will say means to like it's complicated but I'll skip that for this lesson we will say prendo la pizza margarita I'll get the margarita pizza with prendre you always have the definite article same with Volare one thing foreign so anything that you want you need to
have an article doesn't have to be definite now a strange case is with the verb parlare and I'm sure you've come across this and you're wondering do I say parlo Italiano or parlo Italiano well in that case you can use either one we're flexible in that case so you can use the article or not Manu you've said that in the combos CIA and Gia the I is silent and it's there to make the CH and the g sound to say things like cha and Ja but I am sure that I've heard words that break that rule like pharmacia Pharmacy geology and so on what gives this question is more about flexibility a language is a living thing and there will always be things that don't make sense that don't follow any rule or that
break all the rules and here's my encouragement to remind you that accept it yes usually we pronounce CIA as cha but if you come across a word and you are positive that it's Chia then that's how it is just say pharmacea because you would be wrong if you said fermacha so yeah it's more about understanding that not everything fits in a pattern and we'll have to learn to make adjustments to what we believe to be true as we observe it with our immersion meaning we hear it from Italians real Italians speaking real Italian then they are probably right usually the next one is a good one Manu I've tried to speak to Italians but they don't understand me what am I doing wrong first of all as a beginner you know well done to trying to speak to
Italians right now because it's very early but when it comes to not being understood I'll tell you what I think is happening because in most cases that's really the truth it's not because of lack of vocabulary if you don't know a word for something then you're just not gonna say the thing and so that usually doesn't cause misunderstandings or lack of understanding because you're just not saying the thing you're not saying the word because you don't know it so that's not really an issue broken grammar never a problem usually not a problem because I can talk to you in English with just nouns and you still understand what I'm saying and I'll give you an example here me hungry that's very bad English but you know
what I meant to say and so again the fact that you don't have that you don't have accurate grammar yet is not an issue for comprehension for from Italian so what is it's pronunciation it's almost always pronunciation and again back to my example if I said to you me hungry you would understand but if I said and you know it's there were maybe totally out of context but if I said something like because I'm mispronouncing the word for me because as an Italian I look at it and I think it's meh and for Hungary because as any time I would say then you may not understand and that's what's happening so if Italians don't understand you it's usually because of the fact that you're not pronouncing clearly enough for them to understand
bear in mind that as an English speaker you are used to hearing English with all sorts of accents because everybody in the world speaks English or tries to but Italians are not that used to that and so you really gotta satisfy there one thing to hear some level of good Italian and so if the good news is that pronunciation is the easiest thing for you to master it's like the quickest thing that you can Dominate and little plug but if you're part of our all-access platform one of the many courses that you get is a pronunciation course which will get you speaking correctly in just a few hours and so that's not usually a problem once you deal with pronunciation I love the next one because it happens to me too when
I'm learning new languages or when I travel and is I've tried to speak Italian to Italians but they revert back to English how can I get them to speak Italian to me and here's a couple of true facts one is we as humans will always prefer to communicate in the easiest language that we have available and so if I spoke terrible French and that French person spoke terrible Italian then probably we would have to use English because maybe we speak English better both of us and so when it comes to you traveling to Italy it is really a matter of easy better or worse than their English and right now as a beginner it's hard to expect that your Italian is better than their English in many cases but so my advice
would be and it's totally honest maybe it's not what other teachers would tell you or what you would want me to say but don't worry about speaking at the moment actually one of my secret methods of teaching Italian is also to recommend that you do not speak for a little bit but we're not going to get into that today but uh don't worry too much because as you're developing your retardant with starting you know active studying and vocabulary and a lot of immersion you will come to a point where your Italian is actually quite decent and even if you haven't had a chance to practice it you'll manage but here's my tip is don't try to speak Italian with Italians when you're really at a basic
level if you notice that they keep switching to English that could be the suggestion of don't go to touristy places but if you go to Italy you're gonna go to Rob you're gonna go to Florence and Venice and so yeah it will happen but what you can do is try to speak Italian in a safe environment find friends you know maybe you have friends you have family they are willing to spend a little bit of time with you maybe you can find online Partners on platforms like italki uh maybe you're part of our all access platform where you actually get to speak to my team and they totally understand where you're coming from and the challenges that you have and they will always help you and so maybe right now
it's not the best expectation for you to go to Italy and right now communicate in Italian soon but not now the next one is not so much of a question it's more of a complaint and it goes something like Manu you told us about irregular verbs but you only conjugated a bunch of them but you didn't conjugate all the other ones that I actually want like verbs like Volare potere what about them why didn't you give them to us and this one is an opportunity for me to remind you of a very basic concept of language acquisition and that is nobody can teach you a language you have to learn it yourself and so that was my way my subtle way of pointing out the fact that you need to be independent in your studies even when you have a really
really good teacher helping you need to be independent and so when you realize that there's a verb that you would like to use then you're going to look it up the dictionary the online dictionary will tell you whether it's regular or irregular and if it's irregular then you will look at the six versions for the six possible subjects for the present tense which is the only tense you know right now and that'll make sense to you and then you'd be totally fine and then when you need another verb you'll do the same and you'll keep doing this for every verb and every tense as you learn them and yeah so that was a bit intentional a bit mean of me to not tell you the conjugation but again this stuff is available online you can
always find a con the conjugation of a verb but my job is to help you understand how it works so hopefully I did that for you speaking of verb conjugation another question is something like Manu do I have to conjugate it's really complicated and um the answer is yes you do you can make mistakes and you can at times totally mess it up and it's fine it'd be the same if I said something like uh when I was young I play soccer and I use the present tense instead of the past tense no big deal people will understand so but do you have to conjugate yes ideally you become really good at not thinking about well that's the subject that the that's the verb that goes with that subject just like you do that in English when you attach s
or e s to your singular verbs in a third person he goes he plays uh it's just natural to you it will become natural so what seems incredibly daunting right now is going to be very easy only a few weeks down the track maybe a few months the more Italian you will expose yourself to the more you will realize that they never Almost Never Say manjare they will say or other tenses they never say Volare one thing they would say other tenses like which is I would like so yeah you'll you'll hear it so much that it won't be a problem so right now don't be too intimidated by the fact that you do need to conjugate I love the next question because I will give you the most frustrating answer that a good
teacher should give you and that is Manu what does Mika mean Manu can you explain the meaning of magari and any of those questions that have been asked a million times I keep being asked and I've made videos about them but I actually don't want to make those videos because when it comes to the meaning of words some words yes there is a direct equivalent of one object in one language and the other you know and I'm using this which is called microphono and if you ask me what does microphone mean I could easily tell you it means microphone but you could also say mike in English but you can't say mike in Italian right so there are nuances even with the most obvious words but overall yes you could trust the fact that you
know window is finestra and so on but that would put you in a very bad position because you don't want to get used to translating things and even speaking of window I just said but in English you have a window of time does that work in Italian I wonder well it doesn't but sometimes those crazy things also work in Italian but you can't rely on literal translation so that is the first problem that I see in that question now when I do make videos on words like Mika magari and all those ones um I will give you ideas of all in this context the English equivalent is this but it's never always accurate it's never always bulletproof 100 so what is the best way for you to know the meaning of those uh difficult words that you
come across it's not really to ask a teacher not me no anybody else is to pay attention as they occur in real spoken Italian and how you're gonna do that with immersion you're spending a ton of time hopefully watching content in Italian created for Italians and you're just letting it you know coming to you coming to your brain and observe and as you become more able to understand a little bit more whether you're doing passive or active immersion there'll be a point where you say oh I heard magari and I think it means this in this context and you look it up oh yeah it must mean maybe okay and then you go you go about you know believing that magari means maybe two weeks later you hear it again you go
I don't think that means Maybe what could it mean and well then you rely on context to realize that it means something else maybe you'll get to the idea of what it actually means in that context maybe you'll have to look it up and as you're going through the definition you will find there are multiple meanings of magari and one is hopefully or I wish that it was so while of course I'm always here to help you understand meaning of an expression and I will explain to you when this word kind of works the same way as an English word it's always best if you can figure it out by yourself speaking of immersion something that I hear a lot is Manu I've tried doing immersion and it's really hard and it's really frustrating I can't do it just makes me angry and
mad and I feel like I'm failing or whichever way you're asking the question and I have the answer for you it's very simple you are not doing it right you are trying to understand while the exercise is not about comprehension so if you try to understand something that it's quite difficult for you at this level you are going to get frustrated just to give you an analogy now I'm Italian and Oprah is usually in German or Italian so I could listen to in Opera and try to understand or I could just listen to the Opera and enjoy the fact that it's beautiful the music is amazing the singing I can appreciate the melody now as an Italian I do not understand the Opera it's old Italian but also it's
sung in a way that it's really hard to understand the words I don't understand most of what they're saying just like you and so I could make Opera a really horrible experience for me by trying to understand and getting angry that I don't understand or I would just appreciate the fact that it's beautiful music that is the purpose of immersion For You especially as a beginner it's appreciating the beauty of the language appreciate the melody and all the things that we talked about in that dedicated lesson so yeah now finally the question that I know you're wondering Manu I've put in so much effort and I enjoyed watching these 30 lessons I've learned a lot of things I got used to thinking a
bit more how an Italian would think I'm getting to understand that what I believed was impossible to conquer is actually manageable and I've learned a bunch of things I can see that I can already put sentences together but what next you know now that the 30-day beginner series is over what am I gonna do and well worry not we are here for you and not only we will continue publishing content here on YouTube obviously but in the next video I will show you what we've put together to help you take your retardant to the next level all the way to fluency if that's your thing or all the way to wherever you want to get to with your Italian so yes stay tuned and I'll see you in the next video
