Packing your suitcase, do you enjoy it? Fare la valigia means “packing your suitcase”.

I enjoy fare la valigia! I usually pack in the night before traveling. It’s fun when you know you’re doing that because you’re going on a trip and you’re going to have a great time. And you start picking the clothes you’re going to wear there…

Fare le valigie per partire e’ una noia!
Packing before leaving for a trip is a bore!

Anch’io ho sempre paura di dimenticare qualcosa di importante!
Itoo am always afraid of forgetting something important!

Pero’ fare le valigie per ritornare e’ molto piu’ facile!
However, packing when coming back is much easier!

A proposito.. (BTW) the plural of ‘valigia’ is ‘valigie’ not ‘valige’- lots of natives confuse the two. Infact I had to go and check before posting this..

Ciao!

roma55

Nice lesson! One note: my Italian teacher always used “sciopero” (strike) as an example of a masculine noun with s-sound. I always thought it was similarly unnecessary to learn as “safiro”, but I quickly discovered differently when I visited Italy.

Singing Renaissance songs is what has brought me to learn Italian, and the discussion of “questa” becoming “quest’” before nouns starting with a vowel reminded me of a truncation at the other end that appears in a song, “Qui passa per ’sta strada”. Is that kind of shortening common in casual speech, or just used in poetry to make the scansion work?

Dear James,
you can hear in spoken Italian “sta” in place of “questa”, but it is not very correct - close to slang.
You can use it with young people though.
It is perfectly acceptable in poetry or song lyrics as a way to shorten the verse.

Please let us have any links to your singing in Italian!

Ciao

Cari Peter and James,

James, you are very lucky to sing renaissance songs. Do you ever sing Palestrina?

Peter, well spotted ! The ’sta’ in stasera’ does indeed come from the same ’sta’ abbreviation but it is now considered integral part of the word, as shown by the fact itis written as a single term.

As a spoken abbreviation of questa/o, ’sta/o’ is used mainly in central and southern Italy, and is probably a form reflecting the transition between the Latin ‘esto’ an the current form ‘questo’. So a slang word ‘with pedigree!’. Often found in songs.

As for elisions , both feminine and masculine of questo/a can be abbreviated, per esempio:

quest’ anno (this year), quest’ uomo (this man) [maschile]
quest’ aria (this air/this song) , quest’ anima(this soul) [femminile]

Watch out that for the other (or, rather, the most common, as ‘codesto’ is rarely used outside Tuscany these days) demonstrative adjective ‘quello’, there are three forms, like for articles: quella, quello and quel. Again, when used as a pronoun, the masculine form is always ‘quello’. Esempi:

Signore 1: Quel posto e’ libero? [Is that seat free?]
Signore 2: Quello? [That one?]

Inserviente: Quel vaso costa 10 euro [That vase costs 10 euros]
Signora: Bene, lo prendo[Good, i’ll take it] /Bene, prendo quello[Good, I’ll take that one]

Buono studio!

roma55

Cinzia– I mostly sing at SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) events.
Marco and Roma55 — thank you very much for the explanation. No links yet, alas…

Hi Deb,

Since you are a singer, you might want to go to Verona to see an opera in the awesome Roman amphitheatre. It’s a three hours trip by train from Florence and you can book tickets and reserve a room on line at the following link:

http://www.verona.com/index.cfm?page=arena

Please, contact me if you need some help with the tickets.
I wish you great time in Italy!

Johnny

Ciao Jacek,
thank you very much for your comment! The correct answer actually is “questa idea è buona”
Have you read the Lesson Notes’ grammar point?
There is a very useful explanation there!
In short Italians have a different perception when referring to ideas. So of what English speakers might refer to as “that”, Italians use “this”.

Grazie,

Consuelo