Learn what to expect and what to say when you need to go online from an Italian Internet point
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| Ciao a tutti! Sono Consuelo. Hi everybody! I’m Consuelo. |
| Welcome back to ItalianPod101.com’s Italiano in tre minuti: the fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Italian. |
| In the last lesson, we were at a restaurant learning how to ask for the check. Today we change places and move to another one that can be useful, especially for travelers: an Internet café! |
| In Italy, Internet cafés are not real cafeterias because you cannot eat snacks or drink soft drinks there. That’s why we usually call these kind of places Internet Points. |
| Italians don’t use Internet Points that much because they like surfing the web at home. They are just basically considered a place for travelers and visitors. That’s why they can be found in almost every city. Yes, I said almost. I don’t think you can find an Internet Point in a small town in the countryside. |
| Anyway, whenever you need an Internet connection while traveling in Italy, you must be ready to talk to the shopkeeper. Here I’m going to teach you some useful phrases you can use in this case. |
| You’ll probably find a sign with fees hanging on the wall, but whenever the charges for accessing the Internet are not clear to you, it is always better to ask: Scusi, quant’è all'ora? |
| (One more time, slowly: scusi, quant’è all’ora?) |
| Subtitles: Excuse me, how much is per hour? |
| We already saw scusi quant’è, which means ‘excuse-me, how much’, but in this case it is followed by all'ora. |
| Be careful because all'ora is made up of two words, even though it sounds like only one. The first word comes from alla, the preposition without the ending a, but with the apostrophe because the next word, ora, starts with a vowel. Ora is the Italian for "hour." |
| You will probably be answered with something like: All'ora viene... and then the price of the connection per hour, or even All'ora sono... and the price. Both sentences mean ‘Per hour is...’. |
| At this point you can get a point card! There are mainly two sentences you can say: |
| Posso fare una carta punti? Posso avere una carta punti? |
| Let’s look at this question more closely: |
| Posso →avere una carta punti? |
| →fare una carta punti? |
| Posso stands for ‘may I’ or ‘can I’, and carta punti means ‘point card.’ You can choose between avere or fare, which mean, respectively, ‘to have’ and ‘to do’. |
| So, the last question was "May I have a point card?" or "May I do a point card?" |
| (Here Consuelo enters the Internet cafè and talks to the shopkeeper outside camera) |
| Consuelo: Buongiorno scusi, quant’è all’ora? |
| Shopkeeper: All’ora viene un euro e cinquanta. |
| Consuelo: Ah, va bene. Posso avere una carta punti? |
| Shopkeeper: Certo, ecco qua! |
| Consuelo: Grazie mille!! |
| Now it’s time for Consuelo’s tips. |
| Every Internet Point in Italy has also one or more phone booths from which you can make international calls. This is due to the large number of tourists and immigrants who need to call abroad. In the case you wish to use one of these booths, you should first ask by saying posso fare una chiamata internazionale? "Can I make an international call?" |
| In this lesson, we learned how to ask for information at an Internet café. Next time we will learn the meaning of c’è and ci sono, and the way we can use them asking questions. |
| We’ll be waiting for you in our next Italiano in tre minuti lesson. |
| Ciao, alla prossima lezione!! |
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