Learn the Italian phrases you need to know to get smaller bills
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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 learned how to say "can you write it down" in Italian. Today, we are going to learn how to find a place where we can exchange money and learn what to say at the window. |
| When traveling in Italy, you need Euros, and unless you've already done so, you'll need to change your money. You can use an ATM machine and withdraw euros, but if you cannot find one, what are you going to say? |
| Let’s see together! |
| The first thing to say to a passer-by is: |
| Dove posso cambiare dei soldi? |
| (One more time slowly: Dove posso cambiare dei soldi?) |
| Once you enter a bank or a currency exchange bureau, you'll need to know some useful words that you can use, like banconote di piccolo taglio, which are "small denomination bills," and banconote di grosso taglio, which are "high denomination bills." |
| At this point, the right question to ask is mi può cambiare in banconote da piccolo taglio, per favore? |
| (One more time slowly: Mi può cambiare in banconote di piccolo taglio, per favore?) |
| This means "can you change into small denomination bills please?" |
| If we break down the phrase, we have mi può cambiare, "can you change to me." The preposition to use is in, which also means the same thing, "in," in English, and then banconote di piccolo taglio, small denomination bills, and finally per favore, "please." |
| We choose small denominations because it's usually beneficial to have smaller amounts of currency on you for paying for the bus fare, train fare, and so on. |
| You will be probably asked to fill out a small paper with your details, but usually the person who changes money asks quanto vuole cambiare? Literally, this means "how much do you want to change?" |
| (One more time slowly: quanto vuole cambiare?) |
| The answer is very easy. You just need to say "I would like to change," which is vorrei cambiare, and here add the desired amount, for example two hundred dollars, which is duecento dollari. All together, we have Vorrei cambiare duecento dollari. |
| (One more time slowly: vorrei cambiare duecento dollari.) |
| Let’s now put into practice what we’ve just learned: |
| Background changes: bank |
| (Talking to someone out of camera) |
| Guy: Buonasera! |
| Consuelo: Buonasera! Mi può cambiare in banconote di piccolo taglio? (giving some bills) |
| Guy: Certamente, quanto vuole cambiare. |
| Consuelo: Mmmm, duecento dollari per favore. |
| Guy: Sì, aspetti un attimo per favore... Ecco a Lei! |
| Consuelo: Grazie, arrivederci! |
| Guy: Arrivederci, buona giornata! |
| Now it’s time for Consuelo’s tips |
| When traveling in Italian cities, you’ll see that many of them are very small and the number of tourists is very high. For this reason, sometimes, ATM machines break or just run out of small denomination bills, and you need to find another place to change money quickly. |
| In these tourist cities, such as Florence or Venice, there are several of these small currency exchange bureaus with the big sign CHANGE. If you cannot find one, just simply ask by using the phrases we learned in previous lessons, such as c’è una banca quì vicino? C’è un CHANGE quì vicino? |
| This does it for today! In today’s class, we learned what to say when exchanging money. In the next lesson, we’ll cover how to use mi piace and non piace, which mean respectively "I like it" and "I don’t like it." |
| We’ll be waiting for you in our next Italiano in tre minuti lesson! |
| Ciao alla prossima lezione!! |
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