Italian Lesson #1

Hi everybody! I'm Luca from Italy, I'm a linguist and a polyglot, I have a bachelor's degree in Japanese Language and Culture (Transcultural and Linguistic Studies) and I'm here to offer those of you who are interested in Italian language and culture some basics of my language! :)

Are you passionate about Italian food and you would love to visit Venice (Venezia) riding a gondola and to be able to interact also with all those Italians who have poor understanding of English?
Are you planning a trip all over Europe and you want to stay some days in Rome (Roma), see the Colosseum (il Colosseo) and ask for directions to locals without having troubles of understanding?

Here I am to help you to start your travel into Italian language and, since language is a bridge for culture, as you probably already know, this will probably lead you to understand better what Italy is nowadays and, generalizing, the way Italians think.

So let's get started with Lesson #1!

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Lesson #1 - I saluti (Greetings)

The most common and informal greeting in Italian is "ciao!" [Pron. chaa-oh]. You can say it to friends and people you are familiar with, but not to your superiors, such as teachers, your boss, etc.
We say "ciao" when we meet someone (just like "hi", "hello" in English) but we also say it when we separate (so, like "bye"). In the latest case, you may hear people saying it twice: "Ciao ciao!", which is after all as common as saying "bye bye!" in English.

A more polite greeting you can tell to elderlies, superiors etc, is "buongiorno" (literally "good day": buon/buono = good; giorno = day).

Buongiorno! [Pron. Buon jornoh]

We use it from early morning until the late afternoon.
Then, we have discrepancies about the correct time to say it: some old people start wishing others for a good evening (buonasera, pron. buonah seh-rah) right after midday, 12 o'clock, but to young generations this sounds pretty awkward and old-style, so we keep saying "buongiorno" until 5-7 pm, or until the sun sets.

You may be wondering now if I skipped a "good morning"... well, we don't have it. The morning (il mattino, or also "la mattina") is part of the day in Italian culture, so you only have to wish the others to have a good day... because this is what greetings were born for here, to wish others to enjoy their time.

I should also add that, lastly, maybe because of TV programmes, some also wish for a good afternoon: buon pomeriggio!

"Il pomeriggio" is the word for afternoon, and it is a contraction of Old Italian: post, in Latin, means "after", and "meriggio" in Old Italian derives from Latin "meridiem", which is of course the noon.
So: post-meriggio -> pomeriggio

Then we finally have a greeting for late evening, and we mostly use it when we go to sleep:

Buona notte (good night) [buonah notteh].

It is to be underlined that the gemination of the consonants (double consonants) must be heard when pronouncing words like "notte", "mattino", "pomeriggio".

A correct pronunciation in a foreign language may make some feel weird at first, but I ensure you from my own experience in learning more than 10 different foreing languages (I am not trying to show off) that, when it comes to speak to natives of the language you're learning and you pronounce it well and enough correctly (a native will almost always grasp that you are not native as well of their language), they will appreciate it very much and feel much more at ease to speak to you in their idiom.

We also have a polite greeting for "bye, see you next time" in English, which is also very common: arrivederci!

This comes from "al rivederci", which means "until we see each other/meet again".

So, to sum up our first words in Italian, we have:

Ciao = hello/bye
Ciao ciao! = bye bye!
buongiorno = good (morning)/ good day
buon pomeriggio = good afternoon
buona sera = good evening
buona notte = good night
arrivederci = see you next time

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If you liked this lesson and found it interesting, please like it and resteem it!
Grazie! (Thank you!)