Today, we look at “L’appuntamento” by Ornella Vanoni. Now, I have to admit that the only reason I have heard this song is because of the movie Ocean’s Twelve. I was intrigued the moment I heard it, and I think it’s an amazing song. Ornella Vanoni is a well-known Italian pop singer, and this song was released in 1970. Following is a Youtube video of “l’appuntamento,” followed by lyrics in Italian with my English translation. Enjoy!

Not bad, right? We’ll be staying in the village of Seis (Seis am Schlern in German, Siusi allo Sciliar in Italian) for a couple of days, then heading up to a lodge in the Dolomite mountains for a couple of days.

The South Tyrol/Alto Adige region is an interesting one. It used to be part of Austria, and many people here speak a dialect of German. The culture is much more Germanic than Italian. In fact, when I was taking an Italian class in Milan, one of my classmates was a girl from this area who spoke only German and needed to learn Italian to become a teacher.

After our Dolomites expedition, we head to Cinque Terre, and then through the south of France and into Barcelona, so the trip should provide some interesting contrasts. I haven’t been into France or Spain before, so I can’t wait!

Have you ever looked around online for a certain word or phrase in Italian and find yourself unsatisfied with what you’re finding? Maybe you saw the word in a dictionary, but you want to know more. Or you find something, but it doesn’t seem right or you’re not sure how to use it. Well, that’s happened to me a lot, and I decided to do something about it.

How To Say In Italian is a site dedicated to making it easy for people to find Italian vocabulary about a specific subject they are interested in. The goal is to give more context and a better understanding so you feel confident using your newly learned Italian vocabulary.

I only have two entries posted as of yet, about Italian text messages and saying I love you, but there will surely be more to come. If you have any ideas or subjects you want to know more about, let me know here in the comments. Grazie and I hope you visit and enjoy my new site!

When I began this site, the idea was to discuss two things that I love: learning Italian and traveling in Italy. My goal was to write at least two posts a week, and I was able to do that for a while, but I simply ran out of steam. Other things got my attention, as I’m going to school full time, starting another business, and working on some other projects. But the thing that really got me, the thing that started to bother me subconsciously and contributed to my writer’s block, was the traveling in Italy part of the site. I had covered my favorite cities and places in Italy, and there are some other places and areas I could write about, but I knew that pretty soon I would run out of places I had actually been to, and I can’t write about a place I haven’t been to.

So I’m announcing a change here. I want to start this site up again, but the focus will be a little different; it will be more on learning Italian. I have always loved learning other languages, particularly Italian, so I don’t think motivation will be an issue. I plan on posting more lyrics to Italian music videos because I enjoy the music and the lyrics and sharing music with others, and I also want to write more posts that hopefully will help people learning Italian. I may still post occasionally on traveling in Italy, but only when something catches my interest.

So for people who were reading Dreaming In Italian regularly, I apologize for the time off. Hopefully, you’ll still enjoy the content here as the focus shifts a little bit. I’ve met some really cool people in the short time I’ve been doing this, and I hope to continue that. Thanks for reading.

The city of Verona

Prior to my time in Milan, I spent six weeks in Verona as part of a summer study abroad program, and I absolutely love this city. It’s small enough to be manageable and you can become familiar with it fairly quickly, but it’s big enough to have plenty to do and see, and it has great culture and restaurants.

The fact that Shakespeare chose to set his story of Romeo and Juliet (Romeo e Giulietta in Italian) in Verona leads to a large influx of tourists searching for inspiration and eternal love, and one of the places they look is near a balcony purported to be Juliet’s. Below the balcony is a statue of Juliet, and many people rub one of the statue’s breasts for luck (why, I don’t know).

Juliet’s (supposed) balcony, with her statue in the lower left corner

L’Arena is a large coliseum-type building dating from AD 30 in Roman times. The structure is remarkably well-preserved. The acoustics of Verona’s Arena are so good that the site now hosts a world-famous opera season providing a very unique opera-viewing experience. I’m not much of an opera fan, but I’ve seen two performances in the Arena and it is an incredible experience. The opera season is during the summer. If you want to see a performance, ticket prices for the stone seats are significantly cheaper than seats on the floor (and you can rent cushions). Candles are handed out and lit as the sun sets, so you are watching an opera in an ancient Roman Arena by candlelight. Pretty cool.

L‘Arena in Verona

Watching an opera by candlelight

The poet Dante Alighieri, author of the Divine Comedy, spent time in Verona after being exiled from his home in Florence, and there is a statue in Piazza Dante paying tribute to him.

Piazza Dante in Verona

Notice the V-shaped columns on the tops of the buildings. These can be found all over the city and are the hallmark of the Scaligeri (or della Scala) family, which ruled over Verona from the 1200s to the 1400s.

If you haven’t been to Verona before, I would definitely recommend going to see and learn about the great history this city has.

I continue to stumble across great blogs about all things Italy seemingly everyday. One of the best ways to do so and to join the growing community of Italy-bloggers and other Italy-lovers is on Twitter. If you haven’t joined up yet or are new to Twitter, check out my Italy list to find people who tweet about Italy. And you can find my Twitter page here. Also, as I mentioned in my first post on blogs about Italy, Italy Tutto’s list of Italy blogs also has links to the bloggers’ Twitter accounts where applicable.

These three Italy blogs, however, have been on my follow list for a while now, and I enjoy reading all three. Hopefully you will too

Italofile is a “labor of love” run by Melanie, whom you can read more about here. Melanie is the author of The Unofficial Guide to Central Italy and she has contributed to a number of guidebooks on Italy. As an avid iPhone user, I particularly enjoyed her post on iPhone Apps for the Italophile. @italofileblog on Twitter

My Bella Vita is a blog on Calabria and Italy travel run by Cherrye, whom you can read more about here. From their home in Catanzaro in Calabria, Cherrye and her husband run a travel consultancy and Il Cedro Bed and Breakfast (in addition to the My Bella Vita website), all of which must keep her pretty busy My Bella Vita is a great way to gain some insight on southern Italy and to learn about traveling in the region. @mybellavita on Twitter

Flip Florence is a unique site where the author, Jason, posts short videos he records throughout his home city of Florence. This is a great way to indulge yourself if you can’t stop daydreaming about returning to Firenze and to learn more about the city. Jason posts additional content at Flip Florence Out & About on Posterous. @FlipFlorence on Twitter

I hope you enjoy these great blogs about Italy!

The method itself of using flash cards is pretty simple. The easiest way is to buy a stack of index cards, write the word you want to learn on the front, and write the meaning on the back. Shuffle the cards and start going through them to see if you can remember the meaning, looking at the back if you can’t remember. To increase my retention of difficult vocabulary, I would pick out the cards of words I repeatedly had trouble remembering to create a separate stack that I could focus on exclusively. I know there are a ton of computer-based and web-based flash card programs, though I haven’t used any of them before. If you have one that has worked well for you, please let me know in the comments.

I found flash cards to be very helpful for learning written Japanese. Japanese uses three writing systems, two of which are phonetic and relatively simple to learn. However, the third system, kanji, is a pictograph system borrowed from Chinese characters, where each character represents a thing (noun, verb, thought, feeling, idea, etc.). Because each character represents an individual word, there are thousands of characters you need to learn in order to read Japanese effectively, and (at least for me) flash cards were invaluable in learning and retaining kanji characters.

For Italian, the results of using flash cards to learn vocabulary were more mixed. For me, they seemed to be pretty effective for verbs (in infinitive form), nouns, and adjectives. However, they were decidedly less helpful for certain words I was having trouble remembering. As I mentioned in my post on helpful “utility” words, words like allora, tuttavia, nonostante, comunque, quindi, etc. (then, nevertheless, although, anyway, therefore respectively) are very context-dependent and are very difficult to remember out of context. Just try explaining what anyway or nevertheless mean to someone without using an example or explaining the context in which they’re used!

So putting these words on a flash card is not an effective way to learn them because they are not being used in context. A more effective way to learn these words is to pause mentally when you encounter them and absorb the context in which they are used. When you hear them, focus on the intonation. I think you’ll find that the intonation of these words is very similar to their English counterparts. For example, when you hear someone say allora, focus on the context in which they used it and the intonation they used. If the intonation is demanding, then they are using allora in the sense of “And then? Out with it!” If the intonation is slow and drawn out, especially after a pause in the conversation, then they are using it in the sense of “Well then” or “Let’s see,” and it functions as a way to move a conversation along or change the direction of the conversation. After a while, you’ll pick up the different meanings this word can have and you will be able to use it in the right context. You can see why flash cards just don’t work well for these types of words.

Overall, I’d say flash cards can be very effective for words that are not very context-dependent, like nouns, verbs, and adjectives. For words that do depend on context, flash cards won’t be very effective and you should try out other methods. And if you make a set of flash cards, use them! Be sure to shuffle each time, and go back to them after a while. You’ll be amazed at how much vocabulary you can pick up this way!

One of the most interesting things (to me, at least) about learning a new language is learning the slang and the swear words. Yes, it’s not something you would want to use in polite company, and you have to be careful who you use it around. However, the great thing about slang is that it is how many people choose to really express themselves when they are most comfortable, around friends, etc. Real people use language like this everyday, and if you take the time to learn it (and even if you choose not to use it), your understanding of the language and culture you are learning will be that much greater.

Italian slang can be particularly colorful and fun. I hope you enjoy italian-slang-dictionary.com!

Regardless of where they are now or what their goals or interests are, the state of the Italy blogosphere is strong and it continues to grow. I’d like to start a new series of posts profiling some of these Italy bloggers to help others discover these great Italy blogs, and this is the first post of the series.

A good place to start would be Italy Tutto, run by SC Parry. She has created the ultimate list of people blogging from Italy, sortable by region and with links to the bloggers’ Twitter pages, as well as a list of Italy photoblogs and a list of food and wine blogs from Italy. Every week, she puts out a list of her top 10 posts from bloggers in Italy, which is a great way to find new, interesting articles on Italy. Italy Tutto on Twitter

One of the first Italy blogs I started following is Bleeding Espresso by Michelle Fabio, whom you can read more about here. Michelle moved to her family’s ancestral home in Calabria (“the toe of Italy’s boot”) and is now the matriarch of a family of dogs, goats, and other animals. She wrote about her decision to move to Italy here, and I saw a lot in common with my decision to move to Milan a few years ago. Michelle on Twitter

If you are planning a trip to Italy, you should definitely check out Jessica’s WhyGo Italy site, under the BootsnAll umbrella. This is a very thorough travel guide for Italy, and you can find pretty much anything you need to know. Like me, Jessica blogs about the wonders of Italy from the confines of the rainy Northwest (Portland, OR in her case). If you’re learning Italian, be sure to check out Jessica’s list of her 8 favorite Italian swear words! Italylogue on Twitter

There are so many blogs about Italy that I’m sure I will have no problem turning this into a regular series. Stay tuned!

Glenn, who follows Dreaming In Italian on Facebook, suggested using Laura Pausini’s music, and he even sent in the lyrics to a number of her songs, as well as his translations. He told me that using this method of learning and translating song lyrics helped him learn Spanish and Portuguese, and he is now studying Italian. Judging by the quality of his translations, I’d say he’s well on his way. Grazie, Glenn, per il suggerimento! (Thank you, Glenn, for the suggestion!)

If any other readers have songs that they would like to see featured here, just let me know!

(By the way, I think it would be more effective if I could put the Italian lyrics and English translations next to each other in two columns. Anyone know how to create tables in a Wordpress post?)

First up: Volevo dirti che ti amo by Laura Pausini

Original lyrics in Italian:

Volevo dirti che ti amo

Dal rumore del mondo
Dalla giostra degli attimi
Dalla pelle e dal profondo
Dai miei sbagli soliti
Dal silenzio che ho dentro
E dal mio orgoglio inutile
Da questa voglia che ho di vivere……

Volevo dirti che ti amo
Volevo dirti che sei mio
Che non ti cambio con nessuno perché a giurarlo sono io.
Volevo dirti che ti amo
Perché sei troppo uguale a me
Quando per niente litighiamo
E poi ti chiudi dentro di te

Da ogni mio fallimento
Dal bisogno di credere
Da un telefono del centro
Dalle mie rivincite
Dalla gioia che sento
E dalla febbre che ho di te
Da quando mi hai insegnato a ridere……

Volevo affermarti che ti amo
Volevo dirti sono qui
(io sono qui)
Anche se a volte mi allontano
dietro ad un vetro di un taxi.
E questo dirti che ti amo
È la mia sola verità
(sola verità)
Tu non lasciarmi mai la mano
anche se un giorno finirà.
Da ogni angolo dell’anima
Dalla mia fragilità
Da un dolore appena spento
Da questa lettera……

(Cori)

(Volevo dirti che ti amo)
No……
Volevo dirti che sei mio
( tu sei mio)
(Che non ti cambio con nessuno)
(perché a giurarlo sono io)

Volevo dirti che ti amo
Volevo dirti sono qui
Anche se a volte mi allontano
dietro ad un vetro di un taxi.

(Volevo dirti che ti amo)
Volevo dirti che
Che non ti cambio con nessuno
perché sei troppo uguale a me.
Volevo dirti che ti amo.

Ti amo.

Glenn’s translation:

I Wanted to Tell You That I Love You

From the noise of the world.
From the carousel of split seconds
From my skin and deep within me
From my usual misunderstandings
From the silence that I have within me.
And from my useless pride
From the desire that I have of living

I wanted to tell you that I love you
I wanted to tell you that you are mine
That I wouldn’t replace you for anyone else
Because it’s me who’s swearing it
I wanted to tell you that I love you
Because you’re too much like me
When we argue over nothing
And you close yourself inside.

From my every failure
From my need to believe
From the telephone downtown
From my revenges
From the joy that I feel
And the fever that I have for you
From when you have taught me to laugh…

I wanted to affirm that I love you
I wanted to tell you I am here
(I am here)
Even if sometimes I’m moving away
Behind the glass of a taxi.
And this telling you I love you
is my only truth
(Only truth)
Don’t ever let go of my hand
even if one day it’ll be over.
From every angle of my soul
from my fragility
from just a little pain spent
from this letter…

(Choral)

(I wanted to tell you that I love you)
No………………
I wanted to tell you that you are mine)
(You are mine)
(That I wouldn’t replace you for anyone else)
(Because it’s me who’s swearing it)

I wanted to tell you that I love you
I wanted to tell you that I’m here
Even if sometimes I’m leaving
Behind the glass of a taxi.

(I wanted to tell you that I love you)
I wanted to tell you that
That I wouldn’t replace you for anyone else
Because you’re too much like me
I wanted to tell you that I love you

I love you

Next up: Il mondo che vorrei by Laura Pausini

Original lyrics in Italian:

Il mondo che vorrei

Quante volte ci ho pensato su,
Il mio mondo sta cadendo giù
dentro un mare pieno di follie.
Ipocrisie.

Quante volte avrei voluto anch’io
aiutare questo mondo mio.
Per tutti quelli che stanno soffrendo
Come te.

Il mondo che vorrei
avrebbe mille cuori,
per battere di più avrebbe.
Mille amori.

Il mondo che vorrei
avrebbe mille mani
E mille braccia per
I bimbi del domani,
Che coi loro occhi chiedono di più
Salvali anche tu.

Per chi crede nello stesso sole
Non c’è razza non c’è mai colore
perché il cuore di chi ha un altro dio.
È uguale al mio.

Per chi spera ancora in un sorriso,
perché il suo domani l’ha deciso.
È convito che il suo domani
È insieme con te.

Il mondo che vorrei
ci sparerebbe i fiori.
Non sentiremo più
il suono dei cannoni.
Il mondo che vorrei,
farebbe più giustizia
per tutti quelli che.
La guerra l’hanno vista,
E coi loro occhi chiedono di più
salvali anche tu.

Come si fa a rimanere qui,
Immobili così
Indifferenti ormai
A tutti i bimbi
Che non cresceranno mai
Ma che senso ha ascoltare e non cambiare
Regaliamo al mondo quella pace che non può aspettare più.
Nel mondo che vorrei

Uh uh………

Nel mondo che vorrei
Avremo tutti un cuore.
Il mondo che vorrei si chiamerebbe amore.
Stringi forte le mie mani
E sentirai il mondo che vorrei
Uh uh uh
Il mondo che vorrei

The World That I Would Want

So many times I have thought it over.
My world is falling apart.
into a sea full of madness
Hypocrisy

So many times I would have wanted also
to help this world of mine
For all of those that are suffering
like you

The world that I would want
would have a thousand hearts
to beat faster it would have a
thousand loves.

The world that I would want
would have a thousand hands
and a thousand arms for the
children of tomorrow.
With their eyes they are asking more.
You can save them too.

For those that believe in the same sun.
There is no race nor is there any color
because the heart that who has another god.
it is equal to mine.

For those that still have a hopeful smile
because his tomorrow has been decided
and he is convinced that his tomorrow
is together with you

The would that I would want
Would shoot flowers at us.
We would never hear
The sounds of cannons anymore
The world that would want
Would have more justice
For all of those that
Have seen war.
And with their eyes they are asking more
for you to save them

How can you stay there
so, motionless
Indifferent now,
to all the children
That will never ever grow up.
But that feeling has to listen and not change.
We are giving to the world this peace,
That can’t wait any longer
In the would that I would want

Uh uh……….

In the world that I would want.
We will all have a heart.
The world I would want
would be called love
put your hand tightly in mine
and you will feel the world I would want.
Uh, uh……
The world I would want….