How do Italians celebrate Easter? Where do they go? What do they do? Do they eat as much chocolate as we do? Find out, and learn the special “gossip” form of Italian verbs you can use to talk about what other people are doing.
To help you remember what you learnt in today's lesson, below you'll find bonus materials like word lists, quizzes and flashcards. But first...
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Bonus Materials
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Today's Italian words
Buona Pasqua! = Happy Easter
Che cosa fanno gli italiani a Pasqua? = What do Italians do at Easter?
Cucinano molto = They cook a lot
Cucinare = to cook
Cucinano = They cook
Che cosa cucinano? = What do they cook?
Cucinano l’agnello = They cook lamb
Cucinano le lasagne = they cook lasagne
Cucinano dolci = They cook desserts/sweets
Mangiano molto cioccolato! = They eat a lot of chocolate!
Che cos’altro fanno? = What else do they do?
Spesso partono per una vancaza = Often they go on holiday/vacation (literally: They often leave for a vacation).
Partono = they leave
I negozi vendono molto cioccolato = The shops sell lots of chocolate
Vendono = they sell
Take the Quiz!
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Click here to take the quiz for this episode: Buona Pasqua! How Italians Celebrate Easter
Italian flashcards
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- Download the flashcards: How Italians celebrate Easter (+ gossip verbs)
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Transcript
Please note, this is not a word for word transcript.
Katie: How do Italians celebrate Easter? Where do they go? What do they do? Do they eat as much chocolate as we do? Find out, and learn the special “gossip” form of Italian verbs you can use to talk about what other people are doing, in episode #42 of 5 Minute Italian.
K: Ciao a tutti e benvenuti a 5 minute Italian, hi everyone and welcome to 5 minute Italian. I’m Katie…
M: And I’m Matteo. Ciao.
K: Buona Pasqua!
M: Buona Pasqua!
K: Buona Pasqua means “Happy Easter”. Buona means good and Pasqua means “Easter”, so to say “Happy Easter” Italians literally say “Good Easter”.
M: Buona Pasqua.
K: And in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how Italians celebrate Easter, and we’ll be using this conversation as an opportunity to talk about a verb form that we haven’t learnt together yet, which is the “they form”.
M: In the last 3 episodes, we’ve learnt how to say the I form, as in "I eat", the "you form", as in "you eat", we form as in "we eat" etc.
K: Today, when we talk about what Italians do, we’re going to learn the “they” form, as in “they eat”. I like to call this the gossip form of the verb, because it’s the one we use to talk about what other people do when they’re not here. Tell us Matteo, che cosa fanno gli Italiani a Pasqua? What do Italians do at Easter?
M: Cucinano molto.
K: Cucianano molto. They cook a lot. Here we’ve got our first gossip form cucinano, which means they cook. It comes from the verb cucinare which means “to cook”. To get the “they” form of the verb, we remove the -are from cucinare, so we’re left with cucin-. Then we add the “they” ending, which is "a-n-o". So we get...cucinano.
M: Cucinano.
K: Che cosa cucinano? (What do they cook?)
M: Cucinano l’agnello, cucinano le lasagne, cucinano dolci.
K: So we had, cucinano l’agnello which means “they cook lamb” cucinano le lasagne, which means “they cook lasagne” and cucinano dolci “they cook desserts”.
K: Che cos’altro fanno? What else do they do?
M: Mangiano molto cioccolato
K: Then, you heard another example of the “they” form: mangiano molto cioccolato! They eat a lot of chocolate. This comes from the verb mangiare which means “to eat”. To say “they eat”, we remove the -are, so we’re left with mangi- then add “a-n-o”, mangiano they eat.
K: Che cos’altro fanno? What else do they do?
M: Spesso partono per una vacanza
K: Spesso partono per una vacanza. "Often they go on holiday or vacation". So here we had spesso, which means “often”. Then partono per una vacanza.
M: Partono means “to leave” and per una vacanza means “for a vacation”.
K: So Italians often make the most of the 4-day break by going on a little holiday. Now let’s look closer at this verb, partono which means “they leave”. It comes from the verb partire, which is an -ire verb. To make the “they” form, as in “they leave” we remove the -ire, so we’re left with part-.
M: Then, we add the “they” ending "o-n-o". Partono.
K: It’s similar to the “they” ending for -are verbs, but with one important difference. With -are verbs, like mangiare, the “they” form ends in "a-n-o".
M: Mangiano
K: But with -ire verbs, like partire, they “they” form ends in "o-n-o"
M: Partono
K: And if you’ve been listening to the last few episodes, you’ll know there’s one more type of verb that we haven’t mentioned yet, and that’s the verbs that end in -e-r-e, or the -ere verbs, like scrivere. Can you tell us something that Italians do at Easter using an -ere verb?
M: I negozi vendono molto cioccolato.
K: I negozi vendono molto cioccolato. “The shops sell lots of chocolate”. I negozi = the shops; vendono = they sell; molto cioccolato = lots of chocolate.
M: You heard vendono, which means “they sell”. This is the “they” form of the verb vendere which means “to sell”.
K: Great, so we’ve got vendere which means to sell. And good news, to get the “they” form, it’s exactly the same as the -ire verbs. Just remove the -ere, so we get vend- then add “o-n-o”. Vendono
M: Vendono
K: So let’s recap quickly. We looked at how to make the “they” form in three different types of verbs. Verbs which end in -are, like mangiare.
M: To get the “they” form, as in “they eat”, remove the -are, so you get mangi-, then add a-n-o. Mangiano.
K: And to get the “they” form for other verbs which end in -ire, like partire, or -ere like vendere, remove the -ire or the -ere endings and add "o-n-o".
M: So to say they leave, remove the -ire from partire, and add “ono”. Partono. And to say “they sell” remove the -ere from vendere and add “ono”. Vendono.
That’s all we have time for today, thanks for listening. And if you’d like to get more mini Italian lessons delivered to your inbox, don’t forget to subscribe by following the link below. Grazie, and ciao for now, see you next time, or as we say in Italian, alla prossima!
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