Italian Students (Lesson 3)

Hello everyone.

Here is some material based on the class from Thursday 19th March.

Firstly, here are some of the musicians and songs I discussed as forming the Italian popular music tradition. Here is Enrico Caruso singing 'O Sole Mio, Pavarotti singing Nessun Dorma and Fred Buscaglione performing Che Bambola!

Into the sixties, and the hilariously uncomfortable Adriano Celentano is forced to mime to Azzurro, and Lucio Battisti is nervous, then really gets into singing Un'Avventura at the San Remo song festival.

Then we have Claudio Baglioni's famous Piccolo grande amore, and into the 80s with Pino Daniele singing Yes I Know My Way. You may be interested to know that Simple Minds featured on the album version of this song. Maybe not.

The nineties, and rap, Roman style, with Frankie Hi-NRG MC (really)and Quelli che ben pensano. And now we can get more up to date, with Daniele Silvestri's turn at San Remo, "singing" Saliro'.

If none of that interested you at all, please take it from me that you are not alone. You may, however, be interested in this little video (I'm sorry that it's such poor quality) featuring the famous Gigi Proietti as the peasant. How do Italians tell time?

Again, if you find anything nice online, let everyone know with the comments.

Buon Lavoro!

Italian Students (Lessons 1 & 2)

Hello! If you are reading this, you are successfully connected to the internet, or you are in posession of some strong mind-enhancers.

I hope it is the former, because I am going to post some interesting and helpful links that are related to our first two lessons at Bridge of Allan Library.

First, a little bit of light relief. Here is a video by the Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto. He is from Bergamo and made his reputation writing and drawing cartoons in the 1970s. More recently he has moved on to digital animation. This is one of his short cartoons, explaining subtly the differences between the Italians and other Europeans. The music and sound effects, by Roberto Frattini, are also wonderful.

Next we have an indispensible tool for the student of Italian: a good dictionary. While you will probably want to buy a small dictionary for 'out and about' use, I recommend Garzanti's website as one of the very best online solutions. You may be asked to register to use it, but it is free.

Even less exciting than the dictionary is the difficult issue of verbs. I have spotted a website that looks useful to me: verbs-online.com This will help you practice the conjugation of verbi regolari - regular verbs - in the presente - present tense -, which is all you have to worry about. For now...

I hope these things will prove useful to you. If you find anything else interesting on the internet that relates to the class, please use the comments below to tell me and your fellow students about it.

Buon lavoro!