¶ Meet the Joy of Languages Team
Did you know that around 30% of English words are similar to Italian words? By pronouncing them in an Italian way, hand gestures optional, they'll help you a lot when you start speaking Italian. ciao a tutti e benvenuti a 5-Minute Italian! Hi everyone and welcome to 5-Minute Italian. I'm Katie and this is Matteo. Ciao Matteo! Ciao a tutti! We are a half English, half Italian team.
and we're here to help you learn Italian. So we'll start by telling you a little bit about us. I'm originally from England but I've been living in Italy since 2008 when I did a year abroad in a little town in the northeast of Italy called Ferrara and I like living in Italy so much that I decided to move here permanently so in 2010 I moved to Milan where I met my other some might say better half Matteo
Hi everyone, I'm Matteo. I'm originally from Naples. That's where all the sunshine and beaches are, isn't it? Yes, and the pizza. The pizza. Don't forget the pizza. Never forget the pizza. That's very important. Yeah.
¶ Unlocking Similar Italian Words
Okay, so let's get on with some Italian, shall we? In today's episode, we're going to talk about why learning Italian is much easier than you think. And this is because around 30% of words... are the same or similar to English words. Exactly, similar. Great, so let's take the word possible for example. How do you say possible in Italian?
take a guess so wave your hands around stop whatever you're doing wave your hands around Matteo's doing it you can't see him but he's doing it wave your hands around like an Italian and do your best Italian accent and say the word possible. Okay, so Matteo, how do you say possible in Italian? Possibile. So, if you guessed possibile... which you can probably guess means exactly. So possible becomes possibile and that's because words which end in able in English become
in Italian. So, with this in mind, how would you say impossible? So Matteo, how do you say impossible in Italian? Impossibile. Great, so if you guessed... It's essential to wave your hands around still. Of course. So, if you guessed impossibile, that was CORRECTO. Which you can probably guess means correct in Italian. So what about terrible? How would you say terrible in Italian? Matteo? Terribile. So if you guess terribile, perfetto, which means perfect.
Next, words that end in able are pronounced asabile. So, how would you pronounce the word responsible in Italian? Matteo? Great, so if you guessed responsabile, fantastico, your answer was corretto. Next, words which end in al become ale in Italian. So, can you guess how to say animal? Matteo, how do you say it? Animale. Great. And what about original? Matteo, give us the answer. Originale. Perfetto. So, finally, words which end in "-ion", in English, and in "-zione", in Italian.
Can you guess how to say attention in Italian? Matteo how do you say it? Attenzione. And sounds that we pronounce as... A in English are often pronounced as A in Italian. So can you guess how to say conversation thinking about turning the A sound into an A? And the shen into zione. So Matteo, how would you say that? Conversazione. Perfetto. And how about nation? Matteo? Nazione. Brilliant. So, those were a few examples of how simile the...
vocabolario in English and Italian is. Once you know these similarities you can use them to start speaking Italian really quickly.
¶ Episode Recap and What's Next
So that's it for 5 Minute Italian. We hope you enjoyed it and we'll be back next week when we're going to stay on the same theme and talk about words which people think are the same in English but are actually different. So we're going to help you avoid making any faux pas when speaking to Italians in Italy. So, ciao for now. See you next week. Alla prossima. Alla prossima.