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COMMUNITY

What’s new at Europass Italian Language School in Florence

Italian-Brazilian Rafael Tronquini, communication manager at Europass Italian Language School, talks to The Florentine about what’s new at the popular institution in Florence, including reduced class sizes, online offerings and ...

ART + CULTURE

Saving Italian words in piazza Santa Croce

The #paroledasalvare campaign is attracting word lovers to Florence’s piazza Santa Croce, the latest stop on Bologna-based dictionary publisher Zanichelli’s nationwide tour. The aim is to save more than 3,000 ...

COMMUNITY

Learning Italian: more than a language

Italian, like all languages do for their respective cultures, conveys an essence of what it means to be Italian that cannot be fully understood using other languages.

COMMUNITY

Accent chameleons

Accents have never been my forte. When I was 13, a haughtier, more New Yorker version of me, charged with the occasional cawfee and wata slip-ups, took off for summer ...

FOOD + WINE

On “gottino”

There’s a pocket-sized enoteca in NYC’s “the Village” that serves Italian wines by the glass: its name is Gottino. In Pontassieve, my hometown that regularly sleeps, miniscule pizzeria Da Sandrino ...

FOOD + WINE

On “mescita”

If you’ve ever eaten in San Niccolò, likely it was a hearty Florentine affair among amici at the Osteria Antica Mescita. On the table a fiasco flowing with rough-around-the-edges red ...

COMMUNITY

How learning Italian made me “pazza”

It is not just the Italian language that has made me crazy: some responsibility has to go to Florence.

COMMUNITY

Bischero

The Tuscans talk, Bob Hesse believed, the way most people spend money. And whether the speaker is stingy or lavish, they are always clear about how much their words are ...

COMMUNITY

Ancestors

The Flintstones are known as “Gli antenati” in Italy. And though half of the Hanna and Barbera duo was of Italian descent, their cartoon dubbers were apparently unaware that “ancestors” ...

COMMUNITY

Per Firenze

To start an article entitled ‘Per Firenze’ by conjuring a chat on a Roman porch is just a step up from heresy in Florence, so true-blue fiorentini may well be ...

COMMUNITY

The difference

There is something about the phrase “I live in Italy” that makes amicable strangers act like you’ve just announced you’ve won the jackpot. After their excitement dies down, the “inevitable” ...

COMMUNITY

A horse is a horse

Francesco is a filmmaker and he and I have a good working relationship, unless you count the fact that he is the parade and I am the rain. A peaceable ...

COMMUNITY

Go figure

Life in the bel Paese begins with appreciating la bella vita. You know you’re an advanced student of Italian integration, however, when you’ve grasped the concept of la bella figura. ...

COMMUNITY

The sarebbe spectrum

That third person singular, conditional tense sarebbe did not fill me with confidence.

COMMUNITY

Some say love

I spent February 14 in a banquet hall in Venice’s campo San Samuele, across from a palace whose facade Casanova once climbed to reunite with the neighborhood’s most ravishing Rapunzel. ...

COMMUNITY

Rosewater and the Seven Dwarves

At the age of 22, Italian citizenship in hand, I decided to apply for my very first concorso statale. If you don’t know how to feel about this first sentence, ...

COMMUNITY

The word that never was: expat

My friend Karla’s miniscule flat on via dei Bardi needs crowd control even when no one but she and her husband are standing in it. Still, New Year’s Eve at ...

COMMUNITY

Mr. Bojangles

Giancarlo, the affable man with whom I team teach, recently took off for Japan on what he described as a ‘mother-in-law mission’. ‘Japanese women like Italian men,’ he said to justify the absence. I believe his time off is better justified by the fact

COMMUNITY

It all makes broth

Director of The Florentine Marco Badiani speaks great English, but, when it comes to idiomatic phrases, his choice is to be the king of the ‘detto non detto,’ offering creative ...

COMMUNITY

Mr. Bojangles

  Giancarlo, the affable man with whom I team teach, recently took off for Japan on what he described as a ‘mother-in-law mission’. ‘Japanese women like Italian men,’ he said ...

COMMUNITY

The Day of the Cabbage (or “black cabbaged”)

It was a bad day at The Florentine. We were up against last-minute translation deadlines, the guys were producing animations for some key client up north and, lo and behold, ...

COMMUNITY

Turkey truth

  Jeremy is my American scholar-friend who dresses like an Englishman and happily attends Florentine cultural lectures like the kind I conjure. Then, as a member of the educated audience, ...

COMMUNITY

La Luna Storta

My friend Cornelia has been pining over Pinco Pallino for several years now. Cornelia is a pseudonym and Pinco Pallino is the fictional name for Italy’s run-of-the-mill Joe Shmoe. The fact that she didn’t react to me calling him that means she’

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