Talk:Italian/Lessons/Lesson1

Untitled
This was removed from the module page: ''I add some comments as a native italian. A real coversation would start in this way:''

MR Salve, mi chiamo Mario Rossi (It's polite to make a self presentation at start)

MB Piacere di conoscerla, Mario Bianchi (il "mi chiamo" is self understood)

MR Piacere mio.

Let's image that MB forgets to introduce himself. After a minute or so of conversation MR would probably say:

"Scusi, come ha detto che si chiama?"

that is "Excuse me, what did you say is your name?"

Actually is not very polite to ask directly someone's name. Don't ask me why.

Gerard Foley 00:59, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Vocabulary?
What is listed here as "Vocabulary" are actually whole phrases, not single words as would be expected. These could be offered as translation of the dialogue, but they won't help people to learn Italian because they won't be able to see how a sentence works. E. g. that "e" means "and" and "tu" means "you" and that in "Come ti chiami?" there isn't actually a word for "name" (as the translation "What is your name?" suggests). These things need to be explained if you ever want learners to be able to form their own sentences rather than parroting a phrasebook. Even if something is a set phrase, an explanation of its parts will help people to memorise it more easily - and understand any plays on words with it at a later stage of learning. On a different note, I'm presently preparing a new type of language lessons (for German first, but the approach would work very well with Italian too). See Bite-sized language lessons for information. Junesun 13:53, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Shouldn't it be "piacere di conoscerlo", in the masculine form, since a man is asking this?
 * I don't think so. "La" is a form of "Lei" here, which is the formal, polite address, no matter whether you're talking to a man or woman. Junesun 13:26, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

=Some advice= I add some precise information about a couple of matters. (I am native italian).

Absence of unnecessary pronouns
While questions of the form Come stai tu? are not syntactically wrong they are very unlikely to be heard in a conversation like the one presented here. Like most of the time pronouns are omitted when unnecessary, and this is the case. A better sentence is Come stai?, likewise the formal version Come sta?. Subtly speaking, the presence of the pronoun in Come stai tu? gives more emphasis on "you", e.g. in replying to an analogous question if you want to mean some sort of "and now, let's talk about you". Obviously I think this difference need not be teached at this early stage, reporting only the "normal" (i.e. without pronoun) form.

Formal/informal distinction
In the vocabulary "arrivederci, ci vediamo- goodbye, see you later" is reported without specifying the formal/informal distinction between the two forms, which seems to be a central point of this lesson. Maybe it's better to point out the difference to avoid confusion.

Correct pronouns
While lui/lei/loro are widely adopted and accepted, especially in spoken language, they are not, strictly speaking, correct, in that they are complement pronouns. Subject pronouns are egli (male singular), ella (female singular), essi (plural). Lei is instead the correct formal version. I want to say anyway that this is intended to be merely a curiosity, lui/lei/loro as subjects are perfectly part of today language.

Adarkar (talk) 00:27, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Learning "to be"??
Why is the grammar section about the verb "to be"?? This verb has not appeared in the dialog at all. You could make this lesson all about the personal pronouns and tu/Lei distinction. If you absolutely want to teach more grammar, teach the regular -are conjugation with the example of "stare" (as used in "sto bene", "come stai" etc.)