I was reading an Italian short story the other day (in an edition with English translations on the right-hand page) when I saw an interesting word: la persiana. Continue reading
Venetian Blinds
learning Italian
Now?
A pretty simple word, really, but a couple of months ago I began to think about how nuanced it is. Continue reading
Dilettante
I was thinking yesterday about how I’m a bit of a dilettante when it comes to music. I like a lot of acts and genres, but I couldn’t narrow my preferences down to anything very particular. Continue reading
Doctor Who?
Good question. I’m going to write a little bit about the television series Doctor Who, and will state now that I’m not an expert, so if you’re a fan, and I make some mistakes, please forgive me. Continue reading
L’Uomo Pipistrello (Italian-Language Thoughts)
A quick update: you’ve probably been on the edge of your seat the last week or so, wondering if I’d find out if there’s an Italian equivalent of calling Batman The Bat or The Batman.
Well, I’ve been slowly making my through Batman: Anno Uno, and finally, close to the end, I’ve discovered the answer. Continue reading
On the Scent
The verb sentire in Italian is an interesting one. I’ve come across it a few times recently on Duolingo, meaning to hear. I could see how it was related to English words associated with feelings like (to) sense, sensitive, sentiment(al) etc., but found it curious that in Italian it seemed to be used only to refer to one sense. Seemed to anyway… Continue reading
Seal Armpit Delivers Inconvenience, Aches
You never what you’re going to find on the internet, do you? I sometimes have a look at the comments on this blog that are marked as spam. Partly because the occasional genuine comment gets thrown in there, but mainly out of curiosity.
Curiosity as to why those responsible might think I’d fall for their obvious tricks, and curiosity about how successful they are. Mostly though, curiosity about the interesting forms of English contained therein. Take this recent comment, for example: Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 