Learning Italian: I need help!

my sister is fluent. i'll ask her...

Your definition is correct, on principle. But the main difference between "essere" and "stare" is time. Essere is for longer periods of time.

Yet, still here, there are exceptions:

Io sono contento: I am happy
Lui è triste: He is sad

AS for being cold, hungry or thirsty, it's more common to say you "have" cold, hunger or thirst.

Ho freddo: I am cold
Ho fame: I am hungry
Ho sete: I am thirsty.

If you want to be elegant, you can use "sono":

Sono affamato : I am hungry (but is understood as the American English "I am starved")

kickycan, honestly, in this case the problem does not lie in your understanding, but in the grammatical defficiencies of the Italian language (don't tell this to your teacher, but it's darn true).

Wow, that's really helpful. I hope I can get this straight in my head for class tonight. Thanks, fbaezer.

Fbaezer's completely right. On a starting level, essere covers things 'Tu sei un uomo' or 'io sono una donna' are things that aren't likely to change. On most occasions, a temporary state that could change immediately, due to expected or unexpected stimuli, uses stare.

However, there are irregularities, as Fbaezer has shown. Confusing things even more is the fact that whether you use essere or stare depends on where you are in Italy! In standard Italian, when it comes to being in a certain place, they would say 'sono qui;' 'siamo a Genova,' weirdly using the more permanent form for temporary location. In Rome and environs, and in Trieste, they use the more common sense 'stare:' 'sto qui;' 'stamo a Genova.' But, the standard Italian language uses 'essere' after 'there,' like in.. 'there was a politician.' 'C'era un politico.' One would think that this was right, as the past cannot change-- the politician will always have been there in your mind. The Romans disagree, and use 'stare' as he was there only for a given time, and then left. So, one can easily see what Fbaezer means when he talks about the language's being deficient...

apropos italian:

The basically question but still interesting : "Ciao" means "hello", "goodbye" or both?

One way I think of it, Kicky, is that stare also means to stand. So I stand (stay) well.. as we would say "we stand united in.."
I think of essere as meaning equal to, which as others point out, implies permanence.

So, did you have your class one night a week?

Yep, Once a week. I have had two classes, and I really like it so far. The only problem is that I don't have anyone to practice actually speaking it out loud with. I can study the words on paper and I think I have them, but then when I get to class and have to speak it, it takes me a moment or two to get it from my brain to my mouth. Ah well, this week I'll get my buddy to practice with me. The only problem with him is that his first language is spanish, so the way he pronounces certain letters is a little confusing. But I'll get it. Maybe I'll try to get someone in the class to practice with me during the week or something.

good luck for your italian practise kcan... :-)

Thanks, Thok.

Thok: ciao is hello & goodbye.
In formal speak, salve is hello, and addio is goodbye. But only in formal speak.

"You say goodbye and I say hello." : Tu dici ciao, io dico ciao

kickycan, if your mate is a native Spanish speaker, he can teach you the most important pronunciation element for a native English speaker: vowels. Spanish and Italian vowels are pronounced exactly the same.

English speakers tend to make diptongues out of almost every vowel. If you avoid that, you're more half way there in your pronunciation.

An Italian will hear something like this from a typical native English speaker's pronunciation:
"Iou sounou un reigazzou ameriicanou", instead of "Io sono un ragazzo americano".

You are right about the vowels, Fbaezer. I actually took spanish in high school, so I know how to pronounce vowels, and talking to my Argentinian friend does help in that respect.

It's the pronunciation of things like the g in "intelligente" or the qu in "questo" that I have to stop and think about first. I just have to keep practicing I guess.

Kickycano e' un uomo intelligente!

(Never trust my italian, kicky, but always trust fbaezer, and I bet Drom is one to count on too.)

Hang out in an Italian neighborhood (there may be one or two in New York, I've heard) and listen. You won't understand what's being said, but you can pick up on the way the language is spoken. The pronunciation of "qu", "ch", "gl" will come automatically after sufficient repetition.

I grew up in East Boston, a largely Italian neighborhood. My pronunciation is pretty good, but my vocabulary leaves a lot to be desired (in more ways than one).

I wouldn't follow George's advice. You'd find too many second and third generation Italians, who speak a mixture of Southern dialects and English.

On WW2, several Italian-American soldiers were terribly dissappointed when they found out they didn't speak Italian, but the local dialect from their parents' hometown, and couldn't make themselves understood. Stories about G.I. "translators" being absolutely unable to communicate were common.

What we know as Italian is Florentine dialect. It turned lingua franca of the cultured classes, and then became national tongue.
It wasn't until the 1950s and 1960s, with television, that it became the common language of the people. As late as the 1970s, it was difficult for most peasants and factory workers to express themselves fully in Italian.

And then came Il Boom, or am I wrong about that... I think then more people got tvs, etc.

Here's a translated link on Il Boom -
Il Boom

Nevertheless, my own experience has been that when I did take Italian in a classroom setting, I found it fairly easy to pick up the pronunciation. I believe that to be a result of having grown up listening to bits and pieces of spoken Italian (albeit Neapolitan and Calbrian dialects).

Four years of high school Latin (with the ecclesiastical pronunciation) probably helped a bit as well.

La Sua Testa e una scatola vuota.

Lei ha una testa vuota.

Are those grammatically correct? Just trying to come up with good insults as a way to make it fun for me. I'll soon be insulting my boss in Italian all the time. This is so cool.