Learning Italian: I need help!

cani is plural for cane - that's about all I can help you with.

Thanks, but I already have that part. I appreciate any response from you though, littlek. It must be that I like that "cane" avatar or something.

English is the only major language in which 'they,' 'their,' 'them' are used instead of 'he/she,' 'his/her' and 'him/her.' In standard Italian, it makes no sense to say 'someone's left Their luggage.' It must be 'someone's left his-her luggage.' So you use the his/her. 'Suoi' means 'his and her,' and they in the singular. They as in 'Mr. and Mrs. Ionesco is 'loro,' etc, changed to reflect the gender and number of the object that's possessed.

In middle and late middle English, we had distinctions between you in the singular, and you in the plural. Unlike most languages, these died out, but you can recognise 'thou' as being 'you (sing),' you as being 'you (polite single,) and 'ye' as being 'you (plural.)

As I said, most languages keep these distinctions. Like 'thy/thine' and 'your,' Italian has 'tuo' and 'vostro.' Tuo is singular, vostro is plural. Tuo goes with 'tu,' vostro goes with 'voi.'

La tua mela, or i tuoi amici are you, Anabella's, apple, you Annabella's friends.

La vostra casa or i vostri amici are your (two or more people) house and your friends.

(Vostro, vostra, vostri is also used when the You is voi because of infamiliarity between one person and another, but no need to worry about that, yet.)

Thank you, Drom. You don't know how crazy that was driving me. I will have to re-read and absorb what you wrote, but at least I'm not totally aggravated anymore!

Frickin' Italians. It's like they have a different way of saying everything!

go on kick!
it's not an easy language to learn!
... artemisia ... from Rome

Fricking Americans/Britons/Aussies/Canajuns/etcetera, they use the same word for singular and plural second person... they force you to use the same approach for formal or informal talk... they write the words one way and pronounce it the other... their verbs are genderless and you got to use the pronoun all the time... and phrasal verbs are a maze... come on (or is it come off?)

Artemisia, welcome to A2K, and thanks for the encouragement. Not understanding is so frustrating, but I'll get it eventually.

Fbaezer, excellent point.

No problem, Kicky! Like Artemisia (whom I welcome too; I hope that you really enjoy it here,) I have trust that you'll get it. You've not been doing it for long, but you have improved. Unfortunately, we can't have miracles overnight, so one has to push oneself to do keep practicing to understand more. Would you like to Italy for a holiday?

Fbaezer has reason. Middle English is far more logical than what we speak today: it was written exactly how it was spoken; there were very few phrasal verbs; and the you form changed depending on politeness and number. The verbs were sexed too; bring, bringst, bringeth, bringen. I once heard of a school teaching middle English before it taught modern languages, because it made quite a few of their foibles (like copying a verb right out of a dictionary) disappear.

Drom, I would LOVE to go to Italy for a holiday. I am actually discussing plans to do that next year with my parents. I also have started having this crazy fantasy about moving there one day. I started a thread about it, actually.

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=809512#809512

Thanks for the link; I just replied. I don't think that it's that crazy; all you have to do is not listen to the naysayers-- who would naysay anything-- and then you'll see that you have a good chance of getting there. (Where would you be going, if you take a holiday over there?)

ehi kick! you can come here whenever you want.
Rome is wonderful!
Maybe you could learn italian and I could practice my english that is not so good anymore!
I've lived three years in Virginia when I was a child ... but my english is very bad now !

Your English is good, artemisia, it's not bad at all. Where did you live in Virginia?

Hi drom! thanks. I authorize any of you to correct my wrong sentences thjough !
I've lived in Falls Church.
Some day or another I'll go back there. I'm fond of that place.
You know "childhood places" are the one you love more!

There have been no wrong sentences at all, and I would not lie about it if there were, being as I am a grammarian.

You are right about childhood places on the most part; yet, I certainly would not like to return to where I grew up. Unfortunately, my mother operated awful bars when I was younger, and things weren't too happy (thieving, etc.) I have always been a restless soul, though, and I expect that I will have lived in about forty places by twenty years' time.

What were your family doing in Falls Church? -- why did they decide to move back?

my father worked for an italian-american society.
My parents just decided that 3 years were enough! They missed their country too much. It's not easy when you're an adult. I think that the country in which you are born is the place were you feel at home. For children it's another matter. I learned american in less than a year and I liked my school.
In fact it has been very hard coming back here. Nowadays in italy there are plenty of foreigners and our schools begin to have children that don't speak italian. And our teachers (I hope) try to help them as the american schools have always done with foreign students.
15 years ago when I came back it wasn't like this and several times I even felt ashamed that I knew english so well!
The english teachers that I have met were in many cases invious (is this correct?) that I knew english better then them. Isn't this stupid?
I nearly never spoken english even during our english lessons.
That's the reason why I lost a lot of my fluency!
Well... that's the story!!!
Hope yours is going better now. How old are you? do you have a job?

I was just browsing through previous posts and read this:

Well, this is not correct, you always need a definite article in front of a possessive adjective. Therefore you say:
i miei cani hanno i loro alberi favoriti (but I would use 'preferiti' instead of 'favoriti').
You don't need a definite article in front of possessive adjectives with words like: madre, padre, zia, etc.
Ho scritto una lettera a mio padre (I wrote a letter to my father)
but
Ho scritto una lettera alla mia ragazza (I wrote a letter to my girlfriend).

Hope it helps.

Oh, I love it that there are so many threads about Italy, a country those who are new here at a2k will quickly learn that I am very enthusiastic about.

Kicky, I purchased a new fat paperback dictionary, Larousse
Dizionario Compatto. I am already dissatisfied; I so loved my original small Mondadori paperback, and I don't see them in stores lately. It had small print and used many examples with many of the words. I think at some point I will have to invest in a serious bigger dictionary.

I always wear out one half of my dictionaries more than the other half....

For the cd's, I purchased a two cd set by Barron's, to keep in my car, just so I can hear the language. I studied italian for seven quarters back around 1990, and don't get a lot of chances to practice it in daily life. I was never all that accomplished, though by the time I finished the classes I could write complex compositions without every single word having red pen marks from the instructor, and did become friends with the instructor due to the content of my compositions, if not the grammar. I'm quite miserable though at hearing spoken italian and then responding to the speaker with an appropriate comment in less than 24 hours.

Artemisia and luukas, I am so glad you've joined us. What area do you live in, luukas? And where do you live in Rome, Artemisia?

I'm from northeast Italy, I live close to Padova, to be more precise.

ossobuco (funny nickname, by the way), the best dictionary to buy would be a monolingual Italian dictionary for foreigners, unfortunately nothing of this kind has ever been published. That would be really useful.
Though it's not designed for foreigners, a very good monolingual dictionary is 'Il dizionario della lingua italiana per il terzo millennio' ( ISBN 8839550267). There is even a free online version (here)

luukas, thank you for the information regarding the articles. Glad to have another Italian speaker to ask questions on A2K. I hope you'll stick around.

I love learning Italian!

Thank you for the link, luukas; I've placed it in my favorites list.

My former italian teacher is from Padova. She lives in Los Angeles, California, now.