Beth Bartolini-Salimbeni

The Italian language is adapting to the rhythms of modern life with the introduction of new idioms and the construction of simpler, more concise sentences and paragraphs. The basic rules of the Italian language, however, stay the same. Despite the ongoing transformation of the language, these rules remain the foundation that stabilizes it.

Of all the vocabulary needed to speak a language, nothing is nearly as valuable as verbs. Without them, your language is stagnant and incapable of showing action. To make the most of Italian verbs, you can add prefixes and suffixes or the occasional adverb or pronoun and expand your Italian vocabulary exponentially.

The verbs venire (to come) and dire (to say, to tell) conjugate irregularly in the present tense. Prendere (to take) has a regular conjugation. All three take prefixes and allow you to build vocabulary easily. After you master the conjugation of an irregular base verb, such as venire and dire, you can apply the same conjugation pattern to all the verb’s variations, as the following table shows.

In Italian, nouns have gender and number — masculine or feminine, and singular or plural. Articles (a, an, the, and so on), which are associated with nouns, are also masculine, feminine, singular, or plural according to the noun they refer to. So the English definite article the is either masculine singular, masculine plural, feminine singular, or feminine plural in Italian.

Italian idioms add color to a language and make you sound competent and comfortable. Using idioms (may) make Italians think you know more of their language than you actually do. That's good because it means people will respond in kind and help you both to expand your language skills and ease your acceptance into another culture.

In Italian, colors aren't just everyday adjectives; they also appear in idioms to express emotions, fears, feelings, and passions. Colors charge idioms with poetic nuance. Expressions like cronaca rosa (gossip columns), romanzo giallo (mystery novel), avere una fifa blu (to be filled with terror), dama bianca (the spectre of a woman [folklore has it that her appearance is an omen of death]), and anima nera ([to have] a wicked soul) are common in Italian.

Every day, Italians send more than 167 million text messages, for a total of 60 billion texts annually. Texting and chatting in Italian means learning new grammar rules, a new vocabulary, and a peculiar system of signs — all of which are necessary to convey the rhythms of conversation to this new hybrid language.

In Rome, the Bocca della Verità (Mouth of Truth) encourages you to conjugate the present perfect indicative of the Italian verbs essere sincero/a (to be sincere/honest/truthful) and mentire (to lie). The Mouth of Truth is a carved marble mask of a deity or faun. Its fame stems from a sinister legend of the Middle Ages.

Everyone knows at least one Italian word — apart from pizza, ravioli, and lasagna — and that word is ciao (hi, bye). You use it to say hello and good bye to friends and acquaintances. Ciao is somewhat informal, and can be replaced by buon giorno (good day). You use this phrase for friends, as well, but also for strangers.