Writing Tips for Students of Intermediate Italian

Cari studenti, with the help of Veronica I am compiling a list of some of the more frequent errors that occur in compositions in intermediate Italian. Please take a look, this should be helpful! I will continue to add to it as the semester progresses. A presto, Allison.

1. Giocare. The verb giocare is nearly always followed by the preposition a: “Molti studenti giocano a hockey su ghiaccio.” To say that somebody plays a particular sport, use giocare + a + the name of the sport. To say that somebody plays a lot of sports in general, use the verb fare + molto + sport.

2. Piacere. The verb “to like” simply doesn’t exist in Italian. The closest verb to “to like” in English is the verb piacere, which signifies “to be pleasing to”. This is tricky, because it means that the thing that is pleasing is, in Italian, the subject of the verb, not the object. In English you might say “I like gelato!” but in Italian it would have to be “The gelato is pleasing to me!” See how the object becomes the subject of the verb? Now let’s try it in Italian: “Il gelato mi piace!” Il gelato is the subject of piacere, so the verb is conjugated in the third person singular, piace. If you were to try to say “I like cookies!” or, “Cookies are pleasing to me!” you’d say “I biscotti mi piacciono!” I biscotti is the subject of piacere, and is plural, so the verb is conjugated in the third person plural, piacciono. Now, to return for a minute to the English translation of piacere, “to be pleasing to.” See that preposition, to, hanging off the end of the English translation? Well, you have to use it in Italian, a, when you use the verb piacere. To say for example that the cookies are pleasing to Luigi, you need to say “I biscotti piacciono a Luigi.” It is, of course, also possible to substitute “a Luigi”, which is the indirect object of the verb piacere, with the appropriate indirect object pronoun, gli (“to/for him”): “Gli piacciono i biscotti.” (Remember that pronouns usually go before the verb).
You don’t have to use the indirect object pronoun, but – if you don’t use it – you have to use the preposition a + me, te, lui/lei, noi, voi, loro. Just as a refresher, the indirect object pronouns are:

a/per me → mi a/per noi → ci
a/per te → ti a/per voi → vi
a/per lui → gli a./per loro → gli
a/per lei → le (regardless of whether the object is masculine or feminine)

Finally, remember that piacere can be used in any tense, and that it takes the auxiliary verb essere in compound tenses: “Non mi sono piaciuti i biscotti!”

3. Anche. The word anche (“also” or “too” in English) goes before the noun, pronoun, or infinitive to which it refers. “Seguo un corso d’italiano e anche un corso di spagnolo.” “Viene anche lui alla lezione?” “Mi piace leggere e anche scrivere.” To say “me too” in Italian, write “anch’io”. For example, “Anch’io seguo un corso di spagnolo questo semestre!”

4. Capitalization. Unlike in English, where we capitalize the first letter of nearly every word in a title, in Italian we capitalize only the very first letter of the first word in the title and the rest (with the exception of proper nouns, such as people’s names) is written in lowercase letters. For example, the novel Gone with the Wind is, in Italian, Via con il vento. In Italian, we also do not capitalize the following, unless they are at the beginning of a sentence: adjectives and nouns referring to languages (la lingua francese, lo spagnolo), speakers of a language, inhabitants of an area and nationality (gli americani), names of the seasons (la primavera), months of the year (dicembre), days of the week (lunedì).
Proper nouns – the nouns given to places and to things - are always capitalized in Italian. The names of centuries are also capitalized in Italian (il Novecento, l’Ottocento).

5. Chi vs. che. It is acceptable in English to join a dependent clause to a principal clause with the relative pronoun who. For example: “The student who lives with me is from Florida.” (The principal clause – the clause that can stand on its own – is “The student is from Florida." The dependent clause – the clause that makes little sense on its own – is “lives with me”). In Italian, instead of who you must use the equivalent of our relative pronoun that, which is che. Let’s try it: “Lo studente che abita con me è di Florida.”