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No swet, I understand, this is your virtual home an you decorate as you see fit I just tought that people may use it to practice what they learn... You know, after all, the action of talking is fun because it helps you to make new friends... Or to read a poem or watch a movie... and languages are but a means to this end and people learning languages may be infact eager to practice :grin: Anyway, thank you for answering

Di niente

nikolic993, your idea could be an alternative that might work but for that there already is the "conversation lounge" for any given lenguage... I think that implementing an actual chat would be better... to embed a chat into a forum page all it takes is some html programming skills and a free chat service to hook up to (chatroll as an example...) but to do so one must have administration privileges over this forum

Is there a Live Chat on this forum? Sorry for asking but if there is I can't find it wouldn't it be nice to have a live chat for each of the different language "Lounges"? :grin:

I almost forgot, about the greetings when you enter a pubblic place, well, let's say that it depends on the regions: northern folks are quite reserved so it might be uncommon, southern people are more friendly so they might greet people... but, since I come from the north, I am not 100% about southern people greeting habits...

nikolic993... to put it simply, YOU ACED IT!

Just bare in mind that italian has got formalities... referring to verbs these formalities present themselves in the form of a third person singular which is almost mandatory when you speak to an unknown person such as a bartender, your mother-in-law or an employee that is giving you a service (just like spanish language has its "Usted" or german has its "Sie") what you have written is all in the second person singular... which is reserved for friends... one more tip... if you pronounce them using the "english similarities" you just proposed (e.g. ciao = chow) no real italian will understand a single word... If that is your idea of italian greetings I suggest you just go for the smile...

coppia is pronounced with a short pause between "o" and "p" and the "p" is marked, lips closed to let the "p" explode copia has a fluid sound, no puase between "o" and "p" to pronounce the "p" the lips are barely closed

it is not just that... in italian a double consonant also changes the pronunciation of the nearest vowel... making it a totally different sound... with small training it is easy to tell the words apart not just by context but by actual sounds...

by the way... the response to a "how are you" is "sto bene", non "va bene"... "va bene" is a general response used to answer when somebody ask you about an ongoing action... e.g.: "how is your chess game going?" Natasha... you ain't no italian... yet...

"fabene" means nothing... "va bene" is the corect form, some illitearates say "vabbene" joining the two words with an extra b because they can't speak correctly and in some places like Rome and middle Italy they tend to multiply oral occlusive consonants such as "b"

Most of the time if you have a good internet connection nowadays it is easier to go in forums about your favorite topics and start from there... Talking about literature itself if you don't try to buy tailored books for learners Italian authors tend to be a little bit dense...

Sorry for reopening this old topic but to my knowledge it had a misleading answer and I felt like rectifying it...

Short answer is "yes, I'd understand Leonardo but it would be hard".... Florentine from 16th century isn't easy to understand nevertheless it is understandable... But I guess that nowadays it would be possible to understand only the language that comes from Florence area, the language on which modern Italian it is derived... Other dialects are totally impossible to understand even nowadays: e.g. A guy from Verona, north east of Italy has no chance of understanding a person from Vibo Valentia, south of Italy and vice versa if they were to speak their respective dialects Sorry for reopening this old topic but it seemed a good one and I didn't want for it to go unresolved...

Another errata corrige from the previous post: it is clear that the author of the post it is not italian because pronto means "soon" in Spanish, in Italian it means "ready", as in "I am ready to listen"....

Actually this expression is made of 2 words: "va bene". "Va" from the third person singular of the verb "andare" meaning "to go"... "Bene" is an adverb that means "well"... So it is no an expression like the previous post said... It literally means "it goes well"...

Hola, Encantado de conocerte Tom, me llamo Marco y también yo hablo español

My name is Marco and I am 30. I was born in Italy but I have lived for large periods of time all over Europe, namely England, Portugal, Germany and Spain. At the moment I am living in Seville (Spain) I never studied any language for the sole purpose of learning or curiosity, it was rather a necessity... but having lived at least a couple of years in each of the countries I mentioned before has left me with a wide spectrum of languages and to be honest I discovered that the best use I can give to them is to travel, to make new friends and to increase my knowledge of people and cultures. So here I am, nice to meet you all Cheers Marco

My wife is Spanish and she had the same problem, what I came to realise is that in her head she was always trying to translate from English to Spanish and vice versa... I think that it's is due to the fact that in the majority of the Spanish high schools English teachers teach English while speaking plain Spanish... I don't know if that's your case but I'd say that the first thing you should try to tell him is to stop thinking in Spanish...

I think that to categorise a whole language as aggressive or rough is an oversimplification... Most of the time it depends on the regional accent and even among people that belong the the same linguistic region there can be major differences in the way they sound due to personal disposition toward a certain behaviour... I read somebody pointing out that "when somebody hears German he/she is automatically reminded of Hitler"... I think that, without meaning any disrespect, this statement is plain crap, the world is a big place and some years have past since WW2, I think most people know better than to think about that awful man when they hear German... Anyway, I also think that most of the time the roughness or softness of a language also depends on the listener, I think that a German child listening to his mother singing a lullaby will never say that it sound rough... And I think that most of us non native German speaker when we first started studying german we had a totally different feeling about how German sounds with respect of what we think now that we speak it...

I'd say that for starters it's a lot better to go for the one on one: better time use, it is easier for the teacher to correct your mistakes, you learn vocabulary at triple speed and you don't have the chance to get distracted... Because let's be honest, at the beginning when you are newbie it is easy to lose focus especially what you are not grasping the general meaning of a conversation. For a more proficient user it is better to go on a group class because when you are proficient you need to train different skills, you are not concerned anymore on grammar or vocabulary, you start to worry about how to enter an ongoing conversation, how to understand the conversation when somebody is not speaking to your advantage and how to live submerged by that language...

Hi, I am new to the forum os of I say something out of place please correct me. I don't know where you live but to work as a translator, at least here in Europe, you need some sort of authorisation from the government of the country where you live, otherwise your translation won't have any legal validity... I know that because I lived allover Europe and every time I moved I had to make some "official translator" translate my Academic degrees and I had to waste a lot of money on something that I could have perfectly done it myself The only thing I wanted to say is that the idea isn't bad but its applicability in practice could be difficult... Cheers