enough, so long as you keep it up. Doing these five or ten minutes will stop you forgetting what you’ve already learnt and, over time, will let you put more meat on the bones of what you’re learning.
As for what counts towards those five or ten minutes, well, that’s up to you. Whilst you’re working with this book, I would recommend that your five or ten minutes should be spent here, learning with me. Once you’re done here, however, your daily study could be spent reading an Italian newspaper, watching an Italian film, or chatting with an Italian-speaking acquaintance. You could even attend a class if you want to learn in a more formal setting. The important thing is to make sure that you do a little every day.
CHAPTER 2
I booked a table, ordered dinner and then paid the bill. What did you do?
I booked a table, ordered dinner and then paid the bill. What did you do?
The first chapter has shown you that you can learn how to create full and complex sentences in Italian with relative ease. It also began to show you how to convert huge numbers of English words into Italian and then start using them straight away.
We will be doing more of both here, which will allow you to make enormous strides with your Italian in an incredibly short space of time.
Let’s begin by carrying out a second Word Robbery…
Time to steal some words!
Word Robbery Number 2
The second group of words we are going to steal are words that end in “ion” and “ation”. Words that end in “ation” in English usually end in “azione” in Italian. Take a look:
Words such as:
| decoration | decorazione |
| cooperation | cooperazione |
| imagination | immaginazione |
| preparation | preparazione |
| donation | donazione |
| domination | dominazione |
| association | associazione |
| innovation | innovazione |
| irritation | irritazione |
There are more than 1250 “ion” words in English and they are related to similar words in Italian, as you can see above; we can start using these in Italian right now.
Adding them to the words we’ve already stolen so far, we have now reached a total of 2000 words stolen – and we’re only on Chapter 2!
Words stolen so far 2000
We’ve now carried out our second Word Robbery and have gained more than a thousand words ending in “ion” and “ation”, and it only took us thirty seconds to “learn” them.
Now, words ending “ation” in English actually come with yet another benefit. Not only can we steal them to use in Italian in the way shown above, but we can also utilise them to make the past tense in Italian.
Let me show you how.
Let’s take “preparazione” (preparation) as an example.
Now, the first thing you’re going to do with this “preparazione” is to cut off the “azione” at the end. Do this now – what are you left with?
prepar
(prep-are)
Good. Now, onto the end of this, I want you to add the “ato” from the end of the English word “tomato”. So again, I simply want you to take “prepar” and add an “ato” onto the end of it.
What word does that give you?
preparato
(prep-are-art-oh)
This means “prepared”.
Let’s try doing this again, this time with the word “decorazione”. Once more, cut off the “azione” from the end of the word and replace it with the “ato” you find at the end of the English word “tomato”.
Doing this, what do you get?
decorato
(deck-or-art-oh)
This means “decorated”.
Now, you will find that there is always an exception to any rule and, in this, an important exception is the word “reservation”. Italians do not like to make reservations as we do, instead an Italian will make a “prenotation” with the idea being that someone will pre-note the thing they want – a table, a room, and so on – rather than reserve it.
So, given that English words ending in “ation” end in “azione” in Italian, how do you think you would say “reservation” (literally “prenotation”) in Italian?
prenotazione
(pray-no-tatz-ee-oh-nay)
And now that we know what “reservation” is in Italian, we can once again cut the “azione” from the end and add the “ato” from “tomato” in its place. This will give us the Italian for “reserved” (literally “pre-noted”). So, cut off the “azione” from “prenotizione”, replace it with “ato” and tell me what “reserved” or “pre-noted” is in Italian:
prenotato
(pray-no-tart-oh)
Now again, what is “I have” in Italian?
Ho
(o)
So, how would you say “I have reserved” (literally “I have pre-noted”)?
Ho prenotato
(o pray-no-tart-oh)
And “I reserved” / “I pre-noted”?
Ho prenotato
(o pray-no-tart-oh)
And “I did reserve” / “I did pre-note”?
Ho prenotato
