In Episode 11, Adult supervision required, we will blast off with the Dottore into the world of pronouns! We will focus on subject pronouns and object pronouns, both direct and indirect.
Generally speaking, there are two major issues involved with Italian pronouns: one is which pronoun to use, and the other is where to put the pronoun in relation to the verb. We’ll try to help straighten both of these issues out in our next three episodes. Let’s listen and start the pronoun countdown now!
PODCAST LINK: Episode 11
In Episode 10, For best results, we learn more about the ‘noi’ and ‘voi’ forms of the imperative mood. We also summarize the general rules for the use of pronouns with the imperative. By now, the ‘noi’ and ‘voi’ forms of the imperative should hold no mysteries: they’re identical to the present indicative, and negative commands are made simply by placing a ‘non’ in front of the imperative form.
Episode 10 comes to us from the center of Rome, where the Dottore will be showing tourists how to beat the heat of the Eternal City with Acqua Minerale Pansellegrino! Let’s listen.
PODCAST LINK: Episode 10
In Build a better mousetrap, we will focus on the tu forms of the imperative – the most frequently used. While the tu forms of second- and third-conjugation verbs are the same as the present indicative, the forms for first-conjugation verbs are different. The imperative for these is the present indicative stem + -a, as in guarda! (look!). The second anomaly is in the negative command form, where non is placed in front of the infinitive of the verb rather than in front of the imperative verb.
Let’s listen as the Dottore demonstrates the new anti-mouse technology of the TopoKill 9000, a supertrap capable of catching more than a mouse!
PODCAST LINK: Episode 9
In Your call is important to us, we begin looking at l’imperativo – one of the four formal verbal moods in Italian. The imperative is used to issue direct commands: you tell someone to do (or not to do) something. When you address someone formally in Italian, you use the third-person subjunctive, and that’s a rather indirect method. In this episode, we’re looking at the ‘true’ imperative, for first and second person. Let’s listen as Antonella phones home from the Villa Borghese in Italy …
PODCAST LINK: Episode 8
In Someone’s in the kitchen with Pulcinella, we conclude our discussion of the subjunctive with a summary of all the rules. Remember the WHEIRDO verbs? We’ll review all the tenses of the subjunctive: the presente, passato, imperfetto, and trapassato and contrast these with the use of the formal imperative.
Pulcinella will get down with the imperative as he cooks up a delicious spaghetti frittata! Gnam, gnam, gnam. Let’s listen …
PODCAST LINK: Episode 7
In All’s well that ends …, we are once again backstage at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. We will tackle the imperfect and the pluperfect subjunctive as we continue delving into the sequence of tenses. If the verb in the main clause is in a past tense or in a tense of the conditional, we will use either the imperfect or the pluperfect subjunctive. It’s all a question of when the two actions take place in relation to each other. What’s going on backstage? Let’s listen …
PODCAST LINK: Episode 6
Opening Night Jitters is the second in our series on the subjunctive mood. Tonight we are in Naples at the beautiful San Carlo Theatre for a performance of the Commedia dell’arte. As we learn about the present and past subjunctive, we will delve into the sequence of tenses.
We use the present subjunctive when the action in the subordinate cluase takes place at the same time or later than the action of the verb in the WHEIRDO clause, the past subjunctive when the action in the subordinate clause took place prior to the action in the WHEIRDO clause. The curtain has gone up on the First Act. Let’s listen …
PODCAST LINK: Episode 5
In this episode, I’m in the mood for …, we will talk about the ‘moody’ subjunctive. The most common use of the subjunctive is to express actions colored by emotion or doubt, rather than reported as matters of fact.
The subjunctive mood is used in a dependent clause introduced by ‘che’ when the subject of the dependent clause is different from the one in the main clause. It is triggered by verbs in the main clause that we call WHEIRDO verbs. These are verbs that denote Wish or will, Hope, Emotion, Impersonal expressions, Recommendations, Doubt or denial, and Opinions.
Pulcinella has written a special song for the subjunctive, an ode to unrequited love (Tearful Spaghetti). Let’s listen …
PODCAST LINK: Episode 4
Today’s episode, Pulcinella Plugged, will explain the last two tenses in our past tense trilogy, the trapassato prossimo and the trapassato remoto. The function of the trapassato prossimo is to put actions in the right chronological order: to report actions that happened further back in the past than other past tenses. It’s the most past of all the past tenses.
Like the passato remoto, the trapassato remoto is a tense used in literature and narrative writing. It is very similar to the trapassato prossimo in that it is used to refer to a past action that was completed before another action in the past. You’ll almost never hear it in conversation.
Let’s listen now as Pulcinella tells us about his new CD!
PODCAST LINK: Episode 3
Today’s episode, Great Caesar’s Ghost, will help you understand the passato remoto: a simple, one-word, past tense that, just like the passato prossimo, is used to report completed actions or changes in states in the past. While the passato prossimo is used for the ‘recent’ past, the passato remoto is used to talk about actions that took place in a relatively distant, or ‘remote’ past.
In contemporary Italian, the passato remoto has become a literary tense. You will find it in fairy tales, short stories, and novels – and describing historical events in non-fiction biographies, histories, and encyclopedia articles.
Let’s listen as Arlecchina and Arlecchina and Colombina talk to the coliseum cats, the ghosts of Roman emperors
PODCAST LINK: Episode 2