Collins Dictionaries - Easy Learning Italian Vocabulary

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Published by Collins

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Second edition 2016

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank those authors and publishers who kindly gave permission for copyright material to be used in the Collins Corpus. We would also like to thank Times Newspapers Ltd for providing valuable data.

MANAGING EDITOR

Maree Airlee

CONTRIBUTORS

Francesca Logi

Janice McNeillie

FOR THE PUBLISHER

Gerry Breslin

Rachel Grocott

eBook Edition © May 2016

ISBN 9780008142070

Version: 2016-04-01

Title Page

Copyright

How to Use this Book

Abbreviations

Gender and Plural

air travel

animals

bikes

birds

body

calendar

camping

careers

cars

clothes

colours

computing and IT

countries and nationalities

countryside

describing people

education

environment

family

farm

fish and insects

food and drink

free time

fruit

furniture and appliances

geographical names

greetings and everyday phrases

health

hotel

house – general

house – particular

information and services

law

materials

music

numbers and quantities

personal items

plants and gardens

seaside and boats

shopping

sports

theatre and cinema

time

tools

town

trains

trees

vegetables

vehicles

the weather

youth hostelling

supplementary vocabulary

articles and pronouns

conjunctions

adjectives

adverbs and prepositions

nouns

verbs

About the Publisher

The Easy Learning Italian Vocabulary is designed for both young and adult learners. Whether you are starting to learn Italian for the very first time, revising for school exams or simply want to brush up on your Italian, the Easy Learning Italian Vocabulary offers you the information you require in a clear and accessible format.

This book is divided into 50 topics, arranged in alphabetical order. This thematic approach enables you to learn related words and phrases together, so that you can become confident in using particular vocabulary in context.

Vocabulary within each topic is divided into nouns and useful phrases which are aimed at helping you to express yourself in idiomatic Italian. Vocabulary within each topic is graded to help you prioritize your learning. Essential words include the basic words you will need to be able to communicate effectively, important words help expand your knowledge, and useful words provide additional vocabulary which will enable you to express yourself more fully.

Nouns are grouped by gender: masculine (“il”) nouns are given together, as are feminine (“la”) nouns, enabling you to memorize words according to their gender. In addition, all feminine forms of adjectives are shown, as are irregular, invariable and gender-changing noun plurals.

At the end of the book you will find a list of supplementary vocabulary, grouped according to part of speech – adjective, verb, noun and so on. This is vocabulary which you will come across in many everyday situations.

The swung dash ~ is used to indicate no change to a word in the plural of a compound noun.

In Italian, nouns are either masculine or feminine. Most masculine nouns take the article il. This article becomes l’ when the noun begins with a vowel and becomes lo when the noun begins with s+consonant (eg sc, sp, st), or begins gn, pn, ps, x, y or z.

Feminine nouns take la or l’ (when the noun begins with a vowel).

Many masculine nouns end in o; many feminine nouns end in a. Both masculine and feminine nouns can end in e.

Unlike English, where you generally add letters (s or es) to make nouns plural, in Italian you change the final letter.

o> i(il post o> i post i)

a> e(la pizz a> le pizz e)

e> i(il padr e, la madr e> i padr i, le madr i)

Articles change as follows:

Nouns that are imported into Italian (such as bar, computer, menù, sport) stay the same in the plural ( pl inv ). They are generally masculine: