This series focuses on Fluent Forever’s alphabetical list of the 625 most commonly used words in any language, presented 10 words at a time with their Italian translation.

“Not all words are created equal: we use certain words far more often than others…We get a lot of mileage out of our most frequent words…With only a thousand words [of your target language] you’ll recognize nearly 75 percent of what you read. With two thousand, you’ll hit 80 percent.”

–Gabriel Wyner, Fluent Forever

 

Image created at Tagul

Word bank: back (direction), bad, bag, ball, banana, band (music), bank, bar (location), bathroom, beach. Dietro; cattivo/cattiva; la borsa; la palla; la banana; la banda; la banca; il bar; il bagno/la toilette; la spiaggia.

Practice these high-frequency words on Quizlet.

Level: Give it a Try

• The students walk dietro the teacher.
• Go sul retro of the bus.
• The little boy was very cattivo.
• The children play with una palla on la spiaggia.
• First we will go to la banca, then to il bar for a coffee.
• La banda plays music.
• Il bagno is a room with a toilet and bathtub.
• “Where is la toilette?” asked the woman in the restaurant.
• Inside her borsa was a wallet, keys and una banana.

*travel note: when out and about, one needs to ask for “the toilet”. If you ask “where’s the bathroom (il bagno)”, people will think you are looking for the room with a bathtub!

Level: Challenge

• Gli studenti camminano dietro l’insegnante.
• Va sul retro dell’autobus.
• Il ragazzo era molto cattivo.
• I ragazzi giocano con una palla sulla spiaggia.
• Prima andiamo alla banca, poi al bar per prendere un caffè.
• La banda suona la musica.
• Il bagno  è una stanza con una toilette e una vasca da bagno.
• “Dov’è la toilette?” chiesto la donna nel ristorante.
• All’interno della sua borsa erano un portafoglio, le chiavi, e una banana.

Helpful Grammar Links

• Plurals in Italian: In general, singular masculine nouns ending in “0” change to “i”; singular feminine nouns ending in “a” change to “e”. Some words end in “e” and always change to “i” in the plural.
• Adjectives are “matchy matchy” – the ending of an adjective matches in gender and number with the noun they are describing.
• Definite articles: Italian uses definite articles (“the”) much more than English, and each “the” can be different depending on if the noun in question is male or female.
• Indefinite articles (“a”/”an”)

Pronunciation resources

 Forvo, Google Translate  Content resources: Fluent Forever, WordReference

Past Posts

Week 1, Week 2

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This post first appeared on Prayers and Piazzas.