My mom, who was born and raised in Italy, speaks Italian with us most of the time, and our parents take us to Italy at least twice a year. I have also been attending summer camps in Friuli, Veneto and Tuscany since I was a preschooler.
As a result, I am fully bilingual: when I speak Italian, I have no foreign accent and I conjugate even complex verbs correctly.
However, there are a couple of TRICKY points of Italian grammar that took me years to master, because they are very challenging for English speakers. Honestly, my brother never seemed to have an issue with them, maybe because as the first born child he spent more time being spoken and read to by my mom when he was little. I, on the other hand, would chat and play with HIM when I was a toddler, and he would speak to me in English, not Italian (so let’s just blame all my grammar mistakes on him 😉).
The one thing that used to drive me CRAZY is the particle NE. (ne, and not né, which just means “neither” or “nor”) Using this pronoun does not come natural to me or to most Americans, because we simply don’t have an equivalent for it. NE means “of them”, or “of it”, which is something we don’t often say in English.
For example, if someone asks you how many siblings you have, and you reply “I have two”, in Italian you would say “ NE ho due” (I have two OF THEM). Or if you ask “did you eat some bread?” One might reply “NE ho mangiato un pezzetto” (I ate one small piece OF IT), while in English they would simply say “I ate one small piece.”
NE can also mean “about it”, as in “non NE so niente” (I know nothing ABOUT IT), or “NE sono sicuro” (I am certain OF IT).
If this sounds hard, wait until I tell you about the combination CE NE, and even worse, CE N’È (ce ne è)… get ready for your brain to explode 🤯 .
First of all, you may already be familiar with the Italian particle CI, which basically means “THERE”, but not when it follows the verb (in that case it is lì, or là, as in “il libro è lì”).
We say CI when it (there) comes BEFORE the verb: for example, “sul tavolo CI sono tre libri” (there are three books on the table).
Now… are you ready? It gets worse 😈
The particle CI is abbreviated into C’ when the verb that follows begins with a vowel, as in “c’è un libro” or “c’era un libro” (there is/was a book), and it even becomes CE before the particle NE! The cherry on the cake is that NE also gets abbreviated into N’ before a vowel.
I’m not kidding 🤣 I told you it was hard!
We say:
CI sono due libri
But
C’È un libro
But
CE NE ho due.
CE N’È uno solo.
Non CE N’ERANO più, etc.
That’s all for today, I know it’s challenging but… NON MOLLARE (don’t give up!).
Bianca
Bianca is an 11th grader at Ramaz Upper School in NYC. She loves reading fiction and listening to Shawn Mendes and Tate McRae. Her favorite subject is science and she plans on studying chemistry in college, followed by an apprenticeship in Florence or Grasse because her dream job is creating perfumes.
delle app che offrono innumerevoli opzioni di alloggio per tutti i budget in una città meravigliosa come Venezia? Io avevo sempre visto queste app come un’ottima invenzione, in grado di generare profitto e fornire un servizio piacevole, ma cosa comportano per una famiglia di italiani che non può più permettersi l’affitto in laguna? Certo si può vivere in periferia e fare il tragitto casa-lavoro in macchina, ma la città resta un’autentica città italiana se d’estate ci sono quasi solo turisti? O diventa semplicemente un parco divertimenti per noi visitatori stranieri?