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Italian

17 topics in 3 parts: grammar, register and regional dialects.

Grammar

10 topics

• Address: tu, Lei, voiWho you call what, and which verb person follows. Italian puts the formal pronoun in the third person, which no other language you speak does.10 options
• Auxiliary choice: essere or avereWhich verb builds the compound past. Not a free choice, not a matter of taste — and a small class of verbs takes both, with a real difference in meaning.10 options
• Passato prossimo and passato remotoWhich past tense tells a finished story. The sharpest grammatical divide in Italy, and the one where north and south genuinely disagree about the same event.10 options
• Congiuntivo rangeHow far the subjunctive reaches before the indicative takes over. The most discussed point in Italian usage, and the clearest single marker of an educated register.10 options
• Clitic pronouns and combinationsWhere the unstressed pronouns go, and what happens when two of them meet. The combinations are fused, irregular and entirely fixed.10 options
• Ne and ciTwo particles carrying meanings that neither English, Spanish nor Portuguese has a single word for. They are obligatory where the standard requires them, and their absence is an error rather than a simplification.10 options
• Pronominal verbsVerbs whose meaning lives in the particles glued to them. Remove the particles and the verb means something else, or nothing at all.10 options
• Participle agreementWhether the past participle changes its ending, and with what. Narrow, exceptionless, and directly examinable.10 options
• Preposition governmentWhich preposition a verb, noun or adjective demands. Lexically fixed, not derivable — and your two other Romance languages each offer a different wrong answer.10 options
• Relative pronounsHow a clause hooks onto the noun before it. Straightforward until a preposition is involved, at which point che stops being available.10 options

Register

5 topics

• The formality ladderAnchor A, rewritten ten times. Same facts, same request, same deadline — ten heights.10 options
• Politeness and mitigationHow much padding sits around the ask. Italian softens with the conditional more than with vocabulary — and the conditional of courtesy is not a favour, it is the ordinary way to be civil.10 options
• Titles and hierarchyWhat title the other person gets. Italy uses more of them than anywhere else you write, and getting one wrong is noticed.10 options
• Standard and neostandardWhich Italian you are writing — the codified one, or the one educated Italians actually use and increasingly print. The gap is smaller than Brazil's and the stakes in an exam are the same.10 options
• Irony and understatementHow the joke is made, and whether it is signalled. The thinnest sheet in this repository, and it says so on its face.10 options

Regional dialects

5 dialects and 2 overview sheets

• RomanoRome. The Italian of Rome, close enough to the standard to be understood everywhere and different enough to be recognised in 2 words: er for il, annamo for andiamo.5 sound rules
• NapoletanoNaples and Campania. The strongest regional sound in Italian. Final vowels fade to a murmur, s before a consonant becomes sh, and the articles shrink to a single vowel.5 sound rules
• MilaneseMilan and Lombardy. The accent of Italian business and media. The s between vowels buzzes, words do not double, and conversations run on tipo, cioè and figurati.5 sound rules
• FiorentinoFlorence and Tuscany. The dialect standard Italian grew out of, with one famous difference: the c between vowels becomes an h.5 sound rules
• SicilianoPalermo and western Sicily. Italian with Sicilian underneath: three vowels instead of seven at the end of words, ll turned to dd, and the verb at the end of the sentence.5 sound rules
• Regional accentWhich part of Italy the voice comes from. Ten varieties, each with what marks it and a verified place to hear it.10 options · overview
• Regional lexiconWhich word names the ordinary thing, when Italy has three. Unlike the Brazilian and European split, none of these is the foreign one — they coexist inside one country.10 options · overview