Join us for these monthly sessions at Roehampton Library, where you can improve your Italian language skills. We read and discuss together "easy reads" short stories and excerpts from a range of Italian books, from classics to more current works. Among the simplified texts we have read and discussed together are: Dino Buzzati's "Gli amici" and "I topi"; Italo Calvino's "Marcovaldo ovvero Le stagioni in città"; Gianni Rodari's "Favole al telefono"; Antonio Tabucchi's "Sostiene Pereira"; and Giovanni Boccaccio's "Ser Ciappelletto".

Anyone with an interest in advancing their Italian is welcome. The written texts are usually circulated in the previous session, so that participants can prepare in advance reading and translating them. We then read them aloud together in the session, a few paragraphs each, and we discuss about them in some detail, first of all at the language level and addressing any niggling questions about grammar.

After this, we chat about anything more or less related to the themes included in the texts involved. At times, we engage with articles related to the short stories that we read, as we try to delve more deeply into the cultural and historical differences to the Italian context. As we do this in an informal setting, often the discussions can lead also to different tangents.

We look at snippets of etymology and what characterises the Italian language, too. The great Italian poet Leopardi had an interesting way of putting it: "The temperament of Italian language is capable of having lightness, spirit, liveliness, vivacity, quickness, etc., as much as gravity, etc.; it is capable of expressing all the nuances of social life, etc.; but it is not capable—as no language ever was—of having a foreign character" (Pensieri, 1898, no. 1946-1947). Which is a fancier way of saying each language has its own unique personality and distinctive vibe, and Italian is no different in this, however subjectively we may choose to think of it.

Italian Conversation Group