bitful

Com'è andata ieri sera?
How did it go last night?
Literally: 'How (he/she/it) is gone yesterday evening?'

I am waiting with bated breath for my friend Oliver to report back from his date with an Italian last night. I hope he had a chance to impress him with some of the Italian phrases I have been posting here over the course of the week.

Dimmi tutto
Tell me everything
Literally: '(You) tell-me all'

If you want to find out more

The word for 'how' is 'come'. You must all know 'Come stai' (how are you). As usual, when two vowels (a, e, i , o, u) meet, the first one is dropped and replaced by an apostrophe: Come + è = 'Com'è?' = 'How is it?'.

The word for 'night' is 'notte'. However, in expressions like 'tonight', 'tomorrow night' or 'last night' it is translated as 'sera' (= evening). The word 'notte' is very much associated with pitch dark, silence and sleeping.

So if my friend Oliver was Italian, and I asked him 'Com'è andata ieri notte?', he might find it quite offensive because by using 'notte' I would imply that he'd spent the night with the guy on their first date. Which he so obviously would never ever do.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 19th, 2008 at 8:10 am and is filed under italian. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.