wikis

I know and often refer to wikipedia as a general source of information on a topic but I tend to forget that it contains input from almost anyone - and can therefore be innacurate. I had a look at the wiki sites as suggested by 23 things and found the wikimap to be the most useful and I guess I would expect that editors to this site would be genuine...whereas I found the wikileaks difficult to navigate.

E-Books

Allora, in addition to learning Italian via classes, you tube and blogs the use of e-books could be quite useful. One relatively easy way to find some Italian (language and reading) titles is to access googlebooks and type 'italian' in the search engine. Included in the initial responses are books like the lonely planets guide to learning italian and even the 'idiots pocket guide to Italian'.
There's even a book titled 'Italian Stories' which gives the option of reading some excellent italian authors in their original tongue first, followed by an engllish translation.
However, the only thing that I don't really like about e-books on google (and on the other sites I looked at) is the fact that I didn't manage to view each single page on the computer screen - and had to scroll up/down to read the page....Having said that the you tube clip on three e-readers look good - providing a good imitation to a real book..

Del.ic.ious

Just had a quick browse through del.ic.ous and found that it was very esay to tag italian and language and rss feed the results to this blog - another great resource for anyone trying to learn italian. Interestingly I didn't need to sign up for a del.ic.ous account to do this - which was handy in this instance.

On a seperate note - I want to try and link some lovely photos from Italy to the world map on flickr but haven't managed to figure out how to do so - any helpers out there among my 23 thing colleagues?

Ciao,
BI

Bella Venezia

Bella Venezia
Originally uploaded by A Team & Co

Questa e una foto di Venezia - una bellissima citta.
This is an example of using flickr to upload a photo to my blog but it was NOT EASY!

Did You Know......

Ok - it's not striclty Italian related but definitely food for thought!

Little Venice - Bologna

This is a photo of a tiny canal that runs through the heart of Bologna - one of Italy's beautiful Northern cities. It is a curious find as you are walking down one of Bologna's porticoed streets you come across a little wooden shutter in the wall and behind it is what gli Bolognesi call Little Venice! If you happen to be in Bologna check it out - it's beteen Capo di Lucca and Via Alessandrini.

And while there you should test this beautiful city on it's nicknames - Bologna la Dotta (the learned), Bologna la Rossa (the red - famous for it's left wing politics) and especially Bologna la Grassa (the fat - for it's wonderful food!!)

Bella Venezia

Ciao tutti. Here's my first attempt to upload a photo from picassa of Venice's Bridge of Sighs! I decided on picassa because it seems to link to google and I know other family members use it too. Hopefully it will be as good as flickr!

Italian Foodies

Here's a great local italian link that I came across - I'm sure we've all been to La Cucina in Castletroy for a pizza slice, italian panino or a delectable tiramisu ....well for lots of yummy recipes and fab photos link to http://italianfoodies.ie/

Complete Beginner

Parla correntamente or maybe you're a complete beginner and want to pick up a few Italian phrases for holidays. Why not complete the following quiz and find out.....

http://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/italian/gauge/

Buon divertimento - Enjoy!

E penso a te

Ed ora - un po di musica! Questa canzone e bellisima - ed e anche utile per imparare l'italiano.

And now for a little music. This is a beautiful song by Lucio Battisti which doubles up as a very useful way to learn some verbs in the present tense!

Buon divertimento (Enjoy)

Benvenuti

Ciao a tutti - benvenuti al mio blogspot italiano! Voglio usare questo spot per praticare la bella lingua ed anche per sentire notizia d'Italia.

Welcome, Welcome - this blogspot is going to be my chance to practice my italian a little bit and maybe even receive some feedback on my grammar !?! :-) - (note to self, figure out how to put in better smiley faces on my blog..and how to use symbols as there are many accents in Italian!)

Allora, basta cosi per la prima volta - a presto.

Tuttitalia!