Renzo & Lucia, two of Jane’s friends, met and fell in love last summer in Rimini, a well-known seaside location. Now they’re planning to meet in Rome to spend a romantic weekend. Let’s review and practice how to describe people and actions, and how to use not-so-easy to grasp sentences like “si sono conosciuti” (they met each other) and “si sono innamorati” (they fell in love). Enjoy!
Intermediate Level – Lesson Nr. 27
I was wondering why the romantic weekend referred to in this lesson is not “una fine settimana romantica” since settimana is a feminine noun according to my dictionary…
Thanks for the podcasts
“Fine settimana” comes from the English “week-end”, and it is considered a unique word of male gender. So Italians say “il fine settimana”, “buon fine settimana”, and so on. The female form “la fine settimana” is not wrong – it’s just used a lot less.
You say that Renzo and Lucia met “quest’estate” and translated it as “last summer”. Shouldn’t that be “this summer”? Wouldn’t “last summer” be “estate scorsa”? Thanks.
Thuvia, on the spoken Italian language, you’ll hear a lot “questa estate” referred to a summer that has JUST passed.
For example:
“Mi ha fatto piacere vederti alla spiaggia questa estate!” – “It was nice to see you at the beach (this) LAST summer”.
Please note that the sentence uses the past tense and refers to something that happened in the past – the summer has just passed (few days, or few weeks).
If you say “scorsa estate”, or “estate scorsa”, the meaning is the same, but you imply that a longer time has passed since the summer.
Thanks for the explanation. After framing the question, it occurred to me that probably was the reason, but went ahead anyway for confirmation. Now, of course, I’m wondering why it’s questa estate and not quest’ estate.
Both “questa estate” and “quest’estate” are correct.
i never understood the question, we use that same frase in english. I think Thuvia is thinking in english while speaking in Italian, wrong!!
When I stop thinking in English when trying to speak Italian the champagne corks will go flying.
By the way, it’s spelled phrase.
dante, thuvia i know its not easy to learn but lets be nice yes. ha ha