hello everyone if you're new around here my name is sarah and i study italian along with german
as part of my undergraduate degree and a couple of years ago when i first started out learning
italian i made a video on 10 of my favorite italian words however i was only an a2 level
there roughly and now i am a b2 level in most things c1 and a couple of things like reading
so because of this and because of all the experiences that i've had since then i spent
three and a half months living in italy as part of my year abroad for example i feel as though
i know so much more about the italian language and the beautiful words in this language too
so i thought that in this video today i would share with you guys an updated version of my
10 favorite italian words so i hope that you enjoy this video and let's get into it
okay so the first word which i'm going to talk about today is a combination of the italian word
for no 'no' and the italian word for yes which is 'si' and that is 'ni' i just think that this
is such a versatile word and i'm really surprised that we don't have a direct equivalent in english
at least not as far as i'm aware it's only sort of used in informal context but even so i think that
it's such a good way of sort of showing nuances and sort of saying that in such a succinct way
so yeah that's my first word 'ni' the second word is 'così' so this is quite a common word i admit
but i just think that it's so versatile and again there isn't a direct equivalent in english i would
say i mean for example we would use the word so for a couple of the meanings that cosi
has so for example if you said cosi tanto i think that would mean so much for example but
yeah cosi can also mean sort of like this or this big so if you held up your arms like that and you
wanted to show the dimensions of something then you could be like cosi and it means this big and
i just think that's that's such a useful word which again is just takes literally no time to
say at all and you can just express so much more with that than if you were like this big i don't
know i just think that we need a word like this as well in our language the next word is pochino
so i just think that above all this is such a cute word but it's a sort of combination of poco
with the suffix '-ino' which is a diminutive in the italian language which means a sort of smaller
version of whatever the word would be without the suffix if that makes sense so yeah i just
think that that's such a cute word it just means a little bit and yeah i really like it the next
word is simpaticone so i don't know why but it just makes me laugh whenever i hear this words um
it's i just absolutely love it it's kind of not what you would expect it to mean at least not
what i would have expected it to mean when i first came across it so simpatico it means nice when
you're talking about a person and '-one' is another suffix you can put on the end of a word in italian
another alteration that you can make that makes the word instead of smaller it makes it bigger
[please read!]
but it doesn't mean very very nice it means very much the opposite the word simpaticone
it kind of means as far as i understand again there isn't an equivalent in the
english language oh my gosh we're missing out on so much if we just speak english
it means someone who asks too much of something or someone that's way beyond what would be reasonable
and yeah it just makes me so happy i don't know why
just whenever i hear the word simpaticone i know it doesn't have the nicest meaning but
i don't know it kind of like adds some positivity to the situation if i hear that word and i'm like
simpaticone i don't know where i'm going with this okay so the fifth word which i want to talk
about again there is no equivalent in the english language for this i feel as though i should make a
video now talking about words in italian for which there is no equivalent in english let me know if
you'd like that but anyway the fifth word that i want to talk about is 'boh' i mean we kind of say
words in similar situations but it's not sort of the same word boh kind of means like whatever i
don't care it's kind of like a response so um if you said to someone oh do you want to have
croissants or toast for breakfast and the person was like boh it kind of means i don't really
care just just whatever you want kind of thing um like i don't really have a particular preference
and you can use it in sort of slightly different context as well to mean like okay i just want to
get on with this kind of thing i think i mean yeah if any italians are watching this and you want
to give more explanations as to what boh means then feel free but yeah that's just a couple of
examples i guess of the context from which you can use that word but yeah again we just have
such longer more long-winded words than that to express the same thing in the english language
and so that's why i really love the word boh the sixth word i'm going to talk about is confondere
and what i like the most about this word isn't this actual verb the word confondere means to
confuse but if you look at the past participle which is confuso then you can see how much it
is similar to the english language and yeah i just really like how there are so many words
in the italian language which even though they might not seem to have that much relation with
our language english they actually do especially if you look at different conjugations or different
tenses of the word i know this sounds super nerdy but this is the kind of thing i really like
so yeah confondere the seventh word is spassasi i actually couldn't believe it when i came across
this word because as someone who is learning two very different languages i would say like most
people who i know who learn italian learn either french or spanish along with italian so there's
like so much overlap as far as i can tell in terms of vocabulary and grammar and stuff like that
but i'm learning german along with italian so there isn't really that much overlap at all there
is actually much more similarity with english and italian than there is with german and italian
so yeah with this in mind whenever i come across an italian word which is similar to a german word
and actually has the same meaning i just get kind of excited because it's not very often that that
happens and it's even less often that it happens and the english equivalent is nothing like the
german and italian similarities if you know what i mean so yeah the word spassarsi means to have fun
so yeah the german word for fun is 'Spaß' so you can really see how related spassarsi and Spaß
are so yeah it just makes me smile whenever i come across that word the eighth word is
fraintendimento and that means misunderstanding i think it does have another meaning as well but the
meaning which i learnt for it was misunderstanding and i just think that it's such a beautiful word
for something which isn't actually quite as nice if you know what i mean if you
say that there was a bit of a misunderstanding in a certain situation fraintenamento and i also
really like words which combine two different words in italian and there are a lot of those
i mean obviously german that i think more than any language at least any languages that i've
come across that are words which are like compounds with loads of different words but i just really
like it when the italian language does that too yeah i don't really know what else i want to say
about that it's it's a really nice sounding word okay the penultimate word is ferrovia
which means railway and i just think that it's so cool the way that this is made it's kind of
exactly like the german word Eisenbahn in that it literally means iron road or iron way and yeah i
just think that's so clever because again it's so descriptive of um what it is describing i don't
know why i just really like that word and i also like the how its um railway station is 'stazione ferroviaria'
um because yeah it's like an adjective and we don't have an adjective in the same way to
describe something to do with railways so yeah okay the last word which i want to talk about
is cervallo and that means brain and honestly i think that the brain is a wonderful thing
obviously and you know it's such an essential part to the human body like the complexity of our brain
is what distinguishes us from any other species on this planet and i just think that controversial
point here our words in english brain and the german word Gehirn for example just don't do this
justice i just really like the words in italian for brain cervello it just sounds so beautiful you
know kind of sounds like a musical instrument but obviously it's way more than that but you
know what i mean it's just it's just amazing so yeah i hope that you enjoyed this video i did
start filming this video on my other memory card but then it literally packed up when i was in the
middle of filming it and i just thought how rude i have had that memory card for like three years so
i kind of knew its day was coming i lost all the footage on that memory card as well but it's fine
it's all backed up but yeah um i hope that i have filmed this okay for you guys and yeah i hope that
you enjoyed it please give this video a thumbs up if you did and subscribe if you haven't done
already i do like to make a lot of videos on my experience having lived in italy especially now
that it's still sort of quite fresh in my mind at the moment and my experience with learning
languages and hopefully in about six weeks time i will be continuing my year abroad moving to berlin
to study there at university so of course i'm really looking forward to sharing that experience
with you guys on this channel so yeah i think that's everything that i wanted to say really if
you have any favorite italian words if you have a knowledge of italian or if you're italian yourself
and you have any favorite words in italian then feel free to comment them down below and we can
have a discussion so yeah thanks so much for watching and i hope to see you again very soon
bye