Professor Dave here, let’s learn how to use buono.
Very soon we are going to start learning about adjectives.
These are words that describe other things.
But before we dive into learning a whole bunch of different adjectives, let’s just look
at one very common one, buono.
You may have heard this word before, and know that it means good.
In fact, it means good in all the ways we would use that word in English.
Good flavor, good in ability, or good morally.
First off, you may have heard expressions like:
These are quite common, and they can be used every single day.
Some that are more occasion-specific include: Buon natale.
You’ll notice that sometimes we drop the O and sometimes we don’t, and sometimes
we replace the O with an A. This is because buono in the singular, if masculine, follows
the same endings as the indefinite article uno, so it drops the O in front of a consonant
or vowel, but keeps it in front of a special sound.
If feminine, we add the A, or drop the A and use the apostrophe if before a vowel.
Again, this works just like the indefinite articles.
So if we fill in the chart the way we did for the indefinite articles, we get:
Buon gelato, and buona pizza.
Buono spezzatino, and the feminine column is blank.
Then we get buon antipasto, and buon’aragosta.
We should notice how the article changes when used in conjunction with buono.
Now that we understand this, let’s say you are having a meal at a restaurant, and you
want to give compliments to the chef.
Here are all the items you’ve eaten, let’s fill in the blanks with the correct form of
buono so that the chef will be thrilled with the compliment as well as your impeccable grammar.
Excellent.
We should make one additional point.
In English, when someone asks you how you are doing, and you say I’m doing good, this
is grammatically incorrect.
It should be I am doing well.
Even though this colloquialism has become pretty cemented in American English, let’s
not allow that to transfer to Italian.
If someone asks you how you are doing, you would never say buono.
You would say bene, an adverb that means well.
Come stai?
Sto bene, grazie.
This applies to actions and activities, too.
You don’t play piano good, you play piano well, so you could say: Claudio suona bene.
Now that we know how to use buono in a variety of sentences, let’s check comprehension.