This section contained authentic Italian materials 1“Authentic materials” are reading texts, videos, TV programs, songs, and any other sources of language created by native speakers and published in contexts designed specifically for native-speaker consumption, with no thought given to non-native accessibility.. Listen, watch, read, and answer the questions. Do not worry if sometimes you understand just a little bit; it is absolutely normal. It is well known that authentic materials provide real language presentations, real-life situations, authentic cultural information and, of course, they motivate learners. Have fun!
Note: Closed Captions on YouTube allow you to obtain a transcript and subtitle translation for all videos. Some texts (not all of them) are translated into English. Click the images for it.
| Che Bufala! (What a hoax!) According to the prestigious Vocabulary of the Crusca2The Accademia della Crusca is an Italian society for scholars and Italian linguists and philologists established in Florence in1583 and since then has been characterized by its efforts to maintain the purity of the Italian language., the term”bufala” (literally the female bovine animal) derives from the expression “leading by the nose like an ox;” that is to say, walking around the interlocutor dragging him like an ox for the ring attached to its nose. The term, especially nowadays, indicates those news and announcements containing deceptive and fake content.  |
| L’amore inizia per gioco (Love starts as a game) Flowers and their symbolic ties to human affections are deeply engrained in Italian culture. If roses are of course associated with love in general, daisies represent innocence, youth, and vitality, appropriate to the carefree folly of early love. There is a game played by young boys and girls when seeking to determine whether the person of their love returns that affection. The person playing the game alternately speaks the phrases “He (or she) loves me,” and “He (or she) loves me not,” while picking one petal off a daisy for each phrase. The couplet is repeated until all of the petals are discarded; the line spoken when the final petal is plucked divines the truer statement. We trust that the final petal is “He/She loves me”, of course.Pomellato is an Italian jewelry company, particularly focused on using “colored stones”. The Company was founded in Milan in 1967 and currently has more than thirty boutiques worldwide, including New York. The brand ranks among the top five European jewelers by sales. |
| La Prima Cosa Bella (The First Beautiful Thing)
La prima cosa bella is a song composed originally by Nicola Di Bari (listen to the original) for his newborn daughter. The song ranked Second at the 1970 edition of the Sanremo Music Festival, the most popular Italian song contest and awards, held annually in the town of Sanremo, and consisting of a competition amongst previously unreleased songs. The song you are about to listen to is sung by a contemporary Italian singer, Malika Ayane, and was included in the soundtrack of the homonymous movie directed by Paolo Virzì in 2010. The movie was selected as the Italian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 83rd Academy Awards, but it didn’t make the final shortlist.
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