Learn how to ask for directions
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| Ciao a tutti! Sono Consuelo. Hi everybody! I’m Consuelo. |
| Welcome back to ItalianPod101.com’s Italiano in tre minuti, the fastest, easiest, and most fun way to learn Italian. |
| In the last lesson, we covered how to express our own opinions using mi piace and non mi piace, meaning "I like it" and "I don’t like it." Today, we are going to learn a lot of helpful phrases you can use while asking for directions. |
| In previous lessons, we saw the sentence "Is there…near here?" Do you remember how we say that? C’è un…qui vicino? |
| Now we are going to focus on the answer, and we’re going to work on understanding what is said. |
| Let’s start with the basic directions! |
| First we have "go straight." |
| In Italian, "go straight" is vada dritto. |
| (One more time, slowly: vada dritto.) |
| In this phrase, we use the imperative form of the verb andare, meaning "to go," referring to Lei, vada, followed by dritto, which means "straight." |
| Let's take a look at the next expression, which is "to turn." |
| Let’s cover "turn right," which in Italian is giri a destra. |
| (One more time, slowly: giri a destra.) |
| The first word, giri, means "turn," and it is used always in the formal way of speech, and then you have the preposition a, meaning "to," followed by destra, meaning "right." |
| Since left is sinistra in Italian, turn left is giri a sinistra. |
| (One more time, slowly: giri a sinistra.) |
| Let’s try now saying "turn right at the light," which in Italian is Giri a destra al semaforo. |
| (One more time, slowly: giri a destra al semaforo.) |
| Semaforo means "traffic light," but you can substitute it with other words, such as angolo, meaning "corner," or incrocio, meaning "crossing": |
| Giri all’angolo Giri all’incrocio |
| In order to say "it's on the left" or "it's on the right" in Italian, we should use the verb essere, which means "to be," at the third singular person è, followed by the preposition sulla, meaning "on," and finally sinistra or destra. |
| For example: E’ sulla destra. E’ sulla sinistra. |
| (One more time, slowly: è sulla destra. E’ sulla sinistra.) |
| Let’s now see a practical example: |
| (here background changes into an Italian street) |
| Consuelo: Scusi, c’è una fermata dell’autobus qui vicino? |
| VO of a passer-by: Sì, vada dritto, poi giri a destra, è facile da trovare! |
| Consuelo: Quindi dritto e poi destra, ho capito. Grazie mille. Arrivederci! |
| VO of a passer-by: Prego, non c’è di che. |
| Now it’s time for Consuelo’s tips: |
| When giving directions, try also to use davanti, "in front of," accanto, "next to," and dietro, "behind." |
| This does it for today! In today’s class, we learned a lot of phrases to use when asking for directions. Next time we are going to learn how to ask for the time. |
| We’ll be waiting for you in our next Italiano in tre minuti lesson! |
| Ciao alla prossima lezione!! |
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