Italian All-in-One For Dummies (153 page)

Checking out commonly used commands

As you're going about your day and practicing Italian, you may find yourself using some of the more commonly used commands, such as the following expressions.

In formal situations:

•
Scusi
(
Excuse me
). This word is often the only one tourists know, and it's greatly overused. To get through a crowd, you can also say
Permesso
(
Permission
). To get someone's attention (a ticket vendor, for example), you can use
Senta
(
Listen
).

•
Mi dica
(
Tell me
). If you're asking for information, this expression is especially useful.

•
Si accomodi
(
Make yourself comfortable
) (
Take a seat
). You hear this often in an office, where you're waiting to meet with someone.

In more familiar surroundings:

•
Figurati
(
Thanks, don't mention it
). It also appears as
figuriamoci
([between two friends]
don't think anything of it
).

•
Fallo pure
(
Just do it
) (
Go ahead
). If a friend is dithering about whether to do something, this is the common piece of advice.

•
Fammi sapere
(Literally:
Make me know
). Another way to say
Tell me everything
or
Let me know
.

•
Fammi vedere
(Literally:
Make me see
). Another way to say
Show me.

•
Ma dai
(
Oh, come on
).

•
Non facciamo complimenti
(
Let's be frank with each other
).

Chapter 4

Declaring Your Likes (And Dislikes) with Piacere

In This Chapter

Combining indirect object pronouns with
piacere
to express likes and dislikes

Using
piacere
in different tenses

Familiarizing yourself with other verbs that work like
piacere

T
he key to expressing yourself in any language is being able to share what you enjoy and what you don't care for. Getting to know people without understanding what hobbies they enjoy or what activities they really don't like can be difficult. A waiter will be better able to recommend a dish for you if you can let him know you don't care for anchovies or that you're crazy about a particular type of cheese.

This chapter explains how to express likes and dislikes across the verb tenses with
piacere
(
to please
) and shows you other verbs that work in a similar fashion. To use
piacere,
you need to construct sentences backward — at least to begin with. In English, if you want to say that you like something, you simply say
I like coffee,
for example; in Italian, this phrase takes the form
Coffee is pleasing to me.
You build your sentence so it reads, literally,
To me
(
mi
)
is pleasing
(
piace
)
coffee
(
il caffè
).

Using
piacere
also requires indirect object pronouns (
mi
[
to/for me
],
ti
[
to/for you
], and so on), which you find out about in this chapter. You use either the singular
piace
(
it is pleasing
) or the plural
piacciono
(
they are pleasing
) and the object(s) (one or many) of your desire.

Understanding How to Use Piacere

To say you like something in English, you use a direct manner, such as
I like to read.
In Italian, you explain that something pleases you:
Mi piace leggere
(Literally:
Reading is pleasing to me
). In other words, Italian reverses the subject and object; the English direct object (
to read
) becomes an Italian subject (
reading
). The English subject (
I
) turns into an Italian indirect object pronoun (
me
). Whatever is liked becomes the subject. Whoever is doing the liking becomes the object.

With
piacere,
indirect object pronouns reveal who is pleased by (or who likes) something, so this section starts with a discussion on indirect object pronouns; then it goes on to talk about conjugating
piacere
in the present tense and shows you how to combine it with indirect object pronouns.

Working with indirect object pronouns

In general, pronouns replace nouns in sentences and help to avoid monotonous repetition. For example:
Enrico gives the old car to the twins. He gives it to them.
In the second sentence,
Enrico,
the subject, is replaced by the pronoun
he.
The direct object (or what is being given),
the car,
is replaced by the direct object pronoun
it.
And the indirect object (or who receives the gift),
the twins,
is replaced by the indirect object pronoun
them
. Here's another example:

[Io] Mando molte cartoline agli amici
. (
I send friends a lot of postcards.
)

Gli mando molte cartoline.
(
I send them a lot of postcards.
)

Here, you replace
agli amici
(
to friends
) with
Gli
(
to them
).

In the same way,
piacere
uses indirect object pronouns to tell who likes something or to whom something is pleasing. For example:

Mi piacciono i fiori.
(
I like flowers.
) (Literally:
Flowers are pleasing to me.
)

Ti piacciono i fiori?
(
Do you like flowers?
) (Literally:
Do flowers please you?
)

Indirect objects are recognizable (and distinguished from direct objects) by the questions they answer:
To or for whom?
and
to or for what?
Indirect objects are preceded by a preposition (
to, for,
and so on). In English, this preposition is often understood rather than expressed, as in
Giuseppe gives [to] them the car.
In Italian, the preposition is built into the indirect object pronoun (
Giuseppe gli dà la macchina
).

Table 4-1
lists the indirect object pronouns in Italian and their English equivalents.

Table 4-1 Indirect Object Pronouns

Loro
has largely given way to
gli,
which can mean
to/for him, to/for them,
and
to/for you
(formal). If it's combined with a direct object pronoun
(
lo, la, li,
or
le
), it becomes
glielo, gliela, glieli,
or
gliele
and can also mean
to/for her
. So
Mario glielo dà
can mean
Mario gives it to her/him/it/you/them,
depending on context.

Conjugating piacere in the present tense

The verb
piacere
conjugates irregularly. It doesn't use subject pronouns, so in the tables throughout this chapter, when the subject pronouns are included for reference, they're placed in brackets. You can see the basic present tense conjugation of
piacere
in the following table.

The forms you'll use almost exclusively in the present tense are
piace
and
piacciono.
If you like one thing, you use the singular
piace.
Mi piace leggere,
for example, is
I like to read.
An infinitive is singular, and even when you add more than one infinitive,
piace
is the form to use:
Mi piace leggere, scrivere e mangiare
(
I like to read, write, and eat
).