In this lesson we’re going to temporarily depart from our usual procedure of doing the exercises first and looking at the grammatical explanations later. That’s because in this lesson we’re dealing with a concept that doesn’t really have an English equivalent and the exercises won’t make any sense if we don’t first explain what’s going on.
Modes of Address
In Italian there are two fundamentally different modes of address, or ways of speaking to someone. The two modes of address are normally referred to as formal and informal and they affect sentences that involve the 2nd person. That is, they affect the sorts of sentences that use the words you, your and yours in English, like Do you want a coffee?, I can’t see you and Here’s your book. The following table shows how these examples are expressed using the two different modes of address.
| Formal | Informal | English |
|---|
| Vuole un caffè? | Vuoi un caffè | Do you want a coffee? |
| Non posso vederla. | Non posso vederti. | I can’t see you. |
| Ecco il suo libro. | Ecco il tuo libro. | Here’s your book. |
You should notice immediately from these examples that we’ve been using only the informal mode of address so far in this course.
Something else you’ll probably notice is that the formal mode of address appears to use 3rd person verb endings and pronouns when referring to the 2nd person. Vuole un caffè?, Do you want a coffee?, is the same as Does he/she want a coffee?; Non posso vederla, I can’t see you., is the same as I can’t see her; and Ecco il suo libro, Here’s your book, is the same as Here’s his/her book.
Technically these are not 3rd person verb endings and pronouns but rather a special set of 2nd person verb endings and pronouns for use in the formal mode of address. However the formal 2nd person verb endings are indeed always identical to the 3rd person verb endings and most of the formal 2nd person pronouns are identical to the 3rd person feminine pronouns (whether you’re talking to a man or a woman).
The formal mode of address is normally used when speaking to someone you don’t know very well, or otherwise as a sign of respect.
The informal mode of address is used between friends and family members and when speaking to children and animals. It is also increasingly used between young people even if they haven’t met before.
A good rule of thumb is to think about whether you would call someone by their first name. If you’re perfectly comfortable calling someone by their first name then it is appropriate to use the informal. If you would be more comfortable calling someone Mr or Mrs X, or Sir/Madam, then you should use the formal. If in doubt it’s better to use the formal as you are less likely to accidentally offend someone (although as a learner you’ll almost certainly be forgiven for making this mistake).
Preview
Here’s a preview of the phrases you’ll be learning in this lesson.
Vocabulary Exercises
Notes Regarding the Phrase Exercises
In the formal mode of address the 2nd person and 3rd person generally look and sound identical, so you often need to rely on context to work out which meaning is intended. In this course we’ll follow a simple convention to avoid ambiguity:
If you’re translating a statement that answers a previous question, use the question as a guide:
| Italian | English |
|---|
| Dov’è il mio libro? | Where’s my book? |
| Ecco il suo libro. | Here’s your book. |
| | |
| Dov’è il libro di Maria? | Where’s Maria’s book? |
| Ecco il suo libro. | Here’s her book. |
For any other ambiguous questions or statements, assume the 2nd person:
| Italian | English |
|---|
| Ecco il suo libro. | Here’s your book. |
| | |
| Vuole un caffè? | Do you want a coffee? |
Phrase Exercises
In order to avoid confusion, the phrase exercises in this lesson will use only the formal mode of address. In other words, none of the informal phrases that you’ve learnt in previous lessons will appear in these exercises.
Review
Because we only used the formal mode of address in this lesson, you were not able to review any of the exercises from previous lessons that used the informal mode of address. In fact throughout the entire course we will only ever use one mode of address in each lesson, so from now on to make sure you get frequent practice with both modes of address you should start to make regular use of the Review page (if you haven’t already). The review page can also be accessed from the main contents page of the course and it contains all the exercises you need if you want to review anything you’ve learnt in the Grammar, Vocabulary or Survival sections of the course.
Next Lesson: Grammar 10
