Tutorial Transcript

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 learned how to count in Italian. I hope you spent enough time practicing the numbers. They will be useful for this lesson because we are going to learn how to ask "how much is it?" The phrase ‘how much is it’ is: Quanto costa? (One more time, slowly: quanto costa?) Are you ready for some unchecked shopping in Italy? Let’s practice together! The first thing to say to a shop clerk is…scusi, do you remember what that means? Excuse me! So... Scusi, quanto costa? If we want to be more specific when asking "how much is this?" we should add questo when referring to or pointing to a masculine object or questa for a feminine object. Quanto costa questo? Quanto costa questa? For example, ‘hat’ is a masculine noun: cappello. Scusi, quanto costa questo cappello? And what about feminine nouns? ‘Skirt’ in Italian is feminine: gonna. So... Scusi, quanto costa questa gonna? At this point, the shop clerk can answer by saying: Costa… Sono… Fanno… For example: Sono trentanove euro! Fanno trentanove euro! or Costa trentanove euro! What number is trentanove? I’m not telling you! Okay, okay, it’s thirty-nine! It costs thirty-nine euros. Now it’s time for Consuelo’s tips. A quicker way to ask “How much?” is Quant’è? which literally means “How much is?” Even when you ask for an espresso at the counter of an Italian bar, you can ask the cashier un espresso per favore, quant’è? “One espresso please, how much is it?” So, don’t forget that Italian streets are full of stands and in most little towns you can easily find local markets with many stands where you can buy absolutely everything. At this point, can you count euros in Italian? We are going to learn how to do this and much more in the next lesson! We'll be waiting for you in our next Italiano in tre minuti lesson. Ciao, alla prossima lezione!!

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