Tutorial Transcript

Hi everyone and welcome back to my channel! Today we are tackling a topic that may seem easy to you, in reality it is not an easy or difficult topic, let's see together some details that make the difference in conversation at any level. I don't like to think of topics as level A2 or level C1 topics, from my point of view each topic can be dealt with more superficially or in more detail depending on the level. If you hear someone snoring it's my dog ​​who is sleeping here and snoring a lot. Having said that, today we are dealing with the question of the use of definite articles with the days of the week. Or, let's put it another way, we could also say that today we'll talk about the correct use of the days of the week. Behind me you see the list of days of the week: Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Note that in Italian we begin to list the days of the week starting from Monday. I'm telling you this because in English you start from Sunday, right? Let me know in the comments below. Then, another thing we notice about the days of the week is that they all start with a lowercase letter, okay? The days of the week are not proper names in Italian and therefore are written with a lowercase letter. We write them in capital letters only if the day of the week is at the beginning of a sentence. Then, another very important thing is the accent, the accent on the final I which is a grave accent. Why is there an accent? The accent falls on the last syllable and for this reason the accent must be marked graphically. The days of the week where the accent falls on the last syllable do not change in the plural, they are invariable: - il lunedì, i lunedì; - il giovedì, i giovedì. The only two days of the week that vary in the plural are Saturday and Sunday: - il sabato, i sabati; - la domenica, le domeniche. Another thing we notice is that they are all masculine (il), except for Sunday (la domenica). So when we speak and use the days of the week in our sentences we have to make a choice: do we put the definite article or not? It depends on what we want to say, for example, if I ask: When do you go to the gym? And the person replies "Il lunedì" or replies "lunedì". What is the difference in your opinion? If he replies "lunedì" I understand that person will go to the gym this coming Monday, that is the Monday following the time of the conversation. On the other hand, if the person replies "il lunedì" it means that every Monday that person goes to the gym. Another example: "This Tuesday I'm going to soccer practice", "On Tuesdays I go to soccer practice". In this example as well it means that I'm going to to soccer practice this coming Tuesday. While, "I go to soccer practice on Tuesdays" means every Tuesday, it is a fixed commitment, it is an activity that I do weekly on Tuesdays. In summary: if I say "I will go to the post office on Thursday morning", I am talking about a single action. If instead I say "on Sundays I go to lunch at my parents'", I am talking about an action that takes place regularly every Sunday. Obviously with the days of the week we can also use indefinite articles. For example: "When you have a free Monday, we will go out together." This use of "a", indefinite article, underlines that I don't know which Monday I am talking about, but "a Monday" in the future in which you will be free. So, let me know in the comments if you already knew this information or not. Share this lesson with your friends who learn Italian. Obviously I will put subtitles on this video and then - maybe I should have said at the beginning of the video that there are subtitles available... I hope you turned the subtitles on! Thanks so much for watching this lesson and I'll see you in the next one. See you soon, bye!

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