Lira and Euros and Italy
I’ve been practicing my Italian in preparation for the Rome trip. It’s going pretty well; I’m surprised how much I remember from college. One thing I had forgotten about is the passato prossimo, which is a very common type of past tense. It’s a lot like the present perfect in Spanish (e.g. ¿Has comido?–Have you eaten?) except you only sometimes use the verb avere (to have). Other times you use essere (to be). So instead of saying literally “I have gone to the restaurant” you say “I am gone to the restaurant” and what it means is “I went to the restaurant.”
It’s kind of confusing. I’m glad I have another six months to get it sorted out.
One thing that’s really good is that Italy has now moved to the Euro. The last time I was there, they were still using lira, and it required knowing really complicated numbers, because everything cost fourteen thousand six hundred fifty-nine lira. It’s lot easier to understand when nothing I would buy costs more than a hundred Euros.
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