Dear Friends of Italy,

  a trip to Italy is always a dream, even for those who have already been there. Italy has more than one half of the art treasures existing in the world and its historical past adds always an expanded dimension of interest and enjoyment to the imposing natural beauty of its scenic sites. For centuries it has been the cradle and the living space of art, music, literature, and is still an open jewel case, full of treasures waiting only for visitors.

  Italy juts south in the Mediterranean sea, protected by the mighty barrier of the Alps to the north and crossed from north to south by the Apennines. Mother nature gave Italy the well known boot shape and filled it with beauty and diversity. The long valley of the Po river, the countless smaller valleys watered by rivers and spotted with hill-towns offer to the visitors myriads of charming views and picturesque sceneries. The temperate Mediterranean climate of the land, with rare climatic extremes, makes traveling by car in Italy a pleasant experience every season of the year.
  Foreign visitors are drawn to this country by the lures of its stupendous natural environment, its legendary large and small islands, the superb ruins of ancient Rome, the medieval palaces, the mystic cathedrals, the world class museums and the unequaled landscapes.

  This unpretentious little volume is intended to help some of those visitors flocking to Italy, with some basic aspects of the to-day version of the language of Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio. Italian is a phonetic language and we believe it is possible to learn a good number of idioms and useful sentences without paying much attention to the complex grammatical and syntactical rules. This booklet is a simple tool, to be used before and during your trip. Its aim is to familiarize the visitor with recurrent Italian expressions.

  Our reader should not be too concerned with precise pronunciation or with the complexity of verb conjugation but should try instead to understand the Italians and to be understood by them on a very basic level.

  Welcome into the Italian language and traditions.