Letter of Recommendation: Il Caffe by Gramellini (Il Corriere della Sera)

When I want to read Italian news, I turn to Il Corriere della Sera. I don't know how that wound up being "my" newspaper (since I didn't study or live in Milan) but it might have something to do with Indro Montanelli (who presided over the letters in the newspaper when I moved to Italy after college and answered one letter each day in the paper).

And when I want to wade into some bit of Italian news or controversy, I turn to Massimo Gramellini's column, which is called Il Caffe.

There are lots of ways to learn Italian or deepen your knowledge of the language. And reading Gramellini's vignettes in the Corriere della Sera newspaper is just one way.

The newspaper labels his short column "una tazzina di parole ogni giorno": a cupful of words every day. And they are sometimes fightin' words, but almost always worth reading.

BTW, another way to deepen your knowledge is listening to Italian radio. I've written about this before; listening to the news or to cultural programming in Italian is a way to keep Italy on the brain, to practice my Italian and also simply to hear about global news from an Italian perspective (I love "Il Libro del Giorno," for example, a daily show about new books coming out in Italy). 

And hearing the language in this way, versus reading a static website or newspaper, can help you move vocabulary from words you know passively to words you can imagine using in conversation.

What's interesting is, you can listen to Gramellini's column, too!

Click on this sentence to read (or ascoltare!) his latest.

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