Presenting your work at the office: Answering questions after the presentation

💬 Months take a for "in" and are written lowercase: a maggio "in May". in marzo also works, but a is more common.

💬 Months take a for "in": a marzo, a giugno. Months are also written without a capital letter in Italian.

💬 a becomes ad before a word starting with a so the two vowels don't run together: ad aprile, ad agosto. Before other letters it stays a: a maggio.

💬 Italian often uses the present tense for future plans: finisce "ends" here means "will finish". Same with parto domani "I leave tomorrow".

🇮🇹 This is a handy hedge when you give a deadline in a meeting. It sounds realistic rather than unsure, and Italian colleagues use it constantly.

💬 quanto "how much/many" changes its ending to match what's being counted: quante persone (feminine plural), quanti giorni "how many days", quanto tempo "how much time".

💬 al is a + il merged into one word. Italian says "work at" a project: lavorare a where English uses "on".

💬 Starting a question with E "and" is a natural way to move on to a follow-up question. It works like English "And how...?"

💬 persona is grammatically feminine even when the people are men, so it's le persone and quante persone. The plural changes the final -a to -e.

💬 qui sounds like "kwee", because qu always gives a "kw" sound in Italian. The same goes for quanto (KWAHN-toh).

💬 Cities take a for both "in" and "to": abito a Milano "I live in Milan", vado a Roma "I'm going to Rome". Countries take in instead: in Italia.

💬 mi "me" attaches to the end of mandare "to send", which drops its last e to become mandarmi. The same pattern gives puoi aiutarmi? "can you help me?"

🇮🇹 Italians borrow slide from English but don't add an s in the plural: le slide, i computer, le email.

💬 Italian puts "to you" and "them" before the verb, in that order: te + le + mando. Another example is te lo dico "I'll tell it to you".

💬 There's no word for "this" here: oggi "today" + pomeriggio "afternoon". The same pattern gives oggi sera or stasera "this evening".

💬 Adding -issimo means "very": gentile becomes gentilissimo, and bravo becomes bravissimo. To a woman, say gentilissima.

🇮🇹 Italians say this when parting from someone who's heading back to their desk or starting their shift. There's no exact English equivalent, and it's warm and very common in offices.

💬 Grazie a te literally means "thanks to you". It's the natural reply when someone thanks you first, like English "thank *you*". With Lei, say Grazie a Lei.

🇮🇹 Use A dopo! only when you'll actually see the person again later the same day. For a less definite goodbye, say Ci vediamo! "See you!"