Presenting your work at the office: Explaining results from a chart

💬 di + le merges into delle. Same with di + il = del: il grafico del mese "the chart of the month".

💬 Italian says "the sales" in the plural where English often uses "sales" with no "the". The singular la vendita means one single sale.

💬 Colours come after the noun. blu never changes its ending, while rosso does: la linea rossa but la linea blu.

💬 questo "this" shortens to quest' before a vowel. So you get quest'anno but questo mese "this month".

💬 The verb is sono "are", not è "is". Italian matches the verb to the plural le vendite, even though English says "is".

💬 di + l'anno merges into dell'anno. scorso means "last" for time: il mese scorso "last month".

💬 scorso "last" goes after the word for the time period, and it keeps the l'. The same pattern gives la settimana scorsa "last week".

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

💬 salire "to go up" is the everyday word for rising numbers. Its opposite is scendere: scendiamo molto "we drop a lot".

💬 perché means both "why" and "because". You'll often hear the answer start with the same word: perché....

💬 a becomes ad before a word starting with a: ad agosto, ad aprile. It's just there to make the words flow.

💬 molti changes to match the noun: molte vendite "many sales", molto lavoro "a lot of work".

🇮🇹 Much of Italy slows down in August, especially around Ferragosto "the 15 August holiday". A dip on an August chart needs no further explanation.

💬 Literally "it has sense": Italian uses avere "to have" here, where English says "makes". The opposite is non ha senso "it makes no sense".

💬 bello shortens to bel before most masculine nouns: bel lavoro, bel posto "nice place".

🇮🇹 Grazie a Lei turns the thanks back on the other person when they've just thanked or praised you. It's a gracious, polite way to answer a boss's compliment.

🇮🇹 Buona giornata is the usual parting line in offices and shops during the day. Later on it switches to buona serata "have a good evening".

💬 Anche a Lei means "to you too", using the polite Lei. With a friend you'd say anche a te.