Learn Italian | Christmas Words, Phrases, & Italian Traditions

Hi guys and welcome back to my channel or should I say ciao guys! I'm back at you with another video and this is actually a Learn Italian video which is to be honest very well requested on my channel. I often get private messages on my Instagram account as well asking from you guys if I could please continue with this series so when I saw this sweater online I knew that I would probably end up wearing this in one of my Learn Italian videos and that is because I want to teach you Christmas inspired words and phrases so any sort of word that I can think of that relates to Christmas and as well I will be just explaining maybe a little bit of the traditions and maybe how to use these words in some phrases in order to wish someone a Merry Christmas for example. So let's get started and let's learn some Italian Christmas words and phrases. So don't mind my little dog in the background she is actually with me on the bed and she's digging under the pillow. I hope she's not too distracting but there's no one to watch her right now. I'm actually filming in my sister's bedroom because every other room in the house is actually being used right now so this is the only sort of quiet corner that I could come to and read you guys this list but I think it looks really festive with her tree in the background so I hope you guys don't mind this but let's get started and let's just do this one right now because you can clearly see it on my means Merry Christmas. So Natale means Christmas. Bon means Merry or Happy so Buon Natale literally means Merry Christmas. If you would like to know how to say Happy Holidays it is Buone Feste. Buone Feste is sort of like Happy Holidays so Buon Natale, Merry Christmas, Buone Feste, Happy Holidays. Buone Feste. Okay so now let's go over some Christmas inspired words. First things first is albero or alberi. Albero is tree and alberi is trees and now you would say the albero or alberi di Natale. So literally l'albero di Natale is the Christmas tree. L'albero di Natale, Christmas tree. If anything ends in di Natale you know that it is Christmas related. So l'albero di Natale, Christmas tree. Just like adobbo or adobbi is decoration or decorations. Adobbi di Natale are Christmas decorations. So adobbo is a singular, a decoration. Adobbi are decorations and if that isn't such a common phrase more commonly you might even hear the word palina or palini and that literally means bobble or ball. So palini di Natale or palina di Natale is like a Christmas bobble. Not to be confused with an actual ball because you can also say palina for ball. It's basically a Christmas ball or bobble and that goes specifically with the decorations or the adobbi. Next we have babbo Natale. Babbo Natale is Santa Claus or almost literally Father Christmas because babbo is kind of like a cute way of even saying father. So babbo Natale is Santa Claus. Babbo Natale. Another Christmas character that you'll often hear about or see is la Befana. La Befana is literally the Christmas witch. Now la Befana goes with the epiphany and I'm going to be talking about that later so I'll explain la Befana to you but she's a very popular Christmas character that comes around on the day of the epiphany which is January 6th. La Befana. Another very popular Christmas person would actually be baby Jesus and you would say Gesù Bambino. Gesù Bambino is baby Jesus. Gesù is Jesus so Bambino is baby so baby Jesus. Gesù Bambino. In going with the Catholic traditions because a lot of Italians are Catholic and they really care for the church and even the nativity scene and things like that so church is chiesa. Chiesa is church. Chiesa church. La chiesa the church and as well if you go to the church for a Christmas mass you might even see il presepio. Il presepio is the nativity scene. Il presepio and that is the scene with mother Mary and Joseph and the little baby Jesus in the manger so the Christmas manger the nativity scene is sorry the nativity scene is il presepio. Luna. Sorry I'm just petting Luna to keep her calm. Next il regalo or i regali. Regalo is one gift. Regali are gifts so if you wanted to say Christmas gifts you would say regali di Natale Christmas gifts. Regalo one regali more than one. Regali di Natale Christmas gifts or il regalo di Natale the Christmas gift. Now obviously in theme with Christmas when it is Christmas time it is cold, it is snowy, it is the winter time so let's learn some of these words. Neve. Neve is snow so neve is snow. Neve snow. How would you say snowflake? It is fiocco di neve. Fiocco di neve is snowflake. Fiocco di neve is actually one of my favorite gelaterias in Rome so it's literally named after a snowflake which is pretty cute so fiocco di neve snowflake. And when would you see snow or a snowflake? You would see them in the winter time which is inverno or l'inverno so inverno is winter. Inverno winter. Inverno winter. It's always cold in the winter time. Fa freddo. It's cold. Freddo literally means cold. Freddo is cold so if you see you know that you'll probably be feeling very freddo, molto freddo, very freddo, very cold. Now one of the best parts about Christmas is of course the food. Us Italians we love our food and we have a few Christmas related food items that I want to be talking to you about and if you watch my Christmas vlogs you'll have seen me eat this already and that is il panettone or simply panettone. Panettone is basically a Christmas cake or Christmas bread. It is specific to Italy, the Italians invented panettone. I believe it was invented in Milano in Milan so you would eat panettone around Christmas time. It is a very classic Italian cake or bread. It's very delicious, very rich, they use a lot of butters, it's quite heavy and the way you make it is very complex which is why a good panettone is usually quite expensive as well. The classic panettone has like fruits in it so raisins, dried fruits, sometimes it has nuts and you can have different flavor panettones as well. Panettone classico is just your basic fruit panettone really with raisins and dried fruits which I used to hate when I was a kid that I actually love now. You'll also see il pandoro or just pandoro. It's very similar to a panettone, it's almost identical. It just, it's basically the same but it's usually plain so it's a plain and much taller cake and it's usually in a little bit of a star shape and it's usually also eaten during Easter as well so you won't just see this around Christmas time but also Easter so that's il pandoro which is also a Christmas cake. So pandoro was invented in Verona where panettone was invented in Milano and pandoro literally means golden bread. Doro is gold so pandoro is basically golden bread. Pandoro it's your typical Christmas cake minus all of the nuts and things like that that you'd find in a In theme with food you would also eat chestnuts and chestnuts are called castagne. If you also watch my vlogmas you'll have seen me make castagne, roasted chestnuts. So castagne is chestnuts and chestnuts are that typical nut that you'd kind of crack in the middle and you'd bake in the oven and you'd peel them and you'd eat them warm. They honestly kind of taste like a sweet potato in a weird way. It's like a very meaty nut because it's just very thick and heavy actually so you could only eat a few before you're full but they're really delicious and they're so good warm or roasted in the oven. You know that song chestnuts roasting on an open fire? Those are castagne. Lastly one of the last few food related things I could think of was torrone. Torrone is not a bad word in this case guys it literally means nougat. So a delicious nougat made of sugar and nuts and things like that is torrone. They usually have it with almonds or hazelnuts or anything like that so torrone is nougat and you'll often find it around the Christmas time. If you would like the soft torrone you would ask for torrone morbido. Morbido means soft. I personally really like the soft one as opposed to the classic hard one so torrone morbido is soft nougat and it's really good. So as you guys know Natale means Christmas but let's talk about specifically Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Christmas Eve is called La Vigilia di Natale. La Vigilia di Natale is Christmas Eve. You could even say Buon Vigilia di Natale. Merry Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve is La Vigilia di Natale as opposed to Christmas Day which is much more simply Il Giorno di Natale. Christmas Day. Il Giorno di Natale. You wouldn't really say Buon Giorno di Natale you'd probably just say Merry Christmas because Christmas Day is very specifically Il Giorno di Natale. Now that we know the difference let's go over greetings or wishes how you would wish someone a Merry Christmas other than saying Buon Natale. There's a few things you can say and one that is very popular is simply saying Aguri. Aguri is how you would celebrate any occasion so even a birthday or an anniversary or something you would say Aguri or Tanti Aguri which basically means wishes or greetings. Tanti is just many. Many wishes many greetings. Tanti Aguri or Aguri. So if someone were to say it during Christmas Aguri Lisa I would know that it meant Merry Christmas so I would say Grazie anche a te or anche a voi so thank you and to you. Aguri is wishes or greetings for example you can say Aguri per un Natale and then you'd fill in the blank so wishes or greetings for a Christmas that is very blank so Aguri per un Natale sereno peaceful so you're kind of saying Merry Christmas or greetings for a very peaceful or serene Christmas. Aguri per un Natale sereno so best wishes for a Christmas that is very peaceful or for a peaceful Christmas. You can also say Aguri per un Natale pieno di gioia. Aguri per un Natale pieno di gioia that is full of joy or very joyful. Aguri per un Natale pieno di gioia. You can also say Aguri per un Natale pieno di amore or Aguri per un Natale di amore. It's basically Merry Christmas for a Christmas of love really it's just wishing someone a Merry Christmas Lastly you can also say aguri per un natale pieno di felicita. Aguri per un natale pieno di felicita full of happiness. pieno is full of so pieno di felicità pieno di amore pieno di gioia, pieno di serenità, even serenity, so you can just sort of use that in a phrase that's very common but if you would just like to be simple you can say buon Natale or tanti aguri and you'll just understand that it's for Christmas. If you'd like to be more formal and very simply put you could say ti auguro un buon Natale, ti auguro un buon Natale. It's a little bit more formal than just saying aguri but ti auguro un buon Natale is literally I wish you a Merry Christmas, ti auguro un buon Natale, I wish you a Merry Christmas. You can also say vi auguro un buon Natale, vi auguro un buon Natale and that is I wish you all a Merry Christmas, vi auguro un buon Natale, so if it's more than one person you're wishing maybe their family a Merry Christmas very formally, vi auguro un buon Natale. Now when Christmas is sadly over I think I covered the most popular Christmas related words and phrases so now we are going to move on over to New Year. Now Happy New Year is literally buon anno, buon anno, Happy Year, buon anno, Happy New Year. You can also say buon Capodanno, that is a Happy New Year's Eve. You can also say felice anno nuovo, felice anno nuovo, Happy New Year as well. Felice is a way of saying happy just like buon is so felice anno nuovo is very similar to saying buon anno which implies Happy New Year. After New Year Italians celebrate the epiphany, l'epifania, l'epifania, l'epifania is the epiphany which happens on January 6th so the day of January 6th all the little girls and boys would open their stockings. Their stockings are called la calza so literally a stocking is la calza which essentially means the sock so la calza or calzi is stockings or a stocking so la calza is the stocking that you'd open on January 6th and which is the epiphany so l'epifania and you would see what l'epifania brought to you. L'epifania is the Christmas witch who fills your stockings. In Italy l'epifania is very much celebrated so if you see a main city like Rome or Torino or anywhere during the Christmas holiday season they might even celebrate the 6th, the epiphany, with a little Christmas witch flying in. You'll often see that as well it's really cute and that happens on January 6th which is the day of the epiphany, il giorno della befana. Il giorno della befana is the day of the epiphany that happens on the 6th of January which celebrates la befana, the Christmas witch and that's when you get to open your stockings and see if you have coal in there or if you have candy. Hopefully you have candy in there, caramelle, you have maybe the caramelle or cioccolato or things like that that would be a good thing. So guys I think I put Luna to sleep but hopefully I didn't put you to sleep with these Italian Christmas words and phrases. I hope I taught you guys something and you are enjoying this Learn Italian series that I slowly have going on every now and then. Please request what you'd like to see in the next Learn Italian series because I would like to continue doing this sporadically because I think you guys really enjoy it and I honestly enjoy teaching you guys Italian words and phrases like Buon Natale. It's good for me to brush up on my Italian as well that way I don't lose it and I just stay fresh with it so I really hope you guys like this Christmas edition of my Learn Italian and I think that you guys maybe learned something new which is always a good thing even if you simply took away Buon Natale in order to wish someone a Merry Christmas. Honestly that's good enough that will get you very far during the holiday season. So thank you guys so much for watching and if you like this video and do like this series please give me a thumbs up and don't forget to subscribe to my channel for more videos like this one. Bye guys! Buon Natale! Merry Christmas to you all!