Just stumbled over this one as well. Glad to see I was right that it should be migliore.
Around the same point, I caught a few instances of ‘pensavo avesse’ instead of ‘pensavo che avesse’. I always understood it was a real no-no to drop the che in Italian?
To me they both sound fine, but I say lots of wrong things!
I don’t know if it’s the same in Italian, but in Spanish you sometimes can drop “que” (the Spanish equivalent of “che”) with a subjunctive clause*. I’ve seen a lot of things like “penso sia” in this course and so I’ve been working on the assumption that something similar (but not identical) must be the case in Italian. I’m also sure I remember reading somewhere that crosslinguistically, this is a thing.
Maybe @gisella-albertini can clarify.
(*) Although Spanish would actually use an indicative here to be clear.
Up until now, the app itself has been really well behaved, especially considering that I use it wondering round and round the countryside with varying degrees of connectivity.
However, today, I seem to have hit a problem. As soon as ‘Arun’ introduced ‘vincere’, the app crashed. And it keeps crashing. I have stopped and restarted the app. I have restarted my phone (a Samsung android device). I have checked for updates I might have missed. But ‘vincere’ (ironically) seems to have stopped it in its tracks. The only thing I haven’t done is uninstall and reinstall the app.
Hopefully someone can help me get things back on track, please!
(Sorry, just seen this now - for some reason I didn’t get an email notification as I used to!)
Yes, you can drop the “che” in Italian, and I agree with Kai about both sounding fine to me. 
There might be exceptions, but I can’t think of any, right away while answering now. I’ll give it an extra reflection and let you know if there is any example!
Thank you!
Back in business today, after a few app issues. Came across a small glitch. We get the word ‘rosso’ and it’s building up to “potremmo avere una bottiglia di vino rosso, per favore?”, but in between we get a couple of prompts for “a red bottle” which should presumably be “una bottiglia rossA” (not rossO).
Which leads me to something I have been meaning to ask (@Kai, @gisella-albertini ?). If a woman says ‘I am sure’ or ‘I am lucky’ or whatever, would they say ‘Sono sicura…sono fortunata…’ I was assuming that would be the case, but the female voice always just says ‘sono sicuro’, like the male voice. I am guessing that’s because it’s difficult to get the voices to say something different from each other, but I thought I should check.
Excellent choice of sentence, for Italy. 
Yes, that must be a glitch: “a red bottle” should be una “una bottiglia rossA”.
Then, as a side note, we often omit the word “vino” and say “una bottiglia di rosso” or even “un rosso” - but even in this context “una bottiglia rosso” would be wrong.
And also yes, it should be “io sono sicura” or “io sono fortunata” for feminine.
I’m pretty sure a similar thing happened in a few sentences in the French course, which works in a similar way as Italian.
I believe for both it’s just because the system just had “rosso” as translation for “red”, and will have to be “taught” that also “rossa” exists, and when to use it!
We’re working on making the masculine and feminine different for the two voices 
And yes, sorry about the rossa/rosso thing. I’ll make a note to check similar phrases!
I’d noted the same thing throughout the Portuguese, but hadn’t commented - mostly because I assumed it was in some way structural (but maybe partly bc it doesn’t apply to me so doesn’t grate as much). There a a few where both options are given in the Portuguese - presumably an oversight, or an editorial decision not quite carried through: the male voice says obrigado, then pauses, then sheepishly mutters -a, etc.
Yes you’re completely right that we haven’t worked out the best way to do that yet. All of the ways we’ve tried are either tortuously complicated or a little bit wrong!
We suspect that people will work it out anyway, but it would be good to have a better solution and we are definitely working on it all the time, so thank you very much for your patience!
Thank you for your replies - and sorry for the late response (I read them when I wasn’t logged in to the forum then forgot I hadn’t said anything).
A couple of oddities from today’s session.
The first time ‘la gente’ is introduced, and a couple of times afterwards, we hear the familiar Italian voices, but they pronounce the ‘g’ like a Welsh ‘ch’ (or in one case, a non-silent ‘h’) which I am guessing is the Spanish pronunciation?
And secondly, we are introduced to ‘apprezzi’ for ‘you like’ (though I imagine it’s closer to ‘you appreciate’) but we also hear ‘che la gente li apprezzi’ (that the people like/appreciate them’. Is this perhaps another instance of the subjunctive case, or should it be ‘li apprezzA’?
Also, not specific to Italian, but not sure where to share this @aran - I came across this really interesting article about ‘learning languages like a baby’ which indirectly endorses the SSi method. You’ve probably already seen it - if not the the original research. But just in case: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2025-03-language-baby.html
Yes, “chente” is the Spanish pronunciation. You will also hear “yente” (no I’udea what that is, maybe Greek?). It only ever happens when it is a single word, so don’t worry.
The subjunctive form “apprezi” will make sense soon when you see the full sentence. Don’t worry.
About this, I would add that the sentence starting with “che” Is already a hint that you’re likely to find a subjunctive next.
Apprezzare Is to appreciate. The more literal translation of to like is piacere.
But I guess the structure would change quite a bit, would be complicated for the system to deal with it (che loro piacciano alla gente)
I am not sure if it is just in the Italian program, but I have heard the a billion neurons break approximately a billion times. Hahaha
Hello! A couple of questions from today’s session:
Firstly, we have a new reflexive, asicurarsi, to make sure. So we have the usual problems with “I want to make sure” being given as asicurarsi instead of asicurarmi. But this time we have an extra problem, because we are leading up to “They want to make sure they understand” (vogliono asicurarsi di capire) but on the way we have “I want to make sure they understand” which I think should be “Voglio asicurarmi che capiscono” but comes out as “Voglio asicurarsi di capire” - a double error?
This sort of connects to my second question. We have the prompt “I think I will ask you”, and I wanted to reply “Penso di chiederti” but the response given was “Penso che ti chiedero”. Are they both correct, or can you only use the ‘chiederti’ form when both halves are in the present tense?
Oh, and one other question: what is the sliding bar that has now appeared across the top of the app? It looks as if it ought to be a progress tracker, but it’s probably less than a fifth of the way across, and as I am past the ‘black belt’ marker, I thought I was probably over halfway through?
Thank you! (I hope all these questions are okay and I’m not just being a pain in the neck 
)
Yes, two of robo-Aran’s longer speeches from earlier on seem to have come back on repeat after a long spell of only having very short interjections.
Yes you got it almost perfect: “I want to make sure they understand” should be “Voglio assicurarmi che capiscano” (it’s subjunctive here so “capiscano” rather than “capiscono”)
“Voglio assicurarsi di capire” is definitely a bit of a strange mix.
Speaking in general and ignoring the prompt for a second, just in case you’re interested, in Italian you could have “Voglio assicurarmi di capire” (“I want to make sure I understand”)
or “Vogliono assicurarsi di capire” (“They want to make sure they understand”).
While in this case “Penso che ti chiederò” is the most literal translation, matching the future tense, and with a bit more of intention in it.
“Penso di chiederti” is also correct Italian, and basically the same meaning, although I’d naturally tend to use it more as negative “Non penso di chiederti”) or with past tense or for something I’ve been thinking for some time or with a hint more of uncertainty as in “Pensavo di chiederti (ma…)”.
Just nuances, but they’re all fine!
Oh, that’s super interesting, thank you very much Catriona!
And thank you very much for the glitch spotting, which is hugely helpful every time 
