'Giorno' is the Italian word every learner meets on day one, in 'buongiorno'. What the spelling hides is where that soft 'gi-' came from: it's Latin 'di-', the 'di' of 'day', worn smooth as Latin turned into Italian.
'Giorno' descends from Latin 'dies', 'day'. From 'dies' came the adjective 'diurnus', 'daily', and from that the late-Latin noun 'diurnum (tempus)', 'a day'. As Latin became Italian, the 'di-' at the start softened into the 'gi-' of 'giorno' - the same change that turned Latin 'radius' into Italian 'raggio'. The same root spread across Europe: French 'jour', Occitan and Catalan 'jorn', Spanish 'jornada' (by way of Occitan), and - through French - English 'journey' and 'journal'. So the Italian word for 'day' is cousin to a whole family, even where the spelling has travelled a long way from the Latin.
mezzogiorno' - 'mezzo', 'half' or 'middle', plus 'giorno' - means 'midday', the point where the sun stands highest. From there it came to mean 'south', because south is where that noon sun stands, and 'il Mezzogiorno', with a capital, is the ordinary Italian name for the south of Italy. French does the very same with 'midi', which is both 'midday' and 'le Midi', the south of France.
An illustrated black-and-white word-history in comic form - stage panels, one idea to each: 'dies' and 'diurnum' in Latin, the day-family tree across Europe, the 'di' to 'gi' sound-change ('diurnum' to 'giorno', beside 'radius' to 'raggio'), and the Italian family that grew from 'giorno' ('giornata', 'soggiorno', 'giornale')
The word-history breakdown, Latin to modern Italian, with a date at each stage the record allows
A sources page listing where every claim comes from
A short guide for the adult on how to use the cards
The PDF prints two ways. The large cards - one idea to a page - are made to be laminated and clipped onto a single binder ring, so a child can handle them, turn them over and rebuild the order. You print, laminate, trim and bind these yourself; the cards are numbered, so a loose deck goes back in sequence. The single sheet at the end holds the whole word on one page - print it and it's ready, no laminating or cutting - for the pencil case or the middle of a lesson. You'll need a printer; a laminator and a ring are needed only for the deck.
Because the large cards come apart, there's more to do with them than read. Shuffle the stage cards and rebuild the order. Deal them face-down and turn the timeline over one at a time. Hold up an English-cousin card - 'journey', 'journal' - and ask which part of the meaning it kept. Match a Latin stage to its Italian word. If you own more than one word from L'Officina Radice, clip the English-cousin cards from several decks onto one ring and sort the cousins back to their roots. It's the same cards, talked through and handled differently - adult-led, a few minutes at a time, never a drill.
Italian vocabulary is often met as a list of separate words to memorise, and for a child with dyslexia or a stretched working memory, a list is the hard way to hold anything. 'Giorno' is a good place to start, because so much grows from it - 'giornata', 'giornale', 'soggiorno', 'buongiorno', 'mezzogiorno' - and because its soft 'gi' has a reason behind it. Once a learner sees the one root under all of them, a page of separate words becomes one connected family, and that is far easier to keep.
Designed for the range of learners who suit it:
Anyone who likes where words come from
Italian learners in Key Stages 3 and 4
Home-educated children
Learners who find vocabulary hard to hold when it's taught as isolated words - including dyslexic and working-memory profiles
Parents brushing up their own Italian, or studying alongside a child
Adults coming back to Italian after school
This isn't a first step into Italian. A learner should already be meeting words like 'giorno', 'buongiorno' and 'giornata' in lessons or reading - the cards explain words a child is encountering, they don't introduce the language from scratch. If a child hasn't met these words at all yet, this will come too early.
The same root, in the other shops: 'jour' in L'atelier des mots (French) and 'jornada' in El Taller Raíz (Spanish) - the day-family appears across all three, so the sets belong together.
In the Compendium: the post on why word origins help dyslexic learners with modern languages.
Free in The Wordhord: the English cousins - 'journey', 'journal', 'diurnal', 'sojourn' and 'adjourn' - each as its own word card.
For personal use in home education and tutoring only.
'Giorno' is the Italian word every learner meets on day one, in 'buongiorno'. What the spelling hides is where that soft 'gi-' came from: it's Latin 'di-', the 'di' of 'day', worn smooth as Latin turned into Italian.
'Giorno' descends from Latin 'dies', 'day'. From 'dies' came the adjective 'diurnus', 'daily', and from that the late-Latin noun 'diurnum (tempus)', 'a day'. As Latin became Italian, the 'di-' at the start softened into the 'gi-' of 'giorno' - the same change that turned Latin 'radius' into Italian 'raggio'. The same root spread across Europe: French 'jour', Occitan and Catalan 'jorn', Spanish 'jornada' (by way of Occitan), and - through French - English 'journey' and 'journal'. So the Italian word for 'day' is cousin to a whole family, even where the spelling has travelled a long way from the Latin.
mezzogiorno' - 'mezzo', 'half' or 'middle', plus 'giorno' - means 'midday', the point where the sun stands highest. From there it came to mean 'south', because south is where that noon sun stands, and 'il Mezzogiorno', with a capital, is the ordinary Italian name for the south of Italy. French does the very same with 'midi', which is both 'midday' and 'le Midi', the south of France.
An illustrated black-and-white word-history in comic form - stage panels, one idea to each: 'dies' and 'diurnum' in Latin, the day-family tree across Europe, the 'di' to 'gi' sound-change ('diurnum' to 'giorno', beside 'radius' to 'raggio'), and the Italian family that grew from 'giorno' ('giornata', 'soggiorno', 'giornale')
The word-history breakdown, Latin to modern Italian, with a date at each stage the record allows
A sources page listing where every claim comes from
A short guide for the adult on how to use the cards
The PDF prints two ways. The large cards - one idea to a page - are made to be laminated and clipped onto a single binder ring, so a child can handle them, turn them over and rebuild the order. You print, laminate, trim and bind these yourself; the cards are numbered, so a loose deck goes back in sequence. The single sheet at the end holds the whole word on one page - print it and it's ready, no laminating or cutting - for the pencil case or the middle of a lesson. You'll need a printer; a laminator and a ring are needed only for the deck.
Because the large cards come apart, there's more to do with them than read. Shuffle the stage cards and rebuild the order. Deal them face-down and turn the timeline over one at a time. Hold up an English-cousin card - 'journey', 'journal' - and ask which part of the meaning it kept. Match a Latin stage to its Italian word. If you own more than one word from L'Officina Radice, clip the English-cousin cards from several decks onto one ring and sort the cousins back to their roots. It's the same cards, talked through and handled differently - adult-led, a few minutes at a time, never a drill.
Italian vocabulary is often met as a list of separate words to memorise, and for a child with dyslexia or a stretched working memory, a list is the hard way to hold anything. 'Giorno' is a good place to start, because so much grows from it - 'giornata', 'giornale', 'soggiorno', 'buongiorno', 'mezzogiorno' - and because its soft 'gi' has a reason behind it. Once a learner sees the one root under all of them, a page of separate words becomes one connected family, and that is far easier to keep.
Designed for the range of learners who suit it:
Anyone who likes where words come from
Italian learners in Key Stages 3 and 4
Home-educated children
Learners who find vocabulary hard to hold when it's taught as isolated words - including dyslexic and working-memory profiles
Parents brushing up their own Italian, or studying alongside a child
Adults coming back to Italian after school
This isn't a first step into Italian. A learner should already be meeting words like 'giorno', 'buongiorno' and 'giornata' in lessons or reading - the cards explain words a child is encountering, they don't introduce the language from scratch. If a child hasn't met these words at all yet, this will come too early.
The same root, in the other shops: 'jour' in L'atelier des mots (French) and 'jornada' in El Taller Raíz (Spanish) - the day-family appears across all three, so the sets belong together.
In the Compendium: the post on why word origins help dyslexic learners with modern languages.
Free in The Wordhord: the English cousins - 'journey', 'journal', 'diurnal', 'sojourn' and 'adjourn' - each as its own word card.
For personal use in home education and tutoring only.
