'Oggi' is the Italian for 'today', and it's shorter than it looks like it should be. Two small syllables - with a whole Latin phrase folded up inside them.
'Oggi' is what's left after centuries of wear on a longer Latin phrase, and tucked in the middle of it is one of Italian's two words for 'day' - the old one, not the everyday one. The cards trace how the phrase shrank to 'oggi', and show the shorter cousins the same phrase left behind in Spanish, French and Portuguese.
• An illustrated black-and-white word-history in comic form - stage panels, one idea to each, following 'oggi' back to the Latin phrase folded up inside it
• 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, and you choose which suits you. 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 lay them out in 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 timeline. Deal them face-down and turn them over one at a time. Hold up the English-cousin cards and ask which piece of 'day' each one kept. Find the old word for 'day' hidden in the middle of 'oggi'. If you own more than one word from L'Officina Radice, clip the shared cards 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.
'Oggi' looks like a word to take on trust - short, common, no obvious parts. Learned that way it's just a sound to remember. Traced back, it turns out to be a squeezed-down Latin phrase with an old word for 'day' still inside it, and it stops being arbitrary: the doubled 'gg', the vowels, even its family likeness to Spanish 'hoy' and French 'hui' all have a reason behind them.
Made for secondary Italian learners at Key Stages 3 and 4, but it suits a wider range:
• Anyone who likes where words come from
• Italian learners in Key Stages 3 and 4, and GCSE students meeting 'oggi'
• 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 'oggi' in lessons or reading - the cards explain a word a child is encountering, not the language from scratch. If a child hasn't met it at all yet, this will come too early.
Related resources
• In L'Officina Radice: 'buongiorno' and 'mezzogiorno' are the nearest neighbours - both built on 'giorno', the everyday Italian 'day', from the same Latin family as the word hidden in 'oggi'.
• For anyone who likes the links across languages: 'hoy' (Spanish) and 'aujourd'hui' (French) come from the same Latin phrase as 'oggi'.
• In the Compendium: the post on why word origins help dyslexic learners with modern languages.
• Free in The Wordhord: the English cousins from the same root - 'diary', 'diurnal' and 'dismal'.
For personal use in home education and tutoring only.
Available now as a PDF download.
'Oggi' is the Italian for 'today', and it's shorter than it looks like it should be. Two small syllables - with a whole Latin phrase folded up inside them.
'Oggi' is what's left after centuries of wear on a longer Latin phrase, and tucked in the middle of it is one of Italian's two words for 'day' - the old one, not the everyday one. The cards trace how the phrase shrank to 'oggi', and show the shorter cousins the same phrase left behind in Spanish, French and Portuguese.
• An illustrated black-and-white word-history in comic form - stage panels, one idea to each, following 'oggi' back to the Latin phrase folded up inside it
• 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, and you choose which suits you. 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 lay them out in 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 timeline. Deal them face-down and turn them over one at a time. Hold up the English-cousin cards and ask which piece of 'day' each one kept. Find the old word for 'day' hidden in the middle of 'oggi'. If you own more than one word from L'Officina Radice, clip the shared cards 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.
'Oggi' looks like a word to take on trust - short, common, no obvious parts. Learned that way it's just a sound to remember. Traced back, it turns out to be a squeezed-down Latin phrase with an old word for 'day' still inside it, and it stops being arbitrary: the doubled 'gg', the vowels, even its family likeness to Spanish 'hoy' and French 'hui' all have a reason behind them.
Made for secondary Italian learners at Key Stages 3 and 4, but it suits a wider range:
• Anyone who likes where words come from
• Italian learners in Key Stages 3 and 4, and GCSE students meeting 'oggi'
• 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 'oggi' in lessons or reading - the cards explain a word a child is encountering, not the language from scratch. If a child hasn't met it at all yet, this will come too early.
Related resources
• In L'Officina Radice: 'buongiorno' and 'mezzogiorno' are the nearest neighbours - both built on 'giorno', the everyday Italian 'day', from the same Latin family as the word hidden in 'oggi'.
• For anyone who likes the links across languages: 'hoy' (Spanish) and 'aujourd'hui' (French) come from the same Latin phrase as 'oggi'.
• In the Compendium: the post on why word origins help dyslexic learners with modern languages.
• Free in The Wordhord: the English cousins from the same root - 'diary', 'diurnal' and 'dismal'.
For personal use in home education and tutoring only.
Available now as a PDF download.
