LTS #6: Let's Talk Lui!


Lui means he in Italian, while lei means she. This is far more confusing than the Spanish él/ella and the Swedish han/hon. Actually, scratch that, the Swedish he/she was also confusing in the beginning, but this is not about Swedish.

After getting so many Italian questions wrong on Duolingo, it finally hit me!

Lui is like Luigi, Mario's brother. It also helps that they're both Italian.

Luigi is a he. Luigi is a lui.

So lui equals he, and thus lei must equal the other one.

Perfetto!


P.S. Want to know how I untangled han (he), hon (she), honom (him), and henne (her) in Swedish too? Ask me!

Gurleen Deol

I read words. I write words. Sometimes I speak words. Sometimes even in other languages. Follow along for all the updates!

Read more from Gurleen Deol

Hi Reader, this morning while doing Elevate, I came across an unfamiliar word: adust. Naturally, I looked it up right after I secured my streak for the day. It basically means scorched or burned. As in, turned to dust (or ashes). I can almost see this being a Spanish/Italian word as well = a + dust + ar/er/ir for Spanish and are/ere/ire for Italian maybe? Just thinking out loud here so don't quote me on the possible Spanish/Italian words. You can, however, quote me on these Spanish...

It was the 4th day of the 10th month of the 2022nd year. I was amused by the fact that National Taco Day fell on a Taco Tuesday. Naturally, I was craving tacos, the street kind, not the American kind, and found myself looking up the walking distance to the nearest taco truck. 20 minutes there, 20 minutes back, that's easily 4,000 steps, give or take! Today is also a Tuesday, which you know rhymes with NewsDay, hence this newsletter. Actually, I've been craving those same tacos since yesterday...

Obviously, you know what an apartment is, but have you ever wondered why it's called an apartment? It evolved from Italian a parte (apart) to appartare (to separate) to appartamento to French appartement to English apartment at last! Because you separate and move apart from your family, or even neighborhood or city! That's not even the most important part of my discovery! My aha moment came about when I looked up the Swedish etymology. Lägenhet. Het is a common suffix. But what does läge(n)...