I went to my Thursday night Italian lesson. The teacher, Gaetana, asked us at the beginning of the class if we had had a busy week. I said yes, and went on to explain that I have been busy making work because it is the leadup to Christmas, and because I have “an exhibition” <<una mostra>> in December.
Later on, after learning articulated prepositions – preposizioni articolate – we were given a list of objects and told to construct funny sentences using them and the articulated prepositions we had just learned. It was hard. Mostly because the resulting phrases were not really that funny…
However, Gaetana, doing the exercises with us, came up with <<Ci sono tre mostri nel letto!>> = “There are three monsters in the bed!” We had to ask about the monsters part, since monster is not a a regular piece of vocabulary you learn in the course of Italian lessons.
Mostri = monsters. This is a plural in Italian, so one monster = un mostro. And then I had to ask about its close relation to the word for exhibition – mostra. “Are there girl monsters, because wouldn’t one girl monster be <<una mostra>> – the same as the word for exhibition?”
Turns out there are no girl monsters – well, really that the word for monster is masculine.
So if I wanted to have a monster exhibition (as in, an exhibition of monsters, not a really huge show)…
It would be called <<mostra del mostro>>. (And that phrase uses an articulated preposition, double win!)
I’m going to have to tell Justine Austen!