Easy Italian: Beginner Level

By Carmine Albanese

If you’re approaching Italian for the first time, this book is exactly what you need. It contains more than 55 dialogues and short stories with detailed explanations of key words and expressions, grammar rules with lots of examples and more than 260 exercises with solutions to practice what you're learning.
You'll also be able to use a self-evaluation system so that you'll know at the end of each lesson, if you need to go back and review it or if you're ready to move on to the next step. Half way through this course and then again at the end of it, a test will allow you to check your level and make sure that you've achieved the results you were aiming for.
The best way to learn a foreign language though is to be exposed to it as much as you can and it is very important to listen to mother-tongue people speak. For this reason, all the dialogues and the vocabulary lists that you’ll find in this book are available online for free on www.italianglot.com. Listening (and repeating) over and over again is the easiest way to expand your vocabulary and learn the correct pronunciation of Italian words. You will practically “absorb” the language, just like a sponge, and you’ll be able to use words and expressions - that you probably won’t even remember memorizing - in the moment you'll need them.
So this book can be a useful reference guide that you can always carry with you and the online audio and video material will give you the possibility to be immersed in the language whenever you want.

By the end of this course you will develop the following communication skills and you will be able to express yourself on these topics:

• Greet people in a formal and informal way
• Introduce and describe yourself
• Talk about your occupation
• Talk about school
• Countries and nationalities
• Groceries and shopping
• Family and relatives
• Daily habits
• Forms of entertainment
• Holidays and traveling
• Sports and health
• Housing and furniture
• Free time and hobbies
• Desires, needs and obligations
• Permission, possibility and ability
• Food and drinks
• Your origins and your current living situation
• Books and magazines
• Counting and performing easy mathematical operations
• Asking and telling your age
• Asking and telling the time
• The days of the week

So do you want to order a pizza Margherita in Naples ? Talk to a gladiator impersonator by the Coliseum in Rome ? Have a conversation with a gondoliere in Venice ? Understand the lyrics of your favorite Italian song and sing along ? Watch the last Benigni movie without subtitles ? All you have to do is to follow this course. Study a bit every day and have fun !

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carmine Albanese
• Release date: Mar 27, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463129302

Carmine Albanese

Carmine Albanese was born in Naples, Italy in 1971. He's a qualified English teacher and maintains a YouTube channel where he also teaches Italian. He has always been interested in language learning and linguistics. He speaks seven languages and he likes to share the learning techniques that he has found to be the most effective with his students.

Book preview

Carmine Albanese

Easy Italian

Beginner level

Table of Contents

Introduction

Reading and Pronouncing Italian

Lesson 1: Greetings

Lesson 2: More Greetings

Lesson 3: Introducing Yourself

Lesson 4: What do you do for a living ?

Lesson 5: In The Classroom

Lesson 6: Where are you from ?

Lesson 7: Grocery Shopping

Lesson 8: Family

Lesson 9: Daily Habits

Lesson 10: Going Out

Lesson 11: On Vacation

Lesson 12: Review

Lesson 13: Staying Healthy

Lesson 14: Looking For An Apartment

Lesson 15: Old Photos

Lesson 16: Free Time And Hobbies

Lesson 17: Needs And Desires

Lesson 18: Food And Drinks

Lesson 19: Permission, Possibility And Ability

Lesson 20: New In Town

Lesson 21: Books And Magazines

Lesson 22: One Last Effort

Introduction

Ciao, pasta, spaghetti, pizza, zucchini, broccoli, panini, risotto, pesto, mozzarella, lasagna, al dente, cappuccino, latte, paparazzi, magenta, graffiti, soprano, ballerina, piano, finale, bravo, dilemma, confetti, zero, lava, influenza, bimbo, ghetto, manifesto, marina, regata, mamma mia.

This is just a short list of Italian words that are also commonly used in English. The list is actually much longer, even more so if we consider the words that come from Latin and that sound pretty much the same in English as in Italian (long-lungo, victory-vittoria, jury-giuria, contract-contratto, pact-patto and so on). 

So if you've decided to learn Italian, you should know that you're not really starting from square one. If words are the bricks of a language, you already have many at your disposal to start building a home where you can feel at ease speaking the language of this boot-shaped Mediterranean peninsula (that's right, two more words that are strictly related to Italian - penisola mediterranea).

But words alone are not enough, because you will need to put them together in the right way to build up meaningful sentences, just like bricks alone are not enough if you don’t have any cement to glue them together (look at that: we’ve just found yet another word that sounds pretty much like the Italian word cemento !). The cement that can glue the words of a language together to build up meaningful sentences is grammar. 

This book aims at helping you thoroughly understand Italian grammar with lots of examples and exercises. It can be a useful reference guide that you can always carry with you, as you’re laying the foundation of your little Italian home.

In my experience, though, the best way to learn a foreign language is to be exposed to it as much as you can and it is very important to listen to mother-tongue people speak. For this reason, all the dialogues and the vocabulary lists that you’ll find in this book are also available on the www.italianglot.com for you to listen to (and download).

Italian A1 - listen

Whenever you see this symbol, you will know that you can find audio aids about a specific topic.

Listening (and repeating) over and over again is the easiest way to expand your vocabulary and learn the correct pronunciation of Italian words. You will practically absorb the language, just like a sponge, and you’ll be able to use words and expressions - that you probably won’t even remember memorizing - in the moment you'll need them.

I’m sure that when they play your favorite song on the radio, you can sing along and remember its lyrics, even though you probably never really spent any time sitting at your desk trying to memorize them. It just happened naturally and effortlessly by listening to the song over and over again. After all, this is also the way children learn to speak.

So while the audio and video materials will give you the possibility to be immersed in the language with more than 50 dialogues and hundreds of audio exercises, this book will allow you to have all the online material with you at any time in a written form, focusing mainly on the grammatical aspects of Italian and including lots of examples, many more detailed explanations and even more exercises with solutions. You'll also be able to use a self-evaluation system so that you'll know at the end of each lesson, if you need to go back to review it or if you're ready to move on to the next step. Half way through this course and then again at the end of it, a test will allow you to check your level and make sure that you've achieved the results you were aiming for.

If you’re approaching Italian for the first time, the beginner level is the one for you. By the end of this course, you will be able to use and understand familiar everyday expressions and interact with people provided that they talk slowly and clearly and they are prepared to help. You will be able to develop the following communication skills and talk about these topics:

  •  Greet people in a formal and informal way

  •  Introduce and describe yourself

  •  Talk about your occupation

  •  Talk about school

  •  Countries and nationalities

  •  Groceries and shopping

  •  Family and relatives

  •  Daily habits

  •  Forms of entertainment

  •  Holidays and traveling

  •  Sports and health

  •  Housing and furniture

  •  Free time and hobbies

  •  Desires, needs and obligations

  •  Permission, possibility and ability

  •  Food and drinks

  •  Your origins and your current living situation

  •  Books and magazines

  •  Counting and performing easy mathematical operations

  •  Asking and telling your age

  •  Asking and telling the time

  •  The days of the week

So do you want to order a pizza Margherita in Naples ? Talk to a gladiator impersonator by the Coliseum in Rome ? Have a conversation with a gondoliere in Venice ? Understand the lyrics of your favorite Italian song and sing along ? Watch the last Benigni movie without subtitles ? All you have to do is to follow this course. Study a bit every day and have fun !

Abbreviations

Let's see all the abbreviations that you can find in this book and what they mean:

n.: noun

A noun is anything that you can talk about or think of. You can talk about a car, a person, love, a cat. So these words are all nouns.

You can't talk about red, but you can talk about the color red. So the word color is a noun, but not the word red (which is actually an adjective).

You can't talk about slowly - maybe that's the way someone talks or walks - but slowly can't be a topic of conversation, so it is not a noun (it's actually an adverb).

You can't talk about going, but you can talk about the act of going or the intention of going. So the words act and intention are nouns, while going is a verb.

adj.: adjective

An adjective is a quality that describes a noun. We said that the word red is an adjective, because it can describe a car (a red car) or an apple (a red apple). The word my is also an adjective because it can describe words like car or apple too (my car, my apple).

m.: masculine

f.: feminine

s.: singular

pl.: plural

Nouns and adjectives in Italian have a gender (masculine or feminine) and a number (singular or plural).

pr.: pronoun

A pronoun is a word that can replace a noun. So if we change the sentence John eats an apple to He eats an apple, the word He is replacing the noun John, but it's still referring to a person whose name is John, so He is a pronoun.

v.: verb

A verb describes an action (to go) or a state (to be). A noun can perform an action and in that case it's defined as the subject of the sentence. In the sentence John greets a man, it's John who's performing the action (he's greeting someone), so John is the subject of the sentence. The man is directly receiving the effects of the action performed by John and so the noun man is defined as the direct object of the sentence. 

If we change the sentence to He greets him, we now have pronouns instead of nouns, but they still have the same functions:

He is the subject and performs the action and him is the direct object and receives the action. For this reason, we call he a subject pronoun and him a direct object pronoun.

adv.: adverb

An adverb is a quality that describes an action. So while adjectives describe nouns, adverbs describe verbs. If we say I talk slowly, the adverb slowly is describing the way I talk and it's adding information to the verb talk.

Reading and Pronouncing Italian

Reading Italian is going to be much easier than reading English, because 99% of the time, one letter of the Italian alphabet corresponds to just one sound, which means that it can usually be pronounced in just one possible way. So once you memorize each letter of the Italian alphabet with its corresponding sound, you will always know how to read it regardless of the word in which it appears.

In English, on the other hand, one letter can correspond to more than one sound, which means that it can be often pronounced in more than one way (this is true especially for vowels).

---

Let's consider, for example, letter a.

In Italian, letter a is always pronounced more or less like the a in the word car. If you’re familiar with the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), this sound is represented by the symbol [a]:

(1) a → [a]

In English, letter a can be pronounced like the Italian a, in words like car or far:

(1) a → [a]

but in the word cat, letter a corresponds to a sound that’s halfway between the a in car and the e in bet. The International Phonetic Alphabet represents this sound with the symbol [æ]:

(2) a → [æ]

In the word game, letter a is not expressed by a single sound, but by a combination of two adjacent vowel sounds (which form a so called diphthong) which is represented by the IPA symbol [eɪ]:

(3) a → [eɪ]

From these examples, we can see that, while in English there are at least three different ways to pronounce letter a, in Italian there’s only one possible way, so let's consider, one by one, all the letters of the Italian alphabet and let's see how they are pronounced.

Italian A1 - listen   Letter A

As we've just seen, letter a in Italian is pronounced more or less like the a in words like car or far and its IPA symbol is [a]. Every dictionary will give you a phonetic transcription of a word using IPA symbols, so that you can learn how to read it. The symbol / ' / will let you know that the stress goes on the syllable that follows it.

In the word: 

amare /a'mare/

the stress goes on the syllable ma, so the correct pronunciation is amàre.

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Italian A1 - listen  Exercise

Read the following words out loud:

amare /a'mare/

banana /ba'nana/

ala /'ala/

Panama /'panama/

cave /'kave/

Italian A1 - listen   Letter B

Letter b in Italian is pronounced exactly like in English, so no big surprises here. The IPA symbol for this sound is [b].

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Italian A1 - listen  Exercise

Read the following words out loud:

banco /'banko/

baco /'bako/

Barbara /'barbara/

abate /a'bate/

babbo /'babbo/

Italian A1 - listen   Letter C

The third letter of the Italian alphabet represents one of the few exceptions to the one letter one sound rule that we've seen before, because it can be pronounced in two different ways, depending on the letter that follows it.

ca, co, cu

When letter c is followed by the vowels a, o or u, it's pronounced like the c in the English word cat and it's represented by the IPA symbol [k]:

casa  /'kasa/

cosa /'kɔsa/

cubo /'kubo/

ce, ci

When letter c is followed by the vowels e or i, it's pronounced like the ch in chair and it's represented by the IPA symbol [ʧ]:

cena /'ʧena/

cibo /'ʧibo/

In this last example (cibo, food), letter c is followed by letter i, which is pronounced like the ee in feed. We can clearly hear this [i] sound when letter i is followed by a consonant, exactly like in the word cibo, where letter i is followed by the consonant b:

cibo /'ʧibo/

When letter i is followed by another vowel, this [i] sound disappears:

ciao /'ʧao/

cielo /'ʧɛlo/

bacio /'baʧo/

In other words, ciao is pronounced "chao, not chiao.

che, chi

When letter c is followed by letter h, it goes back to the original sound [k] like the c in cat. In this case, we only have two options because the combination of letters ch can either be followed by the vowel e or by the vowel i:

cheto /'keto/

chilo /'kilo/

So letter c is pronounced [k] when followed by a, o, u, hi and he and is pronounced [ʧ] when followed by e and i.

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Italian A1 - listen  Exercise

Read the following words out loud:

cascata /kas'kata/

colore /ko'lore/

acuto /a'kuto/

acido /'aʧido/

lancia /'lanʧa/

cieco /'ʧɛko/

broncio /'bronʧo/

aceto /a'ʧeto/

barche /'barke/

archi /'arki/

Italian A1 - listen   Letter D

Letter d in Italian has a very similar sound to the English d. The only slight difference is that in English, as the tip of the tongue is pressed up against the upper teeth, the body of the tongue gets sort of swollen and, as we produce the sound [d], we expel some air, while in Italian the body of the tongue is more relaxed, almost flat, and no air is expelled. 

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Italian A1 - listen  Exercise

Read the following words out loud:

dado /'dado/

dito /'dito/

adoro /a'doro/

cade /'kade/

dopo /'dopo/

Italian A1 - listen   Letter E

There are two different ways of pronouncing letter e in Italian (yes, another exception to the one letter one sound rule).

The first way is to pronounce it with a wide open mouth and that’s why we call it an open e, like the e in bed. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, this sound is represented by the symbol [ɛ].

The second way is to pronounce it with a slightly closed mouth and this is what we call a closed e, like the a in play. 

In Italian this difference is very important because the way we pronounce letter e can completely change the meaning of some words. For example, the word venti /'vɛnti/ with an open e means winds, while the word venti /'venti/ with a closed e means twenty. The word pesca /'pɛska/ with an open e means peach, while pesca /'peska/ with a closed e means fishing.

Sometimes this difference is not so clear, because in Italy there are so many accents and dialects that in some areas, especially in the south, both the word for peach and for fishing are pronounced with a closed e /'peska/ and it’s the context that can help you figure out what the speaker means.

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Italian A1 - listen  Exercise

Read the following words out loud:

festa /'fɛsta/

venti /'vɛnti/

venti /'venti/

lamento /la'mento/

contento /kon'tɛnto/

pesca /'peska/

bere /'bere/

vedere /ve'dere/

Italian A1 - listen   Letter F

Letter f is an easy one because it’s pronounced in the exact same way in English and in Italian and its IPA symbol is [f].

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Italian A1 - listen  Exercise

Read the following words out loud:

fila /'fila/

forse /'forse/

scafo /'skafo/

caffè /kaf'fɛ/

fermo /'fermo/

Italian A1 - listen   Letter G

Letter g is strictly related to letter c, so if you remember all the different ways to pronounce letter c, you will have no problem figuring out how to pronounce letter g. Let’s go through all the different possibilities one by one.

ga, go, gu

When letter g is followed by the vowels a, o or u, it's pronounced like the g in gate and it's represented by the IPA symbol [g]:

gatto  /'gatto/

goccia /'gotʧa/

guru /'guru/

ge, gi

When letter g is followed by the vowels e or i, it's pronounced like the j in jet and it's represented by the IPA symbol [dʒ]:

gente /'dʒɛnte/

giga /'dʒiga/

In this last example (the word giga, short for gigabyte - did you notice that Italians pronounce it differently ?), letter g is followed by letter i. We can clearly hear the [i] sound when letter i is followed by a consonant, exactly like in the word giga, where letter i is followed by the consonant g:

giga /dʒiga/

When letter i is followed by another vowel, this [i] sound disappears:

già /dʒa/

giorno /'dʒorno/

giù /dʒu/

ghe, ghi

When letter g is followed by letter h, it goes back to the original sound [g] like the g in gate. Once again, we only have two options because in Italian the combination of letters gh can either be followed by the vowel e or by the vowel i:

alghe /'algɛ/

aghi /'agi/

So letter g is pronounced [g] when followed by a, o, u, hi and he and is pronounced [dʒ] when followed by e and i.

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Italian A1 - listen  Exercise

Read the following words out loud:

agata /'agata/

gola /'gola/

gufo /'gufo/

agito /'adʒito/

agio /'adʒo/

gelo /'dʒɛlo/

leghe /'lege/

ghiro /'giro/

Unlike letter c, letter g can produce completely new sounds when followed by such consonants as n or l. Let’s see first the combination: gn.

Italian A1 - listen  The combination gn

When letter g is followed by letter n, it produces the same sound as the ñ in the Spanish words piraña and mañana. This sound is represented by the IPA symbol [ɲ] and it’s always a strong, elongated sound in Italian (except when it's at the beginning of a word), so we write it twice in the phonetic transcription:

bagno /baɲɲo/

So while the combination gn is pronounced as two separate sounds in English [g-n], like in the word ignorant /'ɪɡnərənt/, in Italian it corresponds to one single sound.

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Italian A1 - listen  Exercise

Read the following words out loud:

lasagne /la'zaɲɲe/

lagna /'laɲɲa/

lavagna /la'vaɲɲa/

gnomo /'ɲɔmo/

segno /'seɲɲo/

gnocco /'ɲɔkko/

Italian A1 - listen  The combination gli

When letter g is followed by letter l which is usually also followed by letter i, it produces a sound that can be a little tricky. We could say it’s like a softer l that we produce by moving the whole tongue slightly backwards and pressing it up against the palate just enough as to leave some space on both sides of it to let the air flow out. 

This sound is represented by the IPA symbol [ʎ] and it’s always a strong, elongated sound in Italian, so we write it twice in the phonetic transcription of a word:

agli /aʎʎi/

When gli is at the end of a word, like in our example (agli, garlics), or is followed by a consonant, we pronounce letter i, but the [i] sound disappears when gli is followed by another vowel:

figlio /fiʎʎo/

figlia /fiʎʎa/

figlie /fiʎʎe/

Some words that begin with the combination gli don't follow the rule we've just seen and the letters g and l are pronounced separately, like in the English word glee /'gli:/ (the symbol /:/ means that the vowel that precedes it is a long vowel).

Don't worry, though, because the exceptions are very few, like the word glicerina /gliʧe'rina/ (glycerine) or the word glicine /'gliʧine/ (wisteria).

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Italian A1 - listen  Exercise

Read the following words out loud:

negli /'neʎʎi/

foglia /'fɔʎʎa/

foglie /'fɔʎʎe/

caglio /'kaʎʎo/

paglia /'paʎʎa/

maglina /maʎ'ʎina/

Italian A1 - listen   Letter H

In Italian letter h is never pronounced. The English sound h like in the word hotel is represented by the IPA symbol [h]. So while an English speaker pronounces the word hotel as:

/hoʊtɛl/

an Italian speaker pronounces it as:

/ɔtɛl/

Letter h is written at the beginning of some words to distinguish them from similar words with a different meaning, but it’s never pronounced.

For example, the word ho means I have and the word o means or, but they are both pronounced in the exact same way: [o].

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Italian A1 - listen  Exercise

Read the following words out loud:

hai /'ai/

ai /'ai/

ha /'a/

a /a/

hanno /'anno/

anno /'anno/

hobby /'ɔbbi/

habitat /'abitat/

Italian A1 - listen   Letter I

Letter i sounds like the ee in feed when it’s followed by a consonant and in this case it’s represented by the IPA symbol [i]; it sounds like the y in yet when it’s followed by another vowel and in this case its IPA symbol is [j].

This is just a slight difference in the way letter i is pronounced and it doesn’t imply any change in the meaning of a word, like we’ve seen for letter e:

pino /'pino/

pieno /'pjɛno/

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Italian A1 - listen  Exercise

Read the following words out loud:

sigilli /si'dʒilli/

imbuto /im'buto/

chi /ki/

iena /'jɛna/

piove /'pjɔve/

limoni /li'moni/

Italian A1 - listen   Letter L

The sound corresponding to letter l is similar in Italian and in English, even though there’s a slight difference. In Italian the tongue is more relaxed and flat, while in English it’s kind of swollen and moves backwards. Its IPA symbol is [l].

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Italian A1 - listen  Exercise

Read the following words out loud:

lodevole /lo'devole/

ali /'ali/

lima /'lima/

palo /'palo/

calca /'kalka/

Italian A1 - listen   Letter M

Letter m in Italian is pronounced just like the English m and its IPA symbol is [m].

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Italian A1 - listen  Exercise

Read the following words out loud:

mela /'mela/

mamma /'mamma/

mina /'mina/

mima /'mima/

Italian A1 - listen   Letter N

Letter n is pronounced in the same way in Italian and in English. Its IPA symbol is [n].

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Italian A1 - listen  Exercise

Read the following words out loud:

nona /'nona/

neve /'neve/

nero /'nero/

Italian A1 - listen   Letter O

Just like letter e, there are two different ways of pronouncing letter o. 

The first way is to pronounce it with a wide open mouth and we talk about an open o, like the a in call. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, this sound is represented by the symbol [ɔ].

The second way is to pronounce it with a slightly closed mouth and this is what we call a closed o, like the o in go pronounced with an Indian accent.

This difference between these two sounds can change the meaning of some words. For example, the word botti /'bɔtti/ with an open o means loud bangs which is how Italians usually define the fireworks on New Year’s Eve, while the word botti /'botti/ with a closed o means barrels.

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Italian A1 - listen  Exercise

Read the following words out loud:

moda /'mɔda/

cosa /'kɔsa/

coda /'koda/

colore /ko'lore/

Italian A1 - listen   Letter P

Letter p in Italian sounds almost the same as the English p. The main difference is that in English, the sound [p] is more explosive and air is suddenly expelled when we open our lips to pronounce it. We call this an aspirated p and the IPA symbol is [ph]. In Italian letter p is not so explosive and is uttered without a strong burst of air. Its IPA symbol is [p].

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Italian A1 - listen  Exercise

Read the following words out loud:

papà /pa'pa/

copia /'kɔpja/

peperone /pepe'rone/

polpa /'polpa/

Italian A1 - listen   Letter Q

Letter q in Italian is always followed by letter u and the combination qu is always pronounced [ku], exactly like the combination cu which is also pronounced [ku].

So how do we know when we have to write this combination of sounds with a q or with a c ?

Fortunately a very simple rule will help you figure it out:

when letter u is followed by another vowel (a, e, i, o), we represent the sound [k] with letter q, so we can have these four possible combinations: qua, que, qui, quo.

For example: quando (when), questo (this), qui (here), equo (fair).

An exception is represented by the words cuore (heart) and scuola (school), which are spelled with letter c, even though letter u is followed by another vowel.

when letter u is followed by a consonant, we represent the sound [k] with letter c.

For example: cubo (cube).

The only word in which we have letter c and letter q at the same time is the word acqua (water) and all the words that are derived from it like acquoso (watery). 

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Italian A1 - listen  Exercise

Read the following words out loud:

quanto /'kwanto/

culla /'kulla/

quindi /'kwindi/

quadro /'kwadro/

cuore /'kwɔre/

Italian A1 - listen   Letter R

In Italian we roll letter r, which means that it sounds different from the English r, unless you have a Scottish accent. To roll your r, what you have to do is to place the tip of your tongue up against the palate, right behind the upper teeth, and as the air comes out, the tip of the tongue should tap repeatedly against the palate. 

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Italian A1 - listen  Exercise

Read the following words out loud:

raro /'raro/

ramarro /ra'marro/

rete /'rete/

rana /'rana/

Italian A1 - listen   Letter S

Letter s can be pronounced in two different ways. The first way is like the s in sand and its IPA symbol is [s]. The second way sounds like the z in zebra and its IPA symbol is [z]. 

The [z] sound can only be found between two vowels and never at the beginning of a word. It's also very common in northern Italy, while it's almost completely absent in southern Italy where the sound [s] is more common.

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Italian A1 - listen  Exercise

Read the following words out loud:

storia /'stɔrja/

sistole /'sistole/

rosa /'rɔza/ (northern Italy) or /'rɔsa/ (southern Italy)

segno /'seɲɲo/

socio /'sɔʧo/

Letter s can be also part of two combinations of letters that produce a different sound.

Italian A1 - listen  The combinations sce & sci

The combination sce is pronounced like the she in shed, while the combination sci is pronounced like the shee in sheep. The IPA symbol for the English sound sh is [ʃ]:

scena /'ʃɛna/

scimmia /'ʃimmja/

In this last example (scimmia, monkey), the group sc is followed by letter i. We can clearly hear this sound when letter i is followed by a consonant, exactly like in the word scimmia, where letter i is followed by the consonant m.

When letter i is followed by another vowel, this [i] sound disappears: