Italian 3.9. Directions

In this lesson, we study directions in Italian.

A direction in Italian is “un’indicazione.” A map is “una mappa,” and a street is “una via.” Let us look at more vocabulary related to directions in Italian.

The four geographical directions of a compass or “una bussola” are as follows:

east	estm	south	sudm
north	nordm	west	ovestm

And the four main directions right, left, up, and down are as follows:

right	destra	up	su
left	sinistra	down	giù

To describe the location of an object with respect to another, one can use one of the following:

above on top (of)	sopra	there	lì là
here	qui qua	to the left of	a sinistra di
inside	dentro	to the right of	a destra di
near	vicino (a)	far (from)	lontano (da)
outside	fuori (da)	toward	verso
straight ahead	dritto	under beneath	sotto

“qui” vs.“qua” & “lì” vs.“là”

There is a subtle difference in Italian between “qui” and “qua,” both translated as “here,” and between “lì” and “là,” both translated as “there.”

The difference is that “qua” and “là” tend to be less specific about the location. However, this subtle difference is not often respected.

“Ecco”

There is also the word “ecco” which is used to call the attention to something and is often translated as “here” in expressions.

For example, “Ecco l’autobus” (Here is the bus), “Ecco le mie domande” (Here are my questions), “Ecco perché” (Here is why), “Eccolo” (Here it is), “Eccomi” (Here I am), etc.

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