Favorite words

For the 9 months that Sean and I have been learning Italian (one of us faster than the other), we have found ourselves often choosing a favorite word and then using it as much as possible. From day one Sean's favorite word has always been "ragazzi", which just means "guys"...at least several times a day, we hear, "ciao ragazzi!", which is obviously just "hi guys!" It rolls right off the tongue in such a pleasant way and is just a simple, nice greeting. It can be used in so many different situations too and we both say it about 100 times a day....and even better is "ragazzini" which you say for young kids.

My favorite word changes often. For a while it was "baffi" which means "mustache". This was a little bit more difficult to incorporate into my everyday speech, so it was mainly reserved for my lessons where I chose to teach my students the word, "mustache" just so I could say, "Baffi".

As of late, my new favorite is "infatti", which means "in fact". I now start just about every sentence I say with "infatti" and think I sound rather smart...even if I do fumble the rest of the sentence.