Il Viaggio Verso L'Italia

Learning Italian, Phrase by Simple Phrase

September 30, 2017


Piacere di conoscerti.

Pleased to meet you.

piacere = pleasure

di = of

conoscer = infinitive form of "to meet"

ti = you. So together, conoscerti = to meet you

This phrase competed with scusi for most used, but only on my friend D.'s wedding day! The word that I actually used was piacere, attempting to time it properly. The amazing thing about Sicilians is that they were incredibly warm toward me, although it must have been obvious that I understood about one word in twenty at best...! They were all so very happy to see my friend get married and spoke at a rapid clip, thankfully completely comfortable with the fact that I was basically incapable of responding. I even had the honor of meeting D.'s parents, through the very patient translation assistance of my friend A.

More fomally, if someone says piacere to you, it is a good response to say, piacere mio, which literally means, my pleasure. In English, you could also say, the pleasure (of meeting you) is mine.

Postscript: In Spanish, "nice to meet you" is mucho gusto, or much pleasure. This is similar in structure to me gustan linguas, mi piacciono le lingue, or I like languages, introduced in Post #3. Literally, this translates into English as, "languages please me."