Some insight: We bought these lesson books in Italy, though very good, they are lacking in English instructions, and sometimes we have difficulty comprehending what they want the student to do.

In this lesson we are studying the use of the conditional in giving advice. I am having difficulty with some of the phrases that they want us to use in this letter. The exercise is:
"Scrivete una breve lettera a un amico/a che vuole venire nella vostra città. Dategli/le consigli su:

(They list phrases to use/or to address that subject in the letter; the ones I am having trouble with or not sure of are

il periodo migliore per venire - I wrote: Perche non mi visiteresti durante l'estate? OK??

con che mezzo venire - WHAT DOES THIS MEAN??

dove abitare - I can't figure out how to incorporate this into the letter subject.

Additionally, I find that I am using dovere a lot in this section on giving advice. Is this common practice when telling someone how to do something or what they should do?


grazie in anticipo...........p

They probably want you to say something like:
secondo me il periodo migliore per venire sarebbe....

"con che mezzo venire" means literally "with what means of transport to come" (more freely translated as "how to get there).
mezzo (di trasporto) is means of transport - in barca, in treno in macchina, a piedi etc

dove abitare means (in this context) where to stay (live) while you are there.
So you could say something like:
quando vieni potresti abitare in/a
secondo me sarebbe meglio abitare in.....
etc

you could also use the subjunctive followed by the conditional and say things like:
se fossi in te verrei in primavera etc, but maybe you have not studied this yet so keep it simple.

Sorry, I forgot about the dovere question.
If you are telling them about things they absolutely must do or that they ought to do then yes use dovere.
esempi:
Per essere sicuro/a di trovare un posto dovresti prenotare almeno due mesi prima.
Devi fare il biglietto in tabaccheria

Instead, if you just want to say it would be better, more advantageous, rather than essential, you could use convenire:
Per essere sicuro/a di trovare un posto ti converrebbe prenotare almeno due mesi prima.
ti conviene fare il biglietto in tabaccheria.

quote:

"con che mezzo venire" means literally "with what means of transport to come" (more freely translated as "how to get there).

I never would have got this w/o your help. Everything in my paper copy dictionary with mezzo has some sort of half meaning, but, looking up transport on the English side of the dictionary...one finds the mezzo explanation you give.

mezzo does mention "means (ability)" which makes sense with venire. I should have figured this out before, but at the time I did not see the relevance.

Italian has many word combinations that change the definition of the verb or noun from when it stands alone. Sometimes, they are easy to find. But, at other times I need to use the Vasco dictionary.

Your other explanations are on target too.


Mille grazie

quote:

con che mezzo venire

we used to call our vespa "il mezzo" as a nickname. It really implies 'transport' and is very common in speech.

You might find this link useful. online dictionary