We imagine this word will make your Italian conversations way less awkward. I love how chatty my Italian neighbours are. But you know when someone starts telling you a long story about something that happened to them, and you don’t really have anything to add? That gets super awkward in a foreign language. As a beginner you can find yourself just grinning and nodding like a maniac, only ensuring that the neighbour is too disturbed to ever attempt conversation with you again. Don’t miss our journalists’ daily news roundup from Italy And even when you can understand what they’re saying – or at least most of it – you might not be able to think of a response quickly enough. Or maybe you just have nothing to add. Instead of awkward silence, or manic smiling, here’s a useful word that shows the chatty neighbour you’re listening and keeps the ‘conversation’ going: immagino (hear it pronounced here). While it literally translates as ‘I imagine’ (it’s the first-person singular of the verb immaginare, or ‘to imagine’), it’s …