How did you do with our phrase of the week last week? Avete avuto un sacco di cose da fare? I know I did!

This week, continuing with our phrases from Il Commissario Manara: Un morto di troppo on Yabla we have:

Che cosa stai combinando?
What are you up to?

If you were to translate this one literally, it would look something like this:

What are you mixing up?

In English maybe we’d ask you what you were cooking up. You’re planning something – you’re involved in machinations. You get it. You’re up to something. Below are some examples from Reverso:

Non so che cosa sta combinando.
I don’t know what he’s up to.

Ma poi saprà che sto combinando qualcosa.
But then she will know that I’m up to something.

Vai a vedere cosa stanno combinando.
Go see what they’re up to.

Generally, you’ll hear this in the gerund form, as it is above, but the verb combinare, which literally means to combine, mix, blend, match, is sometimes used in other tenses with this meaning to be up to something. Here are a few more examples:

Vediamo cos’hanno combinato di recente.
Let’s see what they’ve been up to lately.

So tutto quello che hai combinato…
I know everything you’ve been up to…

Volete sapere che cosa combinava di recente?
You want to know what he’s been up to lately?

Non ero l’unica a sapere cosa stava combinando.
I wasn’t the only one who knew what he was up to.

A quick note on che cosa: Depending on who’s talking they may drop either the cosa or the che. Don’t let that confuse you. It’s typical of colloquial speech. We do it English a lot, too. All three, che, che cosa, and cosa, in this context, mean what.

Eh, così, che cosa state combinando questa settimana? Studiate italiano? Spero di sì!

If you feel your Italian is good enough to watch without Italian (or English) subtitles, this episode of Il Commissario Manara is also available for free from RAI. You will need to fast forward to exactly 48 minutes for the start of Un morto di troppo.

As those of you on my mailing list know, I love Yabla! And I love the Italian seriale poliziesca Il Commissario Manara. For the past two weeks, I have been taking a phrase at a time from this RAI television series to improve my Italian and yours. The weekly phrase will now be here on the My Italian Diary, so it will be easier for you to check out all the previous phrases. Just click the link on the sidebar that says La Frase Della Settimana. Of course, for now, there will only be one. This one!

To recap, last week we spoke about ci frequentiamo – the Italian way to say we’re dating. The week before that, we focused on smettila! – the Italian way to say stop it!

This week, we have a lot to do!

Well, what I mean is – that’s our phrase of the week.

Ho un sacco di cose da fare!
I have a lot to do!

Now, a few weeks ago, we also spoke about how to say a lot in Italian. You might remember that un sacco is one of the ways. You could also say:

Ho molte cose da fare.

or

Ho tante cose da fare.

or

Ho parecchie cose da fare.

You can use whichever sounds best to you or rolls off the tongue easier. The point is, since all of us have a lot to do, you can start using this phrase right away. To use it in the past tense, just say:

Ho avuto un sacco di cose da fare.
I had a lot to do.

Or if you used to have a lot to do (but maybe now not so much) you could say:

Avevo un sacco di cose da fare, ma adesso non ho niente.
I used to have a lot to do, but now I don’t have anything.

Un sacco is very colloquial and you will sound like a native if you use it. Just like Guido Caprino does when he says it in this episode of Il Commissario Manara. Here it is as it appears in Il Commissario Manara: Un Morto Di Troppo:

Sì, lo so, mi hai chiamato cento volte, però io non ti ho risposto perché ho avuto un sacco di cose da fare, Teresa.
Yes, I know, you called me a hundred times, but I didn’t answer because I had a bunch of things to do, Teresa.

Check out more examples on Reverso and let us know how you used this phrase this week on our Facebook page.

If you feel your Italian is good enough to watch without Italian (or English) subtitles, this episode of Il Commissario Manara is also available for free from RAI. You will need to fast forward to exactly 48 minutes for the start of Un morto di troppo.