Dialogue: Phone Call (A2)

The Italian phone call has its own grammar. Pronto — not ciao — is the obligatory opening; Sono Marco (not Mi chiamo Marco) is how you identify yourself; posso parlare con introduces every "may I speak with" request; and the moment the person being asked for is reachable, the line erupts into clitic gymnastics: gliela passo, te lo chiamo, ti passo. This page walks through a short phone exchange line by line, then expands into voicemail, wrong numbers, and the Lei-form business call.

The text

Persona A: Pronto? Persona B: Pronto, chi parla? Persona A: Sono Marco. Posso parlare con Luisa? Persona B: Un momento, gliela passo. — Luisa, c'è Marco al telefono per te! Luisa: Pronto, Marco! Come stai?

Five turns. Almost every line teaches a phone-specific feature of Italian.

Line by line

Pronto?

This is the obligatory Italian phone greeting — both the answerer and the caller use it. Pronto is grammatically the masculine singular adjective meaning "ready", but on the phone it's a frozen interjection that has nothing to do with readiness. The etymology dates back to the era of switchboard operators, when picking up the line meant signaling you were "ready" to speak — but no Italian thinks about that now.

Two crucial cultural points:

1. You do not say ciao when answering the phone. Ciao is for face-to-face greetings; on the phone, even between close friends, the call opens with pronto. After identification, ciao may follow. But the very first word is always pronto.
2. Both speakers say pronto. The answerer says Pronto? with rising intonation; the caller often answers with their own Pronto before identifying themselves. So a phone call typically begins with two prontos in quick succession.

Pronto, chi parla?

Chi parla? is the standard "who is this?" — a fixed phone idiom. Parla is third-person singular of parlare (to speak); the literal sense is "who is speaking?" The form has hardened into a formula and works in both informal and formal contexts.

Variants you'll hear:

• Chi parla? — neutral, very common
• Chi è? — slightly more direct, also common
• Con chi parlo? — "with whom am I speaking" — formal, business-like

In professional contexts, the answerer often identifies themselves first:

Sono Marco. Posso parlare con Luisa?

Two phone-specific patterns here.

Sono Marco. — Italian self-identification on the phone uses Sono [name], not Mi chiamo [name]. The two are subtly different:

• Mi chiamo Marco — "My name is Marco" — used when introducing yourself to someone who doesn't know you (face-to-face, formal contexts).
• Sono Marco — "It's Marco" — used when telling someone who you are in a context where they recognize you by name (phone, knocking on a door, intercoms).

In a phone call, the assumption is that the person on the other end might recognize you by name once they hear it, so sono is the right register. Saying Mi chiamo Marco on the phone sounds oddly formal, like you're introducing yourself for the first time.

Posso parlare con Luisa? — the modal posso (I can / may I) + infinitive is the standard polite phone-request form. Word by word:

• Posso — first-person singular of potere (to be able / can / may)
• parlare — infinitive "to speak"
• con — "with" (preposition)
• Luisa — the person you want to reach

The modal posso asks permission and softens the request — Voglio parlare con Luisa (I want to speak with Luisa) would sound demanding. Posso parlare con...? is the neutral polite default.

For more politeness — when calling a business or someone you address as Lei — switch to the conditional:

Un momento, gliela passo.

This is the line that dazzles A2 learners — and rightly so. Gliela is a clitic combination of two pronouns:

• glie- (from gli, indirect object meaning "to him" or "to her" — usually understood from context, here referring to Luisa, the recipient of the call)
• la (direct object, feminine singular, referring to the call or the line)

Wait — but gli means "to him" and the receiver Luisa is feminine. Why glie? Because in clitic combinations, both gli (to him) and le (to her) become glie-; the gender of the indirect-object referent is suppressed in the combination. The feminine direct-object pronoun la attaches: gli/le + la → gliela.

This actually makes the sentence ambiguous on its own — gliela could mean "her to him", "him to her", "it to him", "it to her", and so on. Context resolves it. Here, the speaker is passing the phone to Luisa: gliela passo = "I'm passing her [the line/call] over" with Luisa as the implicit recipient.

The full table of clitic combinations:

Two patterns to notice:

1. mi, ti, ci, vi
   • direct object → keep their forms but their final -i becomes -e (mi → me, ti → te, etc.)
2. gli/le
   • direct object → fuse into single words written glielo, gliela, glieli, gliele, gliene. These are written as one word, not two.

Common phone applications:

Luisa, c'è Marco al telefono per te!

Three useful phrases here.

C'è — contraction of ci è (literally "there is"). This is one of the most common existential constructions in Italian:

The contraction c'è (singular) and ci sono (plural) are the universal "there is" / "there are" of Italian. Note: c'è is written with an apostrophe; the e always carries a grave accent (c'è, not c'e).

Al telefono — "on the phone". Italian uses al (a + il), not the literal "on" (sul), for this idiom. The whole phrase essere al telefono (to be on the phone) is fixed:

Per te — "for you" (informal). Per + disjunctive pronoun (me, te, lui, lei, noi, voi, loro). After most prepositions, Italian switches from clitic pronouns to the disjunctive set:

These are the same forms as the subject pronouns (except me/te in place of io/tu) and they appear after prepositions: con me, per te, da lui, senza di noi, dietro di voi.

Pronto, Marco! Come stai?

Now that Luisa has picked up, the conversation can use a familiar tone — come stai? — but she still opens with pronto. Even between best friends, the very first word is pronto.

Voicemail and missed calls

Three things in the voicemail-leaving formula:

1. Pronto — yes, still required, even on a recording.
2. Sono Marco — self-identification.
3. Ti ho chiamato — passato prossimo of chiamare (to call). Once you start dropping past tense into phone Italian, you've crossed into A2.

For "call me back": richiamami (informal imperative + clitic mi) or mi richiami (Lei form, with richiami being the formal imperative).

Dialing a wrong number

The fixed phrase ha sbagliato numero uses the passato prossimo of sbagliare (to make a mistake). It's a frozen idiom — say it just like that. Note that the answerer typically uses the Lei form (ha sbagliato, not hai sbagliato) with a stranger.

The caller's apology — mi scusi — is also Lei-form imperative. Compare:

• Mi scusi — formal "excuse me / sorry" (to a stranger)
• Scusami — informal "excuse me / sorry" (to a friend)

A formal business call

Segretaria: Pronto, studio Bianchi, buongiorno. Cliente: Buongiorno. Sono il signor Rossi. Potrei parlare con il dottor Bianchi? Segretaria: Un momento, prego. Vedo se è disponibile. Segretaria: Mi dispiace, il dottore è in riunione. Vuole lasciare un messaggio? Cliente: Sì, grazie. Gli dica che ho richiamato. Mi può richiamare al numero che ha in archivio.

Things to notice in the formal version:

• Potrei (conditional of potere) replaces posso — same meaning, more polite.
• Lei-form imperatives appear: vuole? (do you want?), gli dica (tell him).
• Titles matter: signor Rossi, dottor Bianchi. Italian respects professional titles in business calls.
• The subject pronoun Lei is sometimes capitalized (Lei) to mark its formal-pronoun status — though modern usage often writes it lowercase. Both are accepted.

Common phone vocabulary

Common Mistakes

Key takeaways

• Pronto is the obligatory phone greeting — both ends of the call use it. Never ciao as the first word on a phone.
• Sono [name] is the phone self-identification — not mi chiamo.
• Posso parlare con...? is the polite request formula. Potrei (conditional) raises the politeness for formal/business calls.
• Clitic combinations like gliela, glielo, te lo, ce ne are written as one word (the glie- set) or two (the others), and they collapse the gender distinction of gli/le into a single glie-.
• C'è / ci sono is the universal "there is / there are".
• Per + disjunctive pronoun: per me, per te, per lui, per noi. After prepositions, Italian shifts away from clitics to disjunctive forms.
• Phone idioms are fixed: al telefono (not sul telefono), ha sbagliato numero, richiamare, lasciare un messaggio. Memorize as units.