Speaking Italian
How to say the haircut is going wrong, in Italian
If you are in the chair right now
Scusa, li vedo un po' più corti di come li volevo.
Sorry, they look a bit shorter than I wanted them.
If that gets brushed off
Non è proprio quello che avevo in mente. Sistemiamo il resto?
It's not quite what I had in mind. Shall we sort out the rest?
«Li», plural, because Italian hair is plural — i capelli. Tu with a hairdresser is normal in Italy, and «li vedo» — I see them — makes it your impression rather than her mistake. Say it while there is still hair to work with.
There is no chapter for this, and Italian adds a twist no phrasebook warns you about: the thing being ruined is grammatically plural. You sit in the chair rehearsing «è troppo corto» and the sentence you actually need is about «them».
If you need more than one line
softest
Scusa, posso dirti una cosa?
Sorry, can I tell you something? Buys you a beat before the difficult part.
neutral
Volevo tenerli un po' più lunghi qui.
I wanted to keep them a bit longer here. The imperfetto — volevo — states the original wish without accusing anyone of missing it.
neutral
Puoi lasciare i lati un po' più lunghi?
Can you leave the sides a bit longer? Say it with your hand where you mean.
firmest
Si può sistemare?
Can it be fixed? The impersonal si — nobody has to be at fault.
Two things worth knowing
You already know «corto». The problem is that it's «corti».
Hair is plural, and every sentence knows it
Italian counts hairs: i capelli, loro. So it is «li vedo corti», «tenerli lunghi», «sono troppo corti» — plural pronoun, plural adjective, plural verb, all the way down. Talk about «il taglio» — the cut — and you can stay singular; talk about the hair itself and the grammar goes plural with it. Mixing the two mid-sentence is the instant giveaway.
The imperfetto does the softening
«Voglio più lunghezza» is a fresh demand; «volevo qualcosa di più lungo» is a wish you have been carrying all along, and Italian complains in the second register. Volevo, pensavo, speravo — the imperfetto turns a correction into a shared discovery that the plan drifted, which is exactly the tone you want from someone still holding scissors.
What Giulia actually said
What you have to get done
- Softly explain it’s not what you were thinking
- Share what you really wanted instead
- Decide together about the remaining part
Giulia
How are you finding the cut so far?
You
To tell the truth, so far it isn't coming out quite as I'd imagined: I wanted something more layered and less short at the sides.
Giulia
I'm sorry, understood: we'll make it more layered and I'll leave the sides longer.
You
Yes, thank you: for the rest let's go with more pronounced layering and keep the sides distinctly longer, so we correct the shape without cutting any further.
Giulia
Of course, I'll do that and refine the shape without shortening any more: thanks for explaining, I'll finish carefully now.
The whole conversation, unedited
A real run in the app, nothing scripted on Giulia's side. The transcript above is taken from this recording, and the objectives tick off on screen as they are met.
Turn sound on to hear it.
Now say it yourself
Reading that is not the same as producing it with someone waiting, which is the entire difficulty. You can have this exact conversation in the app: Giulia is a third of the way through, and you have three things to get done.
It is free, it takes about a minute to start, and the first attempt is allowed to be terrible.
Practise this conversation
