Can vecchio (old) be used to describe people or not?

Official Memrise Courses Italian
1

In the course Italian 1 the word ‘vecchio’ (old) is taught, but not used in a sentence to learn like ‘giovane’ (young).
I heard somewhere else that ‘vecchio’ can’t be used to describe people :thinking:
Is that true?

2

I’m not a native speaker, but other than the fact that anziano/-a is only to be used for humans, vecchio/-a can be used with both objects and people.

1 Like
4

It can but it can be seen as very rude

5

I agree with @lapatatadoro0 - the same is true in English with some words.

Best to stick with anziano/a @modeneef :man_shrugging:

6

What about La Vecchia Signora?

1 Like
7

True :sweat_smile:, but perhaps not to her face. :blush:

1 Like
8

Don’t confuse things here. @lapatatadoro0 was most probably refering to using anziano/a for persons, not vecchio/a.

And, while I suppose that you could of course also (technically) say una una persona anziana, I doubt that anyone would do that. Same goes with English - an ancient person? Nah.