continuous makes use of the verb essere "to be" as in English rather than stare (e.g. Sempre andando e venendo è! "Always walking up and down she/he is!" from Semper/Sempri andande e beninde est! compared with the standard Italian Sta sempre andando e venendo!): that is because the present continuous built with verb stare does not, in such regional variety, express the idea of an action ongoing at a certain point, but rather something that will take place in the very near future, almost on the point of happening (e.g. Sto andando a scuola with the meaning of "I'm about to go to school" rather than "Right now as we speak, I'm going to school"). It is also common to use antiphrastic formulas which are alien to Italian, by means of the particle già (Sard. jai / giai) which is similar to the German use of ja... schon especially for ironic purposes, in order to convey sardonic remarks (e.g. Già sei tutto studiato, tu! "You're so well educated!" from Jai ses totu istudiatu, tue! which roughly stands for "You are so ignorant and full of yourself!", or Già è poco bello! "He/It is not so beautiful!" from Jai est pacu bellu! meaning actually "He/It is so beautiful!"). One also needs to take into consideration the presence of a number of other Sardinian-specific idiomatic phrases being literally translated into Italian (like Cosa sembra? "What does it look like?" from Ite paret? meaning "How do you do?" compared to the standard Italian Come stai?, Mi dice sempre cosa! "She/He's always scolding me!" from the Sardinian Semper cosa mi narat! compared to the standard Italian Mi rimprovera sempre!, or again Non fa! "No chance!" from Non fachet! / Non fait! compared to standard Italian Non si può!), that would make little sense to an Italian speaker from another region. As mentioned earlier, a significant number of Sardinian and other local loanwords (be they Italianised or not) are also present in regional varieties of Italian (e.g. porcetto from the Sardinian porcheddu / porceddu, scacciacqua from the Sardinian parabba / paracua "raincoat", continente "Mainland" and continentale "Mainlander" with reference to the rest of the country and its people as well, etc.). Some words may even reflect ignorance of the original language on the speaker's part when referring to a singular noun in Italian with Sardinian plurals, due to a lack of understanding of how singular