I am in Italy for
the winter. Through the cold dark months coming up I will be with a
family, helping to teach them English. And, I hope to pick up
Italian.
Of course its not
just through osmosis that I hope to learn, I have a few different
programs I am using, shall we say, training with. If anyone is trying
to learn a language I would recommend Duolingo from the App store and
Memrise online. I'm also listening to a cool program called 'News in
Slow Italian' which does just what the box says and tells current
news stories in nice and slow Italian so that you can follow and read
along. Its great!
I've only been here 2
weeks but already I have noticed a few different phases of learning
Italian which I wanted to share with you. They don't really have an
order, they can happen at once or in different stages.
1. Getting your ear
in. This one does happen first, usually when you jump on the plane.
The Italian speakers around you will be chattering away and it may
just sound like a big hubbub. Sit quietly and listen and let your ear
tune in to the rhythms and begin to differentiate the separate
words. It wont matter yet that you do not know these words, but to
lean them you must first be able to hear them.
2. Recognizing when
words are the same, but with different endings. In Italian, words can
change with gender or depending on how many people there are or of
course the time frame. Giocare means 'play'. Giocando, giocato and
gioca are all different tenses and genders and I still don't know
which is which but I can distinguish them as the same word and that
to me is more important right now than the tense. It get hard though,
for instance. Casa and Cassa are not the same word at all. One is
house and one is cash. With these sorts of words, knowing the rest of
the sentence helps me to figure out which one it is.
3. Recognizing when
you should know a word. This is a strange one but all of a
sudden I have found myself learning all these words every day, and I
cant remember all of them. So I'll be listening to a conversation and
most of the words will sound like noise and then something like
'Sempre' will jump out at me and ill be sitting there thinking, 'god
I should know that one'. I think that this stage is important because
it shows that at least I am remembering the sounds of the words, if
not their meanings yet.
4. Listening to
conversations. Now I can sit and if I really concentrate I can get
through a conversation with a vague understanding of what is being
talked about. It helps of course when I already know what their
perspective is. For instance, we had a conversation in English the
other day about Prosecco and olive oil and how Italy can not
possibly produce as much from their own produce as they say they do.
Then last night we went out and the same conversation was had in
Italian. It was great for me because once I had picked up what the
topic was I had an idea of what the words should be and that helped
me immensely.
5. I have words. I
have lots of great words in my memory now. Things like positions -up,
down, outside, behind. Places - kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, car.
Times- first, after, today, this week and verbs – eat, drink, play,
work but putting them in to sentences is hard. Changing the endings
of words confuses me, as does the position of words in a sentence. A
chocolate ice-cream for instance is actually swapped around. Un gelato
al cioccolato – an ice-cream of chocolate.
6. Another thing I
find hard is when words sound like something in English but mean
something totally different. There are a lot of similar words. Urgent
for instance is just Urgente. Easy to remember. Morbido however has
nothing to do with death or as we would say, 'being morbid'. It means
'soft'. A blanket can be morbido. Go figure.
7. The next thing I
am working on is being brave. With the family it is easy to listen
and drop some Italian into a sentence, my brain is somewhat open and
receiving. However when I go out to a shop or a café and someone
starts talking to me, it's like my brain panics and throws up a wall
and I find myself straight away stuttering' I'm sorry I speak
English' - a perfectly easy sentence in Italian but my brain has
freaked out too much even to remember that, hell it didn't even try
and listen to what they person was asking! Next step is definitely
taking a deep breath when in public and trying. You never learn if
you don't at least try.
At the moment my favorite word is possibly -Carciofi - Artichokes. A shame because I don't like them so it's not like I'm ever going to order them, but I think it sounds beautiful.
