Italian is easy | My language mission and my log | Forum

Ok, I just put Persian on hold. It needed more attention than I could spare. Since I don't like the notion of zero language fun, I'm going to improve my Italian. 

Wait. How is this going to be different from Persian? I'm glad you asked. This is different for a couple of reasons. I've made previous study of Italian. I'd guess I'm about A1-A2 level. I also speak Italian's parent: Latin. And not at some poky level. I'm sure I could pass a C1 test in Latin with zero study. 

These differences have definitely made it possible for me to work for a few minutes here and there and feel like I'm making progress. It definitely didn't feel that way for Persian, though I'm sure it was anyway.

I don't have much of a plan. Just a target. In December I will sit and pass a CILS exam. C1 would be cool, but I'm not planning on that given the swirl of kids, work and school. It will be my target though, since passing a test is best done when you're over the hurdle. One of the key tools in my arsenal will be my knowledge of Latin. I'm going to systematically look for changes that are consistent between the two languages. One is that ae become e. I don't think I've found an exception yet. 

Andavo alla biblioteca…

And I found an Italian course with audio there. I checked it out for the audio, not the book. The book looks ok, but it looks like it has very little actual Italian in it for the heft of the book. All of the audio takes up three disks, which I've not done much with yet—hopefully tomorrow I'll give 'em a listen. Why do so many commercial books, for whatever language, have so little of the target language?

So why wasn't I listening to my treasure today? I discovered that there are bunches of movie trailers in Italian on YouTube. I even found bits of La Minaccia Fantasma, che mi piace. Molto. Of course my daughter noticed and wanted to watch too, so I got sucked into Star Wars in Italian. 

Oh, and I forgot to mention that Italian is one of the very few non-English languages I've heard spoken within walking distance of my house. 

I'm making progress on the reading front. Listening is coming along. The little snips I sometimes say to myself don't seem impossible to do. So progress is progressing, but I can see a few areas that will require polish.

•prepositions – like all Romance languages, there are plenty of idiomatic ways of using them that don't exactly mirror English

•avere vs essere – this seems like it's going to just be more exposure due to its seeming inconsistency

mi sono seduto, ma lo ho veduto

•vocabulary – but I've got a hacker's edge here

I've been pretty banged up this summer with a bum leg. All I can say is that serious pain and the drugs that treat it are a major drag on doing anything. I got a small trove of books for my recent birthday. I'm pretty jazzed about the Italian short stories with English on the facing page (and the all-Greek Odyssey Books 9-12 and the Spanish literature reader too).

On the other hand, I've also had time to watch a bit of YouTube to hone my listening skills.