Saturday 29 September 2012

How's the Italian?

As I said nearly a week ago, I will write from time to time blog posts about my progresses in Italian. My pronunciation, as far as I can tell, is good. I do check from time to time with an Italian colleague at work. I can differentiate masculine and feminine easily, singular and plural too. I am still struggling with the verbs and many words I simply forget after a day or two. I should just listen to those lessons at least once a day. I understand Italian fairly well, it is communicating in it which I need to improve. I remember the words when I hear them, but not when I need to say them. I think I am OK now with the definite articles. 

And re-reading this, it doesn't feel like I am talking much about learning Italian: I am making a list of things I did and did not. I guess that is the problem when you are a beginner learning a foreign language through a book: you learn the tourist version. At the lesson 6 ("sesta lezione"), I basically learn to marvel at Rome. If I ever go there, marvelling in the mothertongue, I'll look/sound like a suck up, a foreign one, which is maybe the worst kind.Saying something controversial would be more fun, and probably more Italian.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Haha! Yes that is my experience of language (in the day) tapes. Every one of them assumes you want to know what time the next train is and wants to ensure you have good manners: please, thank you, thank you very much:-) Happy learning!

Guillaume said...

Thank you!