Ciao!
Come stai? Benevenuto! È il mio blog. Io scrivo qui.
And that concludes my pitiful Italian. I'm attempting to teach myself, but not having anyone to speak to makes the learning process a bit slow. I'm trying, and well, that's more than I could say a few months ago so I guess that's an improvement of sorts. I really like the challenge of teaching myself, and at times I attempt to translate things into my head. At my new place of work (the thrift store) sometimes I look at the new donations and say in my head "la scarpa- shoe' and 'oh, over there la borsa-bag!' and 'wow we have a ton of le camicie, wait is that the correct translation, if its la camicia in the singular, it would be 'le camicie for the plural?' and well there goes that train of thought. The verbs are the worst because I have such an issue with conjugating. And possessives. those such too. I don't know how I can ever learn another language if I barely have a grasp of English. My other issue is my many years of Spanish in middle and high school have permanently marred with Italian accent, not that I had a fantastic Spanish one to begin with. I find myself trying to speak Italian in my head and in return I have some garbled bi-product of Italian and Spanish. It's very disconcerting. I know practice makes perfect, and I try to read Italian articles and practice in my head. A friend told me that once I have a strong enough grasp of the language, I can dream in it. How awesome would that be? To see the world through a different language. My ultimate goal is to speak the language fluently enough that I can blog in it. No one would be able to read it (well except those of you who speak Italian, but I don't think that many of my followers do), but it would just be awesome.
I come from an Italian heritage and for a while, because I was a silly, angsty teenager, I turned my back on my heritage and the language. I regret that a bit. I also regret the trouble it caused in my household because I was determined to be a little rebel and spiteful. That's a whole other story for another day, but I wish I had taken Italian classes when I was in school rather than Spanish. It would make learning the language now easier but I think it would have eased some tension. Maybe. These are merely the Sunday morning thoughts of an errant blogger.
Anyway, teaching myself a language has been quite the challenge. Half the battle is remembering to practice a lesson each day. I'm looking for more productive methods of learning, because as much as I love Duolingo (an awesome starting point, and you can find it here), it doesn't have very good explanations for verb conduction and possessives. My lovely cousin gave me some Italian-English dictionaries and a set of disks to listen to. I wonder if listening to Italian music would help? Possibly? I just have come to really love the language, when I practice and the computer voice sounds out words, I wish that I could sound like that. So smooth with that lyrical accent. I sound choppy and my accent is terrible. I'm surprised anyone can understand me.
My roommate speaks fluent Spanish (and sounds so beautiful when she speaks it, too), and I'm, just like, I sound like Hodor, slow and dumb. I know it takes time, and I've been trying to teach myself for over a year and have made very little practice. It also doesn't help that I frequently gave up due to intense frustration. Well, I guess if I want to reach my goal of being able to write an entire blog post in Italian, I better keep it up. For someone who likes the challenge of this, I sure gave up frequently. But I've always come back to it, and its easier to pick up more quickly. I have one friend who speaks Italian, and he's been a great asset to me. He pushes me to keep at it and literally practice every day. I guess during my little bit of a down period, it was hard to feel excited or motivated to stick with the language. But now that I feel much better, this little side hobby can turn into something I practice with and use to motivate myself. Also, it works great with my new and improved hermit like tendencies. Who needs to go out when I can stay at home and listen to Italian music and attempt to speak it? Right? Right. That goal of being able to walk around my kitchen and speak entirely to myself in Italian is like the best goal ever. My lack of verbs is also a hindrance. I look at the knife and go 'il coltello', but I have no verbs to say I need the knife or I want the knife. io vedo il coltello' (I see the knife) but use is that to me. Maybe I should start littering my blog posts with random, meaningless phrases in Italian.
Vedo la camicia.
How's that for a start?
Arrivederci!
Come stai? Benevenuto! È il mio blog. Io scrivo qui.
And that concludes my pitiful Italian. I'm attempting to teach myself, but not having anyone to speak to makes the learning process a bit slow. I'm trying, and well, that's more than I could say a few months ago so I guess that's an improvement of sorts. I really like the challenge of teaching myself, and at times I attempt to translate things into my head. At my new place of work (the thrift store) sometimes I look at the new donations and say in my head "la scarpa- shoe' and 'oh, over there la borsa-bag!' and 'wow we have a ton of le camicie, wait is that the correct translation, if its la camicia in the singular, it would be 'le camicie for the plural?' and well there goes that train of thought. The verbs are the worst because I have such an issue with conjugating. And possessives. those such too. I don't know how I can ever learn another language if I barely have a grasp of English. My other issue is my many years of Spanish in middle and high school have permanently marred with Italian accent, not that I had a fantastic Spanish one to begin with. I find myself trying to speak Italian in my head and in return I have some garbled bi-product of Italian and Spanish. It's very disconcerting. I know practice makes perfect, and I try to read Italian articles and practice in my head. A friend told me that once I have a strong enough grasp of the language, I can dream in it. How awesome would that be? To see the world through a different language. My ultimate goal is to speak the language fluently enough that I can blog in it. No one would be able to read it (well except those of you who speak Italian, but I don't think that many of my followers do), but it would just be awesome.
I come from an Italian heritage and for a while, because I was a silly, angsty teenager, I turned my back on my heritage and the language. I regret that a bit. I also regret the trouble it caused in my household because I was determined to be a little rebel and spiteful. That's a whole other story for another day, but I wish I had taken Italian classes when I was in school rather than Spanish. It would make learning the language now easier but I think it would have eased some tension. Maybe. These are merely the Sunday morning thoughts of an errant blogger.
Anyway, teaching myself a language has been quite the challenge. Half the battle is remembering to practice a lesson each day. I'm looking for more productive methods of learning, because as much as I love Duolingo (an awesome starting point, and you can find it here), it doesn't have very good explanations for verb conduction and possessives. My lovely cousin gave me some Italian-English dictionaries and a set of disks to listen to. I wonder if listening to Italian music would help? Possibly? I just have come to really love the language, when I practice and the computer voice sounds out words, I wish that I could sound like that. So smooth with that lyrical accent. I sound choppy and my accent is terrible. I'm surprised anyone can understand me.
My roommate speaks fluent Spanish (and sounds so beautiful when she speaks it, too), and I'm, just like, I sound like Hodor, slow and dumb. I know it takes time, and I've been trying to teach myself for over a year and have made very little practice. It also doesn't help that I frequently gave up due to intense frustration. Well, I guess if I want to reach my goal of being able to write an entire blog post in Italian, I better keep it up. For someone who likes the challenge of this, I sure gave up frequently. But I've always come back to it, and its easier to pick up more quickly. I have one friend who speaks Italian, and he's been a great asset to me. He pushes me to keep at it and literally practice every day. I guess during my little bit of a down period, it was hard to feel excited or motivated to stick with the language. But now that I feel much better, this little side hobby can turn into something I practice with and use to motivate myself. Also, it works great with my new and improved hermit like tendencies. Who needs to go out when I can stay at home and listen to Italian music and attempt to speak it? Right? Right. That goal of being able to walk around my kitchen and speak entirely to myself in Italian is like the best goal ever. My lack of verbs is also a hindrance. I look at the knife and go 'il coltello', but I have no verbs to say I need the knife or I want the knife. io vedo il coltello' (I see the knife) but use is that to me. Maybe I should start littering my blog posts with random, meaningless phrases in Italian.
Vedo la camicia.
How's that for a start?
Arrivederci!
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