I have renewed my goal of learning to speak Italian this year.
Why Italian? Because half of my family of origin was from Italy. The other half is from Ireland, and I already speak English. 🙂
Also, I want to go to Italy and visit where my grandparents were from. Learning Italian makes me feel closer to that goal, which is, sadly, already about ten years overdue.
This is the second foreign language I’ve studied so far. I learned French when I was younger. I began in seventh grade, continued in high school and college. I remember sitting in the language lab in college and having no fun whatsoever. The end result is that I can understand and read some French, but I am (and was) a poor speaker of it.
I have higher hopes for my journey with Italian! Over the past fifteen years or so I have taken Adult Ed classes through local schools, listened to CD’s, read books, listened to songs in Italian, but the best method I’ve tried is an app.
I’ve been using Duolingo (free version). Here’s what I like about it:
It’s FUN! And FAST! And I am actually learning!
What is surprising me is how the decades old French is comingling with and interrupting my learning of Italian. When I am trying to think of how to say a word in Italian, sometimes (actually, often) the word presents itself to me in French first. For example, how do you say “with” in Italian? The first word my mind produced was avec, and only after that did it give me con.
Karen Creamer
