Italiano

Since August of 2006, I have begun my journey to try and learn Italian. It has been one year. Can I speak Italian (Posse parla Italiano)? Yes and no. As those who have tried to learn a new language can attest, one really needs others to practice with; ie: school, a friend, or immersion. While I believe I have come a long way in a year, I know I could not hold a conversation with an Italian. However, I do think I could get my meanings across in most situations, like getting a table at a restaurant, buying gas or wine, or asking for directions. So, to that end, I suppose I have achieved my goal.

I started learning Italian because when I travel there this coming October, I wanted to show respect for Italian people by at least "attempting" their language. I am convinced now if you truly want to learn a language, you must live there and immerse yourself in the culture. Since that is impossible for me, I do want to continue to learn Italian; speaking and writing. Once I return from my upcoming October trip, I will start looking for a school around here.

The other idea I had was to form a like minded group of people who want to learn Italian and get together once a month and speak Italian for the evening. I think this could be done in the context of a dinner or people bringing wine. I will look into this avenue as well.

I started with the popular 'Rosetta Stone'. However, I found it kind of worthless. Mostly because there is no translation with the pictures. Sure, you learn to see and object and identify it in Italian, but you don't learn the grammar rules; so I returned it.

What has worked best for me has been the Pimselur Italian method. I loaded up the cd's onto my iPOD and listened while bike riding or driving to work. I have realistically spent about 10 - 15 hours week learning Italian on average. Lets say 624 hours - lol. It has real Italians speaking velocemente (fast) and does a good job of really teaching you to listen and speak Italian. I also would highly recommend writing all the lessons out on paper (or Word), and using this web-site to look up Italian words: http://www.wordreference.com/iten/c'%c3%a8

I also bought a couple of verb workbooks which helped a lot.

My goal is to continue learning Italian as best as I can; and keep returning to Italy and speak this beautiful language.