Tag: italian.2007

I only managed to get in one lesson yesterday instead of the two I was aiming for, but one is better than none. Yesterday’s lesson was called Numeri e l’ora which is a bit of a misnomer because telling time was introduced, but much of the lesson was a reviews of the previous lesson on singular and plural forms. More complex sentences were added. And some additional numbers (15, 20, 30). New vocabulary, too, as always.

Here is what is tough for me. I have no problem quickly learning what is being said in the language. It is much harder for me, however, to try and formulate an Italian sentence, even though I can understand the language. I have to slow to a crawl just to think of the words, and the correct form of nouns, plural, singular, verb, etc. I think it used to be like this with Spanish too, and eventually, I “got it”. I suppose the same is true with Italian. I have no doubt I will be able to understand what people are saying; I’ll just be slow when it comes to have to speak it myself.

I got through two Italian lessons last night: numeri cardinali da 1 a 10 (the counting numbers, 1-10), which was the easiest of the lessons I’ve done so far. I also got through singolare e plurale: nomi e verbi nel presente, presente forma progressiva (singular and plural nouns and verbs, present tense). This turned out to be the toughest of the lessons I have learned thus far.

It seems as though Italian (like Spanish) has different forms of nouns when those nouns are plural, and combine those nouns with the masculine and feminine versions and you’ve got four combinations. What’s different from Spanish (and English) is that the plural form does not end in “s”, which takes some getting used to. (I recall Hebrew being like this, with the plural form of the noun ending in the -om sound.) From what I have been able to infer, the masculine plural tends to end in an “i” sound (“i bambini”) and the feminine form tends to end in “e” (“le bambine”). In some cases, the article changes and I haven’t figured out the pattern yet. For instance, whereas “the boys” is “i bambini”, “the eyes” is “gli occhi”. “Gli” is not the easiest thing to pronounce, even when you hear it repeated 20 times.

And then there are the plural form of the present tense verbs (“stanno”), which combines with the plural forms of the nouns described above.

All of this, mind you, is inferred, as there is no explanation as part of the software. This, I think, is the trick of learning the language. Rather than having a teacher explain the mechanics to you, you just have to figure it out yourself, piecing it together as best you can. But after a while, the patterns start to make sense, even if you don’t know why.

I also learned that prepositions also change form with the singular or plural, something that I don’t think happens in either English or Spanish and it means yet a third form that you must be aware of.

Tonight, I’ll be going through lessons 6-7, which I think deal with more on plural verb forms and also simple question and answer forms.

This morning, I made my way through Level 1, Unit 2, Lessons 2 and 3. I was introduced to some basic present-tense verb forms and sentences such as, “The boy is running”, “The girls are jumping”. These got more complex, with sentences like “The girls are running after the boy”. Lesson 3 involved adjectives, things like old and new for objects and old and new for people. Also things like some basic colors.

Still no memorization and everything is presented in a way that you can intuit what the meaning is (and through repetition, you remember it), but I’m pretty good at memorizing too. I find that I can hear the sentences in Italian and know almost at once what they mean in English. But if I see a picture and try and say the sentence in Italian, I hesitate. So what I am going to do is put together a set of flashcards (I love flashcards) based on the vocabulary that I am learning, with the English word on the front and the Italian word on the back. I will then use these to improve my English to Italian translation speed; that is, until I get good enough to where I can see a word in English and instantly say it in Italian.

There are some things that I have picked up, such as which nouns are masculine and which are feminine. Also, there are some subtleties to pronunciation. Some words are pronounced with sounds that don’t seem to be included in their spellings. I am trying to remember these.

Here are words I’ve learned so far, from memory

When I finally got home from work last night, my new Rosetta Stone software was there waiting for me and I was eager to try it out. I got it installed and completed the entire first lesson, which took about 45 minutes. In fact, when I took the test, I only missed one question and that’s because I wasn’t paying attention when I answered it.

It is really a fascinating method for learning a language, unlike anything that I had in school while learning Spanish. They say that there is “no memorization required” because there is no translation. You are taught entirely in Italian. This is true. The amazing thing is how well it works (so far) for me and how much deduction and plays into the learning process.

It starts out very basically. You are shown four pictures, and then a native speaker speaks the Italian word for each picture, for instance: un bambino, una bambina, una palla, una cavello. Then the speaker will speak one of the words and you have to click on the appropriate picture. I would repeat outloud anything that I selected so as to work on my pronunciation, etc. (There is a whole section of the application that analyzes your accent and pronunciation in great detail, but I only played around with that a little last night.)

As you progress through the lesson, more words are added via pictures. At first, these are mostly nouns, but then, other words are subtly added. For instance, you’ll see a picture of a man and a boy and then speaker will say, Un uomo e un bambino (thus, you deduce that e means “and”). That evolves into learning some prepositions. You see a picture of a girl on a horse: una regazza su un cavello. You see a picture of a boy standing under an airplane: un bambino sotto un aereo. All the while, new words are being added by the pictures: boat, elephant, dog, cat, etc. It is really an ingenious way to learn. At first when I saw the boy sitting on the wing of the small airplane, I couldn’t decipher the word su, but then I saw the girl sitting under the table and immediately understood the word sotta and from the that was able to deduce the word su.

I started the second lesson last night, which introduces some verbs, entirely in the basic present tense form of is —ing (“is walking”, “is running”, “is swimming”, etc.) I didn’t complete the lesson because I had to get to bed and I will start it from scratch again today, but even in learning the verbs, you are left to yourself to decipher the meaning from the pictures which I think is very useful because your mind has to work at it and you begin to learn the words directly rather than have to translate them. Also, they continue to add subtleties along the way that expand your knowledge. For instance, after doing sentences for pictures like, L’oumo sta cominando (the man is walking), they will throw in a picture of several girls running together (Le bambine stonno caminando) and you begin to learn plural forms of nouns and verbs.

The thing that impressed me most is that this morning, I remember most of what I learned last night as though I just had it fresh. I can hear the native speaker’s voice in my head saying the various words and I know what they mean without having to think about it too much.

Rosetta Stone software is not cheap, but so far, I am very impressed with how it works so it seems to be well worth the money spent.