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The 1-year challenge: Italian | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5853 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 1 of 244 19 July 2009 at 8:17am | IP Logged |
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Well, here goes nothing... Don't know why I decided to start a log all of a sudden, but seems like a good idea I guess. At this point I really need to start keeping a record of what I'm doing, so on the off chance that it might be of use to anyone, somehow, why not here... This way I can look back and see that 1) it did work (hopefully) and 2) how I made it work. I don't exactly have 20-20 hindsight when it comes to these things. Just very results-oriented.
I'll also use this log partly to keep track of materials that have been particularly useful to me, some of them will be put here just so I can remember them, but since others who are learning Italian could theoretically benefit from some or all of them. I might as well post about it. I'm not one of people on this site who speak a kajillion languages well, mainly because I've done a lot of language-hopping and vacationing and general nonsense with languages rather than sticking with one, but that's changed since I started learning Italian. It's the 10th language I've actively studied or otherwise learned beyond the mere basics, after English, German, Spanish, Catalan, Hungarian, Latin, Biblical Hebrew, Ancient Greek, and modern Greek. My knowledge of some of those is passive at best, by now non-existent in others, which is a shame, I know. At some point I got tired of dabbling, and somehow settled on Italian as the one and only. I remember taking out an Italian course from a library maybe a decade ago, the course sucked so I returned it and sighed a little inside before forgetting about it entirely. I almost took Italian as an elective at uni last fall, and bought Assimil's Italian With Ease while I still thought I'd be taking the class, but it ended up sitting on my shelf for a while until something happened in late April that made me suddenly and out of nowhere decide to take up Italian and study it to fluency, excluding everything else until I finished. I still don't know precisely what that 'something' was, but I think it had something to do with Mia Martini's Eurovision performance in 1992. I miss Italy...! Incidentally, some of my other language nerd friends and I have a certain fondness for using words from the languages we're studying if we're sure we're going to be understood by the other person, and 'ciao' somehow came up a lot. Anywho... My goal I want to get native-level fluency, to the point where I know Italian as well as your average adult educated speaker, distinguishable from natives by appearance only (I look very Norwegian, so they'll always be able to tell). I'm obviously aiming for fluency in all four areas - listening, reading, writing, speaking - so I can't be weak in any particular one. Out of those 4, the most difficult one will be speaking, since I'm chronically shy, so that will need to be overcome. I've given myself a year, since I get the impression it should be fairly doable, given that I already know a fair bit of Spanish and Catalan (though I wouldn't call myself fluent in either). I've divided the year into 4 stages of 3 months each; the first ends next week-ish (I started in late April). What I have been doing so far The first block started when I started Assimil's Italian With Ease. I'm just about finished with my second run-through of the passive phase (I might describe my method later but I've written about it elsewhere, I do the passive phase twice as I go along, using the review sessions to divide things up) and am well into the active phase, though a little behind (on purpose). Besides that, basically any random enjoyable input as and when I feel like it, and trying to work out how I can achieve my overall goal. The materials I've been using: - Italian With Ease - A plain old getting-a-little-rough-along-the-edges dictionary (Webster's New World Italian Dictionary) - WordReference dictionary, and forums when necessary - Music with lyrics. I've found this to be a truly great learning tool (for me, I know not everyone likes using it) and really helps me solidify things and pick up random expressions and vocabulary, I like getting a piece of the natural organic language as it is used creatively, so I'll continue to look for more good music to learn from, and learn more from the material I already have. Great fun! - Interviews on youtube - Reading comments to songs and interviews on youtube. This is about as unfiltered as it gets, and it's nice to be able to pick out the spelling errors and mistakes here and there and know I'm right (or double-check if unsure) and I guess I'll need to learn all that - what's it called - l33tspeak (?), sooner or later (meh though)... - Reading random articles in newspapers and on Wikipedia, on topics that interest me if anything stands out, if not then just skimming random things... Occasionally just clicking through to the Italian version if I'm reading something in English on Wikipedia. I don't necessarily look up everything, just the things that ring a bell or that seem most important, to get the gist of most things in a paragraph - Occasionally using google translate for comments and articles, but less so now that I understand a bit more - My gmail, cell, skype, youtube and ipod are all in Italian - Looking up random things that come up in my day - Random reading around the internet, translating if I'm interested in the subject matter - Reading some of the Italian posts on Unilang What I will be doing from now on After 6 months of learning - that is, in about 3 months time - this log will be in Italian only, and I should probably stop speaking English with the Italians I have on Skype right about now... Harder than it sounds but has to be done! Going to be focusing more on output from now on, but still, I'm not too fussed about leaving the most intensive focus on output for stages 3 and 4. Won't be cramming any grammar, don't plan to study vocabulary lists or doing any SRSing either, cause I'm afraid of those things after my secondary school German classes... No guarantees I won't change my mind of course, but I will try my method of looking things up as they come at me with massive amounts of input, and we'll see how it goes and if I can get to fluency that way. Some new materials or techniques, in no particular order, that I may or may not be adding over the next weeks and months, depending on time constraints, limited money, blah blah woof woof the usual: - Just got an Italian-Norwegian visual dictionary that sucks in some areas but looks pretty cool in others - Need to find a dictionary with recordings of pronunciation, cause I sometimes learn better that way but it's not essential given the sensible spelling. Will look for this online I guess - Going to get the works by Shakespeare that I like most in their Italian version (they seem to have most of them at liberliber.it), and possibly the Italian translations of other 'great books', using a copy of the same in English if I feel like I need it - Wrap up the active phase of Assimil, then do it again, passively, actively, and just with audio, as much as I feel like doing and feel like I need to be doing - Reading up on etymology and related latin. Fits nicely with uni, I can learn more Italian and impress the heck out of my morphology professor at the same time. Win-win. Also likely to gain me nerd points with my peers - which in medical school is usually a good thing. The latin I will purposefully study/review in its own right alongside will be medical latin only (that is, beyond what comes up from reading about etymology) and will be the only part I will use an SRS for, because it seems like a good idea to start using that sort of thing for fact-y stuff that will fit in one, but I still refuse to use it for regular language study (thanks, German!) - Read up on things in my grammar books as they become an issue from my input sources i.e. when I'm stuck (have been saving this for post-Assimil). I have Essential Italian Grammar by Olga Ragusa and Soluzioni! by Denise de Rôme - Get some materials for learning Italian from Spanish, and possibly from Catalan, to take advantage of what I already know in those languages and learn more about false friends, similarities and differences that way - At some point, hopefully soon, I will try to get an idioms dictionary or something similar, or look for one online - Listening to audiobooks from librivox.org and reading along, possibly just listening, and possibly getting some from elsewhere too. All the finished ones are on my iPod now so I can listen whenever - Radio, TV, government radio, I read somewhere that apparently Italian politicians are rather crafty with words, which makes it sound like something I should be listening to, and I like the idea of politics sounding cool - Podcasts. Might subscribe to Acquerello, an audio magazine type thing that looked interesting. - Opera? Lots of that stuff is in Italian, and though I don't necessarily like everything, there's something quite special about that kind of music when it's well done. - Might try to find some Italian poetry or something (the classics and whatnot) but I'm not really much of a reader. I love The Divine Comedy in English and have it in Italian as an audiobook, so I should get a copy of the book in Italian too. - Will be listening for all the sounds in the audio I have available, as well as trying to figure out the beginning and end of all words, as described by Iversen somewhere. I should probably read his description of it again... Also, I will be listening carefully to work out the spelling of unknown words (double vs single consonants in particular) to train my ears to tell the difference. - Will get a monolingual dictionary, probably Garzanti, not sure what's available but will research - Bought some art books to read, one of the 36933187 reasons I want to learn Italian is that I love the art and architecture, so I will focus on materials such as these books rather than fiction etc which almost always bores me. - Will consider doing a 'word or expression a day' type thing, but not sure about this yet. - Just got gtranslate for Firefox, which will make in-browser translation faster - Will consider a Michel Thomas course but I think I'd find his voice way too grating in the long run and I've heard not-so-good things about the quality of some of these. Still undecided on this one - Should use the WordReference forums more. I've already used it to a degree, so far only really for tricky things, but need to read up on idioms and such here as they come up, if they have a thread, at least skimming - though I can't spend a ton of time on every little thing - Those little phrasebook things that came with The Guardian this week - but what happened to #1? There was no phrasebook on Monday, #2 came on Tuesday... Disappointing. Oh well - Apparently the audio for some of the old Assimil courses (and possibly other courses which might be worth looking to) are public domain and available at uz translations so I'll see what I can find there that I can use - Reading Personalità confusa, gosh I just love this! - Any other free useful stuff I can get my hands on online. - Last but not least, taking better advantage of the native speakers that I can talk to, who are actually willing to let me butcher their language as part of my learning and help me figure it out... One of the most important things to me is that I shouldn't get bored or tired of the language, that's a minimum requirement. That Khatzumoto (sp?) fellow from AJATT said in one of his posts that "there is no such thing as boring but effective" and that really resonates with me. It should be fun all the time, so if it's not then I'm doing something wrong. So instead of continuing what I'm doing in that case or stopping altogether I'll revise my method until it's enjoyable again. That doesn't mean I won't have to work for it - I just think "time-consuming and complex" doesn't have to mean "difficult" (I hate that word). I suppose I'm applying some of the same principles I use at uni, I don't consider it study before exam time. Before then it's just reading up on medicine-related stuff out of interest, cause I really do want to know it all. I learn better from curiosity and studying things when they are most interesting to me, and it's worked out pretty well so far. This turned out longer than I'd planned. If you made it this far, my apologies to your eyes and brain. Go have some chocolate, it'll make you feel better. Suggestions, recommendations and constructive criticism are most welcome :-) In Italian if you want... Liz Edited by Lizzern on 22 August 2009 at 12:01am 3 persons have voted this message useful | |
| reineke Senior Member United States https://learnalangua Joined 6391 days ago 851 posts - 1008 votes Studies: German | Message 2 of 244 19 July 2009 at 6:02pm | IP Logged |
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Wow, I haven't read your...post very carefully but I can see that you care and I have no doubt that you can do it.
Italian politicians are like slippery eels and just as attractive. Good luck with your Italian! 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Splog Diglot Senior Member Czech Republic anthonylauder.c Joined 5613 days ago 1062 posts - 3263 votes Speaks: English*, Czech Studies: Mandarin | Message 3 of 244 20 July 2009 at 6:11pm | IP Logged |
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"I want to get native-level fluency, to the point where I know Italian as well as your average adult educated speaker, distinguishable from natives by appearance only (I look very Norwegian, so they'll always be able to tell) ... I've given myself a year, since I get the impression it should be fairly doable"
It is certainly good to be ambitious, but I always raise an eyebrow when I see both extremely high targets (which most people never reach even in a lifetime of study) and short time frames. I am sure you can get far with devoted effort for a year, and wish you well, but I would be astonished if anybody (after one year of solid effort) could make an Italian (or any other national) think that they were of the same nationality. 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5853 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 4 of 244 20 July 2009 at 6:40pm | IP Logged |
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Thanks for the comments, guys. Splog - yeah it's kind of one of those "aim for the stars, then if you miss..." things, and if it doesn't work out that's fine, I don't mind if it ends up taking longer. I just know from rather extensive experience of failure in this and that, that I need rather extreme deadlines. I get so much more done that way than if I allow myself more time. I'm weird that way. If I have the option of postponing things, it's quite possible, even likely, that I will - unfortunately. I do, however, feel that it's too easy to just carry on in mediocrity for years and years, and that we can do much more, but perhaps since we're all kind of like that (that's a VERY general comment about the state of the world) it has become so normal to take long that we all assume things couldn't be done any faster. I'm not sure I necessarily agree with that assumption, so this is, I suppose, an experiment to me... Either I'll be able to do it or I won't. That AJATT fellow was fluent in Japanese after 18 months so I don't think a year for Italian is too impossible-sounding. I do have a very high standard for what I'd call fluency though, I've heard people claim fluency in languages in which I'd call their skill level intermediate at best, and most days I wouldn't even claim fluency in English, even though natives insist I totally should. Anyhow, 9 months from now I will either have achieved native-level fluency (...cool) or I will be well on my way but with work still to be done (...still pretty cool). Either way I'm better off setting a short deadline, that much is certain (to me).
I was hoping to start this on a high note if I ever ended up writing a log, but I guess not... No sleep at all Saturday night, then a long nap yesterday, and days like that are never any good. My brain is still kind of offline today, so I'll probably take it more or less easy. I did listen to some audio books yesterday though, focusing solely on listening for the sounds, all of them, and trying to make out the words. Obviously a lot of words are just mine by now, so I can understand them without trying, though there's always that slight concern that maybe I'm dealing with an exception or something, I guess I'm still at that stage now where I risk misunderstanding things cause I might be simplifying whatever I see to the lexical meaning I know or the exceptions I've already encountered. I will, as always, need to be careful, but at this point I need to start looking at exceptions and idiomatic usage more extensively than I've been doing up till now. I try to read the full entry when I look things up, but it still feels like I'm on unstable ground. I so need an idioms dictionary... Also listened to some music yesterday, but even that wasn't very productive. I did pick out a few new things from what I listened to, one of those neat moments where something you didn't get a while ago just suddenly makes sense, which was nice. Also read a long article on something music-related, I could follow most of it and get a pretty good sense of the underlying tone and opinion of the writer, then read 45 comments' worth of authentic Italian insults :-) Controversial topic, I guess. Some pretty sweet turns of phrase too. Good times! So far today I've listened to some more music but this time looking more closely at the lyrics of a song that was new to me, as well as listening to parts of an interview. Been seeing some progress in my understanding of spoken/sung Italian, but there are still words that fly right by me. Edited by Lizzern on 20 July 2009 at 6:51pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Tally Bilingual Diglot Senior Member Israel Joined 5552 days ago 135 posts - 176 votes Speaks: English*, Modern Hebrew* Studies: French | Message 5 of 244 20 July 2009 at 8:53pm | IP Logged |
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Grazie mille!
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| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5853 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 6 of 244 20 July 2009 at 11:30pm | IP Logged |
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Just finished reading act 1 scene 1 of Amleto out loud and trying to follow the gist of it. I need to go back and do it again, looking up all the words I don't know. I started off reading an English version alongside, but the two texts didn't match up very well, so I ended up just going with the Italian to see how much I could follow and practice pronunciation, and ditched the English. Hopefully the English version of Hamlet I have back home matches the Italian more closely than the one I found online so I can use it, but it was pretty interesting to see some of the Italian takes on things.
Going to have this bound when I get home I think, find room for a little Italian literature section in my shelves somewhere... Looking at things in the long-term perspective, knowing how many medical books will be filling those same shelves over the next few years, I don't actually have space for all that many Italian books, but if I have them printed I'm less likely to get distracted by the computer, I can just pick a book and sit in my study chair and just read... The world goes round much more smoothly when I don't constantly have the computer in front of me. It was great to get to speak Italian out loud again, I'm staying with my parents this summer so I've basically been in silent mode since mid-June, which is obviously and apparently not a very good thing to do. My parents are on vacation this week, so I can talk all I want. My Rs are getting rusty! That's one of the most difficult sounds to me, because I speak a dialect of Norwegian where there is no trilled R (though the occasional semi-trilled D). But on the whole, my pronunciation isn't atrocious. I'll nail it eventually. Overall tone needs work though. It still surprises me how much more comfortable I am with pronouncing Italian than Spanish! I don't know, there's something about it that just suits me. That could be because I simply adore Italian, and merely 'really liked' Spanish, I don't know... Will be updating the first post of this log with the details of what I'm using, as and when I feel like it, so that the links are all there, just FYI I guess... I have about 3 days to finish the second passive phase of Assimil so I might do some more of that tonight, it doesn't take long. Liz Edited by Lizzern on 20 July 2009 at 11:34pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| KiwiKiwi Tetraglot Groupie Belgium Joined 5640 days ago 50 posts - 50 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, German, French Studies: Italian, Russian | Message 7 of 244 21 July 2009 at 12:05am | IP Logged |
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I love how you are working this Italian! It motivates me too :) as i am getting into learning Italian. Languages always came natural to me, but now i want to get the basics too (grammar and verbs etc.). This way i can later learn way more difficult languages (Russian, Japanese, upgrade my French). I have to get into the flow again though with Italian.
Your goal 'speaking native' is really skyhigh, i have to say. Even for Italian. The problem is, or your luck (probably)... that Italians love it when foreigners speak their language! So if you only say: 'Ciao bello/a!' they will tell you how fantastic your Italian is. But aiming high is the way to the sky and it will motivate to do a lot i think. Great all your goals! Good luck!! Edited by KiwiKiwi on 21 July 2009 at 12:07am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Belardur Octoglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5555 days ago 148 posts - 195 votes Speaks: English*, GermanC2, Spanish, Dutch, Latin, Ancient Greek, French, Lowland Scots Studies: Biblical Hebrew, Italian, Arabic (Written), Mandarin, Korean | Message 8 of 244 21 July 2009 at 10:46am | IP Logged |
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I think your goals are great, and totally reachable! I began being mistaken for a native speaker after 6 months of returning to active German study, so don't let anyone tell you that it can't be done (though it's still not consistent, it happens)!
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