From the mind of Roger Wyatt

One almost in the can

I am wrapping up Italian 101 finally. I started this new path on September 26th and has the time really flown by. I have completely finished 2 units (10 lessons) and 3 lessons into the last unit of Italian 101. I really can't believe how much material I have gotten through in a little over a month. From my month I have discovered quite a few things about language learning that have made it easier for me to make progress and where I have been stumbling.

The Good, bad, and funny

I am very much sold on this concept for learning. I really don't know why high school language classes are so boring and pedantic when there is a better way. My high school Spanish classes were rote recitation of verb conjugations that never really stuck. The reason is that you spend all your time translating - rather than thinking. I have found myself thinking in Italian from time to time when I'm studying. Without total immersion in the language (like traveling to Italy) it's quite amazing to be transitioning so quickly from translating to thinking. Having never been multi-lingual (high school Spanish doesn't really count), I've often wondered how the transition from stumbling to fluency happens. While I'm still very far from any semblance of fluency, I think I get the process that happens.

The bad part is that once you start down the path of language learning - you can't get off the bus and rejoin later. I got really busy and spent a week away from it and I had to refresh my memory and catch up. It wasn't that hard, but it does mean there is a commitment here. You need to make time frequently.

The funny had to do with some of the imagery. For the phrase "The woman is on the bed" there was a picture of a woman sitting on a bed. The next phrase was "The money is on the dresser". I just started laughing. LiveMocha could stand to check their phrases and images.

I'm a 3yr old Italian Child

I figured I would compare my Italian proficiency against my son, Beck. He's two years old and speaks very well for his age. By comparison, I figure I'm as proficient as a 3 year old Italian child in my speaking and grammar. I know some basics (I can count, know colors, basic sentences, etc), but make plenty of grammar mistakes. I'm finding that the masculine/feminine is really something that is foreign to me as I find myself wondering to a use "le","la","lo", "il" or "un". However, I have been reading some Italian blogs and are beginning to understand more and more - maybe not the specifics, but I'm getting some of the gist of various phrases. My vocabulary is still not sufficient - I have no idea how many Italian words I know - to converse adequately.

Continuing on

So I'll be finishing up Italian 101 and moving on to Italian 102. I'm in it for the long haul. One thing that helped me a bit was this article by Tim Ferriss "How to Learn Any Language in 3 Months". It had some good points to help figure out verbs and some other details to get past the more mundane aspects of learning a language quickly.