Learn Italian Your Own Way

It occurred to me that I haven’t talked about the Italian language for a while. I was reminded of my amusing Italian pronunciation guides by an old friend who found my blog yesterday; my Beijing “language = funny” post, and recently having had to explain my language learning process, in Italian, to a bunch of half-in-the-bag Italian IBM executives.

But, that’s a story for another time. Today, I’m going to tell you how I learned Italian.

Actually – and this should come as no surprise to my regular readers – I am going to digress by confessing: I love “s” words in Italian. Not all “s” words, obviously. But there are several dozen that are so much fun to get your mouth around, and so utterly descriptive, that I have literally whiled away an afternoon reading this section of the dictionary. Some examples:

1. sciatto (shyacht-toe) = unkempt, slovenly (reminds me of “shot to hell”)
2. sgualcire (zgwal-chee-ray) = to crumple up (as in clothes)
3. sfarzoso (sfarts-oh-zoe) = magnificent (heh, farts)
4. scazzarsi (scots-czar-see) = to lose interest (as in a cat who becomes distracted by a shiny metal object and leaves you standing there with a cat toy; reminds me of “scatterbrained”)
5. sgorbio (zgorb-yo) = ugly (like, in an unfortunate way)
6. sgobbare (zgoh-bar-ray) = to slave away at something (to me, if the act of sighing, wiping sweat from your brow and looking around at all the housework you still have to do had a sound attached to it, it would be this word)

I could seriously read them out all day. You can, too! Roll those r’s, don’t be shy. Use them in an English sentence, like I do sometimes! It’s fun. But, back to how I learned Italian.

I did take private lessons for a month or so, but I didn’t love it. My teacher was wonderful; I just didn’t like that I was not permitted to follow my own line of logic, so in my head I had to keep track of a lot of things that for me didn’t have any connection to each other. I ditched her and bought a vocabulary book, a verb book, a grammar book, and a workbook. I studied 80 minutes a day – to and from work on the train.

• I made flashcards of verbs.
• Everything in my house was labeled with their Italian names (a trick my mom did with me when I was learning to read).
• I listened to Italian talk radio while I worked, to get used to the sound and for listening comprehension (my most difficult area).
• I found Italian songs I liked, printed out the lyrics, translated them, and then sang them for pronunciation, mimicking the singers as well as I could. (I highly recommend Giorgia.)
• I bought Italian tabloid magazines and read them with a dictionary by my side.
• I only did what interested me, so I would never scazzarmi.

And then, of course, I moved to Rome, where I didn’t know anyone and had to speak Italian to survive.  I pestered my new friends with a million questions as we got to know each other – what was that word?  Why do you say this instead of that? How do you say/pronounce this or that? Do you have a phrase for this or that English colloquialism?  I was relentless.

By no means do I recommend this method for everyone.  My point is, if you want to learn Italian, you don’t have to sgobbare in a classroom setting or uncomfortable conversation groups.  Do whatever feels right to you, and only for as long as it interests you.