I want to learn Italian, but there is no class available at my school for it (plus, I heard langauge classes suck, especially High School). Anyhow, if you do, do you have any tips for me? Where do I start, etc.?

I had to learn it on my mission, but I DON'T recommend that method!

Its not a hard language, maybe a bit tricker than spanish, but not much. Immersion is the key. Find a way to do an exchange program in Italy for a few months. You might never want to come back:) If that's too expensive or has to come later, find an italian and get romantic with them. Sounds hokey, but I know from personal experience how much language you can learn from somebody you are infatuated with.

I would LOVE to do a foreign exchange program. How would I go about doing it? How much would it cost?

Put in for a mission to Italy. Great way to learn. Ha Ha Ha.

Funny you should ask. I learned Spanish on my mission and have always used it in my work, but I always wanted to know Italian because I love Italy and it is my number one destination.

A couple of years ago I bought a course called Learn in Your Car by Penton Overseas. I put the cd's in my car and for two years I have listened to the CD's on my way to work and on my way home. I never wavered. You always have to go to work so there is no reason no to do it regularly.

That is the key. I do not trust those courses that claim to have you speaking in a couple of months.

I have only had one conversation so far because I know no one who speaks Italian, but I can say anything I want to. I rented an Italian movie and I understand a lot. I am not sure how hard it would have been had I not known spanish first though.

Didn't it mess up your Spanish? It did for me. I am always mixing close words up like

Horno & Forno
Orgullo & Orgoglio
Palabra & Parole
etc...

Every time I couldn't think of what to say in Italian I would unintentionally insert the spanish words and that was frustrating. After a while my mind seemed to separate it out though. At work though I do sometimes put Italian words in unintentionally now.

The worst was that se and si have flipped meanings and usages. I still tend to screw that up.

For me plurals and "no" vs "non" are the most common offenders

Yeah, I don't know if I'll ever get the plurals down. I will be depending on the kindness of strangers when it comes to that. It seems like they just choose any old word in the sentence to base the plurality on. It would be easier to keep track of Brigham Young's wives.

I learned Italian, but it was AFTER learning Spanish on my mission, and they are similar enough that it was easy to pick up.

I just did CDs in the car, and studied them.
I also read the BoM in Italian (this was in 2005 when I was still TBM). It was good because I knew what the words were supposed to say, so I was able to decipher the italian as I read.

But if you have another book that you are very familiar with, it is a decent method to get that in Italian (just be sure to triple check your pronunciation guide so that you don't pick up bad habits as you are reading).

My dad is currently trying to learn Italian, and he is doing it with a combination of Art books and Movies dubbed into Italian.

I only recommend the movies if you have really good hearing (I don't, so I rely on watching mouths move). "Life is Beautiful" in it's original italian is a very good movie for picking up some italian (with the mouths in sync).

ASLO beware that there are 2 dialects of Italian: Northern & Southern. Be sure to learn Northern, as it is viewed as the "more proper" italian.
(basically you will never say "I ate cake" but "I have eaten cake"... you always use the past participle. There are some other differences, but that's the main red flag for "improper" speech).

But the BEST way to learn italian is to go to Rome or Florence. They speak enough English there to help you, and their culture is really good at correcting you when you mess up, so you learn very quickly (whereas the latino culture tends to ignore your mistakes).

HS/College classes depend 100% on the teacher, but generally are not very good. I would rate watching movies in Italian above a HS/College class.

After you know basic italian, College classes are GREAT at teaching you the ins and outs of grammar so that you could write professionally in Italian (being able to converse fluently is totally different from being able to write a business letter or some other "professional communication").

Good luck. Italian is super fun to learn! And if you visit Italy, they LOVE anyone who tries to learn Italian (because it isn't one of the most popular languages).

P.S. If you want to see the most beautiful place on earth, go to Cinque Terre in the north west of Italy. I took my wife there for our honeymoon. It was amazing. I'd been to Italy before, but I hadn't seen Cinque Terre. Now I wont let anyone go without seeing it.

Thanks. I didn't know about the differences of North/South.

Luckily I apparently have learned the north and was wondering why everything is always said with the past participle --mystery solved.

You are right about Cinque Terre. I haven't been to Italy since I started learning Italian. I can't wait to get back. I have never had anything but a great time. I love lake Como and the Splendido at Portofino and I just want to eat everything.

You make me want to abandon my life and go bum around Italy again.

There are not northern and southern dialects. What we call Italian is basically the Florentine dialect. It has been the language of literature since the Renaissance. I know Neopolitan poets were writing in Florentine even in the 1500's. It only became widely used throughout the country as a spoken language in the 1950s with the advent of television. There are still many dialects throughout Italy that are still spoken. Even towns a few miles apart can speak different dialects so it is a lot more than a Northern/Southern division. I am not sure what you mean by not using the past participle in the south. I think you might be thinking of "Mangiai il pane" vs. "Ho mangiato il pane." The first conjugation would be used mainly in literature but sometimes you will hear it in spoken language. If that is what you are thinking of then I think you are right you would mainly hear that in spoken language in the south. It is still Italian, however, not a southern dialect.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/30/2012 08:15PM by dazed11.

Coming from Spanish, my tendency was to say "I ate"

But I got asked "why do you speak like a 'Terrone'?" by the italian couple I was staying with near Milan (Terrone is a pejorative word for southerner, referring to the school of thought that all southern Italians are farmers and manual laborers).

My input about dialects comes directly from them... it isn't based in academia.

So, take it for what it's worth.

But in Napels, everyone used the past tense, rather than the past participle.

I am just kind of sensitive about people saying bad things about southern Italy since that is where I served my mission. Also in general I don't like the idea of one way of speaking a language being superior to another. I think if a foreigner did use the passato remoto tense people would mainly just be impressed that he even knows that tense. It is kind of hard to remember. When I wrote my reply I first wrote "Mangio' il pane" which would be "He ate bread" and I couldn't remember the first person conjugation so I had to look it up.

Just to be clear- I am in NO way condoning what that couple told me, nor her use of the word Terrone.

So if that wasn't clear, I want it to be :-)

I have been told the best way to learn a new language is to find a person of whatever gender attracts you who speaks only that language and live/sleep with that person. Your mileage may vary.

My fiance is of Chinese descent ("real Asian not born in America") and she speaks it everyday to me.

I've been with her for 4 years and I still speak as much Chinese as the Mexican people at Panda Express. :( I speak English Japanese Spanish and Portuguese, so I know I have the ability to learn. I just find that sometimes immersion can get you used to things but not necessarily adept at them.

My advice, get used to listening to Italian (plenty of Italian translated movies) and couple that with a sprinkling a study grammar here and there, much like how children learn. You notice how they all just seem to know what sounds right and wrong.

Check out http://www.dantealighieri.com/
Their language courses are 230 euro per week. You would also need housing as well. I would say it would be great to do at least a month of intensive courses to get a good foundation and it would be great to be in the country while you are doing it. Then it would be easier to pick up more as you go by watching movies, reading newspapers, etc. I have never been to Siena but one of my Italian professors said he thinks it is the most beautiful city in Italy. I hope to take some cooking classes at this institute sometime.

Siena might be one of the most beautiful towns in the entire world. If you have a chance to stay there a while, take it!

Did you live in Siena on your mission? I was in the south in the Catania mission.

I was in Oz italian speaking 84-86. My good MTC buddies went to Catania. Most of my italian contacts/friends in Oz were families originally from Calabria so I used to know a lot of calabrese dialect, way different than mainstream italian as I'm sure you know! I've travelled all over la Bella Italia starting when I was a kid growing up on military bases in Europe. My italian now is good enough to watch a movie and pick up the drift of a conversation, but its so mixed up with spanish and portuguese now that I can't say I really speak italian anymore:(

A couple of websites for learning Italian among other languages...

www.busuu.com
www.livemocha.com

I'm not sure where you could go, but I took 3 years of Italian for the heck of it.

I practice by watching RAI on cable. I can't really recommend where to go, although I'm surprised a college wouldn't have an Italian program. If you want to practice, let me know.

If you can't afford an immersion programme in Italy, you might want to try Rosetta Stone software. When we moved to Austria, I knew no German. We bought Rosetta Stone to begin learning, and we found it pretty good. I would recommend it.

It's fun to use, simple, and effective. I learned enough to understand the basic working of the language and acquired a fairly large vocabulary. I was able to learn this in spite of being 59 years old when I started. I learned enough to test into an intermediate level of introductory German in the EU system of language for immigrants.

It's not perfect, of course. For instance, it introduces the German cases, but it doesn't explain how they work. So I am learning those through other courses. But I believe Italian doesn't rely on cases as German does, so it would not be (or would be less of) an issue for you.

I would very much recommend it for someone who wants to learn on his own and who can't afford to do a course abroad. You can work at your own pace, and it really is effective.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/31/2012 03:29AM by Lorraine aka síóg.

Learning basic Italian is easy- learning perfect Italian is really hard.

Luckily, it's not like Russian, German or Latin where you have to memorize all the different cases (which according to some makes it easier).

If you're in a position to- full immersion language study (e.g. moving to Italy and staying with an Italian host) is the best way- the less they speak English- the better (it helps FORCE you to try to express yourself. Yes, more frustrating, but gives better results (generally)).

You can get a copy of 501 Italian verbs and start learning the different verbs and rules on how to structure the tenses.

There are COUNTLESS dialects in Italy- essentially every province or city can have at least 1. Long story short- yes, the Northern way of speaking is regarded as the 'correct' way, and the Southern is regarded as the 'ignorant, uneducated, redneck' way (take your pick). So, for clarity AND popularity- I would go with the Northern approach.

One other idea is for you to yes, watch videos in Italian, but watch videos that you are FAMILIAR with. That way you kind of already know what they are saying, and you are able to focus on the audio rather than reading subtitles.

A way you can do this is find the Italian equivalent to the title of the movie in question (good luck), go to www.google.it (make sure you actually change to the .it server rather than the .com) and put in 'guarda ___movie title here____ online' or '_movie title here_ streaming'.

I personally wouldn't waste too much time learning the fancy tenses 'mangio, mangiai, mangerei, etc...' The fact you are trying to learn Italian is impressive enough- don't go blowing any fuse trying to impress anyone. Get the basics down, and then expand by learning more complicated things. Saying 'I ate bread' (Ho mangiato pane) and I want to eat bread' (Voglio mangiare pane) is PERFECTLY FINE.

TheIrrationalShark Wrote:
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> I want to learn Italian, but there is no class available at my school for it (plus, I heard
> langauge classes suck, especially High School). Anyhow, if you do, do you have any tips for me?
> Where do I start, etc.?

I got a degree in Italy (in Italian, obviously) and I am in Italy now (check my previous posts). My level? Bilingual.

I don't want to rain on your parade but, IMHO, the people who said Italian is easy/fun/a joke are inadvertently misleading you. The reality is that, for an anglophone, Italian is a difficult language.

Also, should you come to Italy, be careful: there are literally THOUSANDS of different dialects, with VERY different syntax and VERY different pronunciation. This is going to be particularly confusing and frustrating, considering that you are a beginner. My advice: just stay at home and pick any good old grammar book.

Learning Italian will be a long process (not less than 7-8 years, 7-8 hours a day) and you will have to be very motivated. Out of curiosity: why do you want to study Italian?

I don't have any method too recommand but one thing that helps when learning a language and not being able to be in immersion is to try to find all kinds of ways to immerse yourself in it.
So yes Movies, Music (songs), ect. One thing that is good is if you have access to a multicultural tv station that offers a programation in different languages. For example, in Canada we have OMNI tv and they have programs (soaps, news, documentaries, etc) in Greek, Portuguese, Albanian, Polish, etc and of course Italian.
I'm always surprised at how much I can follow the Italian ones thanks to my French and Spanish.

If any one plans a group trip in Italy, let me know. ;)

Hello, I am an Italian native speaker graduate and I have created a blog about the Italian Language and Culture for foreign learners www.italianencounter.com.

I am also an Italian language tutor on Skype, I have been doing this for over a year so far. Feel free to message me for any questions about Italian!

A presto, ciao!

Serena