{"id":9541,"date":"2015-06-29T21:30:59","date_gmt":"2015-06-29T19:30:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/?p=9541"},"modified":"2015-06-29T21:30:59","modified_gmt":"2015-06-29T19:30:59","slug":"learning-italian-the-back-to-front-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/learning-italian-the-back-to-front-language\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning Italian: The Back To Front Language!"},"content":{"rendered":"

My mother tongue being English, I can really empathise with the problems encountered by learners of la bella lingua<\/strong>. Let’s face it dear readers, Italian sounds divine … but it’s all back to front, upside down, and inside out, vero<\/strong>? Of course, if you already speak another Latin language your learning experience will probably be rather more straightforward, but even then Italian has many grammatical idiosyncrasies ready to trip you up, such as the rather vague differentiation between stare<\/strong> (to be) and essere<\/strong> (to be), which are so much easier in Spanish or Portuguese.<\/p>\n

In the early stages of learning Italian this back-to-frontness is a big problem: we want clarity, we want literal equivalents, we torture ourselves by asking why? why? why? What’s the point of saying la mia bici<\/strong> (the my bike), isn’t it sufficient simply to say ‘my bike’? Why do Italians say questa notte<\/strong> (this night) when what they mean is last night? And what about che culo!<\/strong> (what bum!) when they really mean ‘that was lucky!’<\/p>\n

\""Why<\/a>

“Why don’t you overtake, it’s only a bike?”<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n

Well, here’s a tip: don’t get too hung up on literal comparisons or translations. Sometimes you just have to accept the fact that this is the way things are. No one is going to change the Italian language to make it easier for you!<\/p>\n

Now, if you’re not living in Italy then you’ve really got your work cut out for you! Just think for a moment about the way in which children learn their mother tongue: they are surrounded by it, hence they acquire it, they absorb it, they imitate and practice it in meaningful contexts. How on earth are you, dear readers, going to achieve that at home or in a class far from the shores of il Bel Paese<\/strong>?<\/p>\n

To be honest, I don’t envy you, in fact I admire you for trying! The bits and pieces of Italian that I learnt in England certainly helped, but really, I didn’t begin learning until I came to live here.<\/p>\n

And there’s an interesting thing: after a few years of living in Italy, those expressions that used to seem so wrong eventually become normal to the point that you even begin to question the logic of the English language! Take, for example, questa notte<\/strong> (last night). This expression used to sound so silly to me when I heard Serena using it; “wait … do you mean this night, tonight … but how can questa notte<\/strong> be last night when it translates as this night?”<\/em> etc. etc.<\/p>\n

\"145\"<\/a>

Last night a thief came into my house looking for money … … I got up and we began looking for it together.<\/span><\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Well, guess what, these days, when I’m talking in English, I often find myself saying ‘this night’, when what I mean is ‘last night’. Can you see what’s happened there? Questa notte<\/strong> has become the norm for me, my brain has accepted it to the point where it can sometimes seem more normal than saying ‘last night’. What I’m getting at is: it’s all a matter of perspective, and by continually questioning the logic of Italian constructions we can easily impede ourselves from making progress.<\/p>\n

The Italian child, when learning its mother tongue, doesn’t say to itself, “la mia bici … che strano, perch\u00e9 si usa l’articolo?<\/strong>” The child accepts, absorbs and assimilates what it hears: la mia bici<\/strong>, il mio libro<\/strong>, il nostro gatto<\/strong>, la nostra macchina<\/strong> etc.
\nSo, remember that child whilst you’re learning. Sure, study the grammar and so on, but most of all learn to listen and observe just as you did when you were a child. After all, you don’t need to study musical theory in order to hum a simple tune that you’ve heard a few times on the radio, do you?<\/p>\n

In bocca al lupo.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\"\"

My mother tongue being English, I can really empathise with the problems encountered by learners of la bella lingua. Let’s face it dear readers, Italian sounds divine … but it’s all back to front, upside down, and inside out, vero? Of course, if you already speak another Latin language your learning experience will probably be…<\/p>\n

Continue Reading<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":9546,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":""},"categories":[619],"tags":[385860,385861,385862],"class_list":["post-9541","post","type-post","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-italian-language","tag-learning-italian","tag-study-italian","tag-tips-for-learners-of-italian"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9541"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9541\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9553,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9541\/revisions\/9553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/italian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}