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How to Learn Italian

By Gerrit Du Plessis

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 20Mar2009 Word count: 528 Viewed: 2024 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

When I was a child, a new friend invited me home after school. In her warm, fragrant kitchen, I found her grandmother, a chubby woman who loved to hug and dole out kisses. I loved this woman immediately, but there was one problem; I didn't speak her language. This did not seem to bother the good woman one bit; she just assumed I'd figure out how to learn Italian! Fortunately, Nonni (as my friend called her) gave me no choice; she was going to adopt me as an auxiliary grandchild, and she was going to keep talking regardless of whether I understood her or not. As I spent more time there, I was astonished to learn that I was beginning to understand her. How could this be? I did not know how to learn Italian, and I'd never studied it. All I was doing was listening.

Amazingly, research shows that listening is pretty much all you have to do. Children learn from listening to their parents. First, as babies, we listen to the sound of the language our parents speak; we don't understand the individual words, but we sort out the sounds that belong to our language from all other possible vocal sounds. Eventually we begin to attach meaning to certain sounds we hear; our parents say "Where's your nose?" and we touch our noses. Finally we begin to try making some of those sounds ourselves. If we're successful, our parents understand us and respond with joy. If not, they don't respond, and we try again. This is exactly how to learn Italian too!

But suppose you don't have Italian parents, or even a neighborhood Nonni. It's not too late. If there is a nearby school, university, or community center that offers Italian classes, consider taking advantage of the opportunity. But if there's not, or classes don't fit into your schedule, choose a good audio-based language program to learn Italian. Make sure it's audio-based; you won't get a good accent out of a book. Reading may be a good way to learn Dostoyevsky, but it's not how to learn Italian!

After you've acquired a sense of the sound of the language and learned some basic words and phrases, seize as many opportunities as you can to hear Italian spoken and to speak it yourself. Watch Italian movies, with and without subtitles. Go to see an Italian opera, and try to understand what they're singing about. Go to your neighborhood pizza joint, and find out if the owners speak Italian; they probably do, and would be happy to chat in their native tongue. If your community has a civic association or an Italian-American club, make new friends. They will be more than delighted to teach you how to learn Italian.

Italian is a dynamic, living language, the language of Dante just as much as it is the language of the Godfather. Learning it will give you a window on not only a beautiful country (which you may sometime want to visit), but on a wonderful culture made up of vibrant people. As you discover how to learn Italian, you'll find you've opened the door to a whole new world.

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