Calling All Italians: Report to My House, Adesso

Buongiorgo, signori e signore, ragazzi e ragazze.  E 'così bello vedere di nuovo. It is never a drudge to write a daily post on this blog, because it gives me a chance to write and think in Italian.  Benvenuto!

I try not to think about it, i.e., how I might use my Italian, rudimentary as it may be, when just writing and listening to it are not enough.  It is times like these when I wonder if I'm not making a mistake not learning Spanish instead; the United States has an enormous Spanish-speaking population and I live in a state where Spanish is a vibrant second language.  Also, Mexico neighbors the country.  Finding French speakers would be a little more challenging; Haiti comes to mind and then there's Canada, which is so far away from where I live in the States, that it had just as well be France. But finding Italians in North America is not that easy.

But the fact remains (and I have to constantly remind myself of this, otherwise I find myself becoming a jack of all languages and a master of none, to borrow and adjust the old adage) that, though Spanish is useful and has qualities that I respect and admire, and even though I have the advantage of years of study in French, Italian seems to be the one that ha conquistato il mio cuore, captured my heart.  Yes, like a conquistadore, Italian has discovered and conquered my heart.   So, as for if or how I'll make contact with Italian speakers later on, well, I'll have to cross quel ponte when I get to it.  Perhaps there are ways to connect to Italian expatriates here in the U.S.  I'd love to go to Italy, but first, I don't have the funds to visit and second, I don't usually enjoy just touring a country--I'm selfish, I want to live there and get the full experience, both good and bad.

Nice skirt, no?

But to shift gears back to the main purpose of this blog, to talk about learning Italian, as I continue to study foreign languages, it strikes me that one of the hardest things about expressing oneself in the target language is the fact that it's usually almost impossible to express a thought in Italian the exact same way you'd express it in English.  I see this all the time when my Italian pen-pals write to me in English.  They have shuffled the words in a sentence or used some preposition pronoun is a way that would not be used in English.  Often I have to mentally unscramble a sentence in order to get the gist of it.  For this very reason, even though a lot of language authorities disagree, I think it is almost obligatory to spend as much time, if not more time, learning entire phrases as memorizing isolated words.  Often I find myself having an English construction in my mind while I'm trying to express something in Italian, and when it finally comes out of my mouth, I sense very strongly that that is just not the way an Italian would say it.  Yes, vocabulary lists are essential when just beginning to learn a language (when we were babies, we first learned the words daddy or mommy before we learned 'Where's daddy?), but very soon in the process, we need to start thinking in full phrases, sentences, and expressions.  Otherwise, we're going to sound like a bambino.  Still, it's surprising how well you can make yourself understood by using a single word:  Piazza? for 'Where is the piazza?'  'Mangiare?' for 'Do you want to eat?'  This baby-talk, along with a plethora of physical gestures (just make sure you're not using a gesture that has a completely different meaning to Italians!) might work in a pinch.  Capisce?  

A presto...