Is That Roberto Benigni Speaking Italian? Oh, my God; It's Me!

Listening to a recording of one's own voice is often rather like looking at a photograph of oneself.  'Who's that?' you might say before you recognize yourself.  And this, of course, is only natural; the image we see in a mirror is in reverse, so a photograph looks different.  And except for the times we've found ourselves in a canyon and heard our echo, we never hear ourselves speaking.  

Thanks to the wonders of technology, though, we are able to hear what we sound like to other people--and sometimes it's a bit startling, at least the first time.  It turns out that recording yourself when learning a second language can be a very useful (and informative) process for improving your pronunciation and capturing that illusive linguistic tone of a language--and its nuances.

By playing back a short recording of yourself as you continue to attempt to speak Italian, you can hear your mistakes, rather than just see them on paper.  I was very surprised when I recorded my first Italian speech at all the mistakes I made in syllable stress.  These are errors that would not be detected in your written exercises.  As you are well aware, the stresses in Italian are often irregular and a misplaced emphasis could interfere with making yourself understood by listeners.  The same goes for the other difficult pronunciation problem in Italian: double consonants.  The mistake of saying casa when you meant to say cassa glares out at you when you hear yourself pronounce those words on a recording. 

I had wanted to add an MP3 of some of my first attempts to record myself speaking Italian, but it would seem that with the Google Blogger platform, though it's relatively simple to add photos and videos, attaching audio files is difficult--involving using HTML, which I've tried to avoid.

The important thing about recording your Italian is to avoid being overly critical.  You're just learning, for chrissake!  If you could speak it perfectly without any effort, there would be no need for recordings, interminable grammar exercises, comprehension practices, etc.  Record a short monologue (or you could even write up a little dialogue and play both parts--that might be fun).  Then play it back several times, not just passively letting the words and sentences slide by you, but listening closely--both for the mistakes and for the things you did very well with.  If you sound even remotely like a native, then pat yourself on the back and have a gelato.

Ora, viaggiatore (Now, voyager), the next step is to record a video.  That way you can not only hear your progress (or lack of it), but also practice the body language and gestures that go along with good, animated, expressive Italian.  Also you can compare the way you employ your mouth, tongue, and teeth with what you see when you watch a native speaking.  Yes, le mie amiche, this is going to take some courage, but if we want to eventually become fluent, we need to put aside our fears and go forward to seek and to find.  (If this paragraph sounds familiar it's because I've been paraphrasing Walt Whitman :))  Yes, I know he's not an Italian, but he could write a good ditty every now and then, va bene?