Ah, my Italian blog. How I've missed you. I've been hanging out with the Spaniards a lot lately and have completely ignored you. Mi dispiace! Ti prego, perdonami.
I'm still puzzling over the fact that when I switch from watching TV shows in Spanish or French, even though my current vocabulary bank in Italian is miniscule (and probably overdrawn), the few Italian words and phrases I do know all come out sounding clear as crystal. Thus, I end up understanding way more of the spoken Italian than I do the Spanish. I grasp a little more of the French, but only because I've studied it for ages.
Also, (and I don't mean to say this to denigrate other languages in the least), I seem to pay attention more when I'm listening to Italian. It grabs my attention. I've spoken before of how the unpredictable stresses on syllables gives the language a constantly changing rhythm and all those vowels give it a musical lilt. French has almost equal stress on each syllable, and while there are some very beautiful French words, unless the speaker is animated and expressive, it can come across as monotone at times. Spanish has rhythm, but its a very static rhythm--and for some reason which nobody seems to know, spoken Spanish sounds as though it's being shot out of a cannon, extremely rapid with few pauses.
I just wish I could find more TV show in Italian. This is where Spanish learners have a huge advantage--YouTube offers hundreds of shows in Spanish, some dubbed American programs, others in the original Spanish. I may be about to solve some of that problem, though.
There is a free online program called Hola that 'unblocks' foreign TV stations and makes your computer think it's in another country. (Now if only I could find a similar program that makes ME think I'm in Italy :)).
This will allow me to access RAI, the giant TV network in Italy that produces hundreds of programs all the time. This will open up a lot of possibilities, but I still wish I could find more Italian shows that are not only in Italian, but also have Italian subtitles. Those are very hard to find.
Anyway, it's good to be back here in Bella Italia.
A presto...
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