How I Learned Italian

Hi, Steve Kaufmann here and today, I want to talk about how I study Italian or how I learned Italian. Uh, remember if you enjoy these videos, please subscribe. And if you've listen to podcasts, on a podcast service, please leave a review. Uh, I do appreciate it. Now, uh, I did a video on what I did to learn German, how I studied German, how I learned German to the extent that I speak German, because it's not one of my strongest languages. Now I'm going to do the same with Italian. And, um, I don't, I haven't scoured all my bookshelves to find all the books that I, I used for Italian, but the process was essentially the same. And now it is again, you know, I had traveled in Italy.

I had hitchhiked, uh, hitchhiked in Italy, uh, with the knowledge of Spanish that I had, I was kind of communicating with people in Italy. Uh, and it's always a language that had, you know, a great appeal to me because Italy is such a lovely country. There's so many lovely places to visit and food and music and lively people.

And so I wanted to be good in Italian. And of course I wasn't, I was communicate... communicating, but at a very basic level. So, I can't remember when I decided to make a greater effort with my Italian, but I will show you some of the things that I did. So, first of all, the one thing I remember is that I got a hold of the Linguaphone series for Italian.

And Linguaphone is, I don't know if they still exist, I guess they do. It's extremely expensive for what it is, because essentially what you need is text with audio and a glossary. That's all you need. You don't need all the exercises. It's fashionable now to have pre-reading questions and post-reading comprehension questions, and all kinds of things that are quite unnecessary.

In fact, that spoil the pleasure of reading. Uh, so there's a lot of useless exercise stuff in here, but I had to find something for Italian. So I don't know if I got a deal on it or if it was sort of surplus somewhere. But I do know that I went through this and listened to the audio many, many times. And this was before I got into this, you know, the realization that you have to listen repetitively over and over again, instinctively that's something I did.

And I can remember listening when the family arrived in Milan and vaguely, this would be at least 30 years ago that I did this. So I went through this. Now, um, then with my experience in German of finding, you know, readers with glossaries, um, you know, I found books like this First Itlaian Reader for Adults. And I have never liked, I do have, I don't know where they are here. I can find them, you know, sort of bilingual books where you have, let's say the Italian on the left-hand side and the English on the right-hand side. I've never found that very effective because what I need is the words, the individual words that I don't understand, I don't want to have to read through the English to find the spot that corresponds to where I am in the Italian.

What I want is like, here's this word I don't know what it means. What does it mean? And in former days that meant, uh, you know, readers with glossaries. As I showed you for German, the disadvantage is that very often, the word you need is not in their glossary or the word that they introduced in the glossary is a word you already know.

So to a large extent that has now been made obsolete by online dictionaries, by LingQ and things of that nature. But I did a lot of reading of, and I just couldn't find them, but oh, here we have... here's another one. But there were lots of more and, and, uh, always, you know, readings with glossaries. Now, obviously, if you know French, if you know Spanish, a lot of vocabulary is freebie in Italian.

People always make a big deal about false friends. To me, there is the odd false friend in these languages. It's not a big deal. The common vocabulary is a much greater benefit in learning a language and the odd word that is a false friend. You quickly find out if you use it in the wrong context. And so you make adjustments, but it's... false friends, in other words, a common vocabulary is a good thing not a bad thing. Um, but with the Italian... now grammar, of course, this is a great little grammar book, which you go back, I go back to over and over and over again, because all the little pronouns ... and that, uh, are difficult because they're different, different from what I am used to in other languages.

And so kind of reviewed the rules and then you watch for them when you're reading and then you listen and stuff like that. A big, a big boost to my Italian was the discovery of il narratore, which is a, an audio book publisher, very small based near, um, I think he's near, uh, Verona, uh, but he's up on the hillside.

And he's there and he puts out wonderful, uh, audio books and he does a wonderful rendering of I promessi sposi. Now, a lot of people, especially Italian people, they had, I promessi sposi, which is a classic of Italian literature, they had it at school. They don't like it. It's boring, but for me, it's what I like. It's exotic.

It's another century. It's another country. And of course, with, uh, the wonderful, uh, audio book version that... mauricio does, it's lovely. And I can remember jogging when I was in Palm Springs, listening to I promessi sposi in Italian. He also does a wonderful version of wonderful version of Pinocchio.

And the advantage with both those texts is that I can import the text to LingQ. I can look at words and phrases. So I'm no longer a, you know, in many cases, you know, if you get a book like a modern book like this, Alberto Moravia, uh, there won't be, uh, you know, you can't just get the digital text to import to LingQ, but if you're dealing with, um, classics, you can import the text, look up words and phrases, you can listen to the audio. And so you're learning in a way that's agreeable, it's easy. That's much easier than struggling with bilingual textbooks or even books with, with glossaries. So that was my path with Italian. And, but I'm not where I want to be in Italian. For example, if I want to read Umberto Eco, which I do, there are too many words that I don't understand. And so if I start reading them and if I look through this book, I'll see a lot of underlinings where, you know, I underlined the word with the sort of optimistic intention of eventually looking it up at a dictionary, which I never do. Um, ideally I would be able to read those on LingQ so I can look up every word and save words and phrases and learn them.

So with that, I'll just show you a very brief, uh, what I have done with Italian on LingQ, and then I'll kind of, uh, finish up with a few words. Okay. Let's have a look at what I've been doing in LingQ, which has really made the learning of a... of any language, including Italian a lot easier than it was 30 years ago when I decided to improve my level of Italian.

So if I click on my thumbnail here and, um, No, I haven't done anything recently, but if I go to my all time will see that I have 22,500 or 22,236, known words that I was particularly active terms of adding to my known words total back in 2008 and have been active at various times. Uh, this is the known words.

Now, if I look at my LingQs created number there's only 5,000 of them, so that the bulk of the words that are on my known words total are words that I saw in the text, but didn't need to look up cause I knew them. And so I think eventually sort of determines what your vocabulary level is as you will go by saving words that you need to learn.

Uh, if I look at words of reading that I've done on LingQ, I hadn't read a fair amount, but I've also read a lot of Italian away from LingQ so LingQ hasn't been my main, um, place to study Italian, although, you know, 61,000 words back in the summer, I guess the end of 2013 is not insignificant. Uh, but, uh, that gives you, so I found out that the gradual growth in my known words, And picked up a lot at the beginning and have continued to increase gradually, but I really haven't been very active.

So that's really the picture of my activity, uh, when it comes to Italian on LingQ. So, um, you know, where do I want to get to with, with Itlaian? You know, I can communicate in Italian, uh, to some extent, but not as well as I would, like, I don't speak it as well as I would like, I understand quite well. Uh, but if I pick up a book like this, like, uh, I have actually, uh, I think, I think this is one where I found the audio book, so I could listen to the audiobook of what if I read through it on every page I can see because I've underlined them.

I can see five or six or so words that I don't know. So I'm not good at it. In my reading, I would like to be better. And if I weren't learning Arabic and Persian, then just as with all the other languages, I would love to spend time to get better in Italian. But I have sort of brought my Italian up to a level where it's not just sort of semi Spanish.

It's actually Italian but limited. And, but I am at a situation where if I were to go to Italy or if I've had the opportunity or the need to use the language, or if I just decided to spend a month indulging in my interest and the enjoyment that I get from Italian, that I could, you know, bring it up. And so it's kind of on the same level as German.

In other words, a rusty B2 that I could easily bring up to a, a better level of B2. And that's where I hope to get my language. As I continue to explore new languages, I will leave you with a couple of interviews that I've done in Italian so that you can gauge, you know, the difficulties that I continue to have in Italian.

Thank you for listening.