Learning Italian with Davide of @PodcastItaliano - YouTube (2)

you put enough time into it.

If you have a, an attitude that you want to notice, but

some people just don't notice.

The question is, even those people who don't notice, even if you

point it out, it doesn't mean they're gonna be able to do it.

So it it's kind of a mixture.

It's, it's, sometimes it helps, I, I wouldn't say it doesn't help.

It's like in Russian, the unaccentuated "o" becomes an "ah",

some people don't notice that.

You point it out, it doesn't mean they're gonna do it.

So I It's a mixture of both.

Um, yeah.

Another area where I thought we, it was interesting you showed those circles of...

in other words this whole issue of how many words do you need?

How do you activate your vocabulary?

And you had one person on there who was very much into, you know, every time

you learn a word, write it out, use it, which I'm not a big fan of because

it's, it's gonna limit your vocabulary.

So there's always this issue of how much focus on this bits and pieces,

the details versus how much of the language are you gonna bring into you.

Uh, and I think you have to strike a balance.

Uh, and you pointed out too that you have this sort of larger circle of words

that you know, in a very small number of words that you're comfortable using.

Uh, at some point you have to expand that, and you do that by speaking more,

and you shouldn't be afraid of speaking.

But at the same time, if you have a very small, larger circle, you'll

never have much comprehension.

You'll never have, you know, words that you can eventually use to

increase your active vocabulary.

So there's this constant push and pull between how much input and how much you

actually have to use what you've learned.

Where do you, where do you see all of this?

I mean, um, I'm a massive fan of, uh, I'm, I'm a huge fan of massive

input, uh and I've been, you know, influenced by, by you on this.

And I think you, you absolutely need to immerse yourself as much

as possible in the language.

But, you know, there are a lot of people who just do that and then they, they don't

speak very much and they don't speak well.

Even, and if they, you know, if they don't have an, if they understand everything

perfectly, so uh, you really have to speak a lot and, and, and write if you

want to do those two things well, it's, it's not gonna be automatic, although,

of course, listening and, and reading is going to help, but it's, there's not

a, an automatic influence on how you speak and how you produce the language.

Um, I think.

You eventually have to speak.

There's no question and eventually have to speak a lot.

Uh, and, and I would say that, um, yeah, as someone who wants to learn to

speak and I think Italian, any language, it's fun to speak the language, you

know, it's fun to, you know, imitate the intonation of the native speaker

as, as close as you can get to it.

And, um, there's a almost like that's the game, that's what's fun to do.

So I agree with you that some people are reluctant to do that.

It's a little more difficult.

You gotta set up a, a meeting or online or face-to-face, so it's more difficult.

It's easy just to turn on your MP3 player and listen.

Yeah.

It's almost too easy to consume content these days.

Too easy yeah.

Uh, it's so easy...

I agree.

Like it's, it's, uh, it's what you do by default.

But yeah, you, you, you have to speak.

And, and I, right.

And, and I think the joy of expanding your vocabulary is that there's

so much good material in Italian.

Oh, and, and you also had one, uh, a video and you talked about the importance of

reading, and I totally agree with that.

I mean, reading is, is absolutely essential.

That's where you expand that vocabulary base, the, the, the passive, the

potential words that eventually might be added to your active mix.

Um, but there's so much good material in Italian available.

When you go to Italy, um, how widespread is English?

So if you're an, a person that would like to visit, to visit

Rome or Florence or whatever.

Um, or even, uh, I don't know, Bari or Sicily.

I mean, there's so many wonderful places to visit in Italy.

How widespread is is English?

To what extent can you survive with just English?

To what extent is your experience in Italy gonna be richer by

being able to speak Italian?

I think it's going to be a lot richer and obviously like knowledge

of English really depends on the city, I believe also.

I don't know if I'm, if I'm the right person to ask because I'm not going

to speak English to other Italians, but I think it really depends.

If you go to Florence or Rome or Milan, it might be easier to,

to, to get by speaking English.

Uh, but if you go to even Bari or other, other places, smaller cities,

smaller towns, um, it's going to be near impossible to, to, uh, to use English.

Especially if you go to, I don't know, small borghi.

We have this, these borghi uh, these small, very small towns or villages, I

guess you could call them villages in English, which are beautiful in, in Italy.

I think they're worth the visit.

And if you want to communicate there, you're not going to be

finding English very useful.

So, uh, I think it's definitely making the experience a lot richer and in general.

I would say we're not that good in English.

Uh, you know, we're probably a little bit better than the, than

the Spanish, than Spanish people.

And, uh, if I had to say, or at least we try harder, but still,

we're probably in the, in the bottom countries when it comes to English

proficiency in the European Union.

So still not that good.

Behind the, behind the Portuguese who aren't too bad in English?

No, the Portuguese are, are incredible.

Um, yeah it's a matter of, we, we haven't had much English speaking

films and movies and all that and um we have everything dubbed in Italian.

And so I think that played a, a role.

And, you know, one of the big attractions of Italy is food and particularly in

a smaller town, but I can remember being in, um, I can't remember whether

it was Bologna or, or where I was.

But, or Parma and in a lovely restaurant and, uh, without Italian, you know, you

couldn't order and you couldn't engage the, the mama who was running the place

and sort of chit chat back and forth.

And even in the smaller towns, that's gonna be even more the case.

So for anyone wanting to explore Italy and explore the food and

explore the countryside, uh, having Italian is, is such a big advantage.

And, um, yeah, and I think...

Go ahead.

Sorry.

...a lot more authentic and genuine and fun, so, yeah.

I, I totally agree.

And I, I hardly recommend your channel.

Uh, as I say, because of how clearly you speak, how pleasant it is to

listen to your Italian and the range of content you have from history

to the language itself to how to learn and lots of different things.

So, uh...

And I also have the podcast, if I can promote my, my own podcast.

Go ahead.

Please.

Go ahead.

I have a lot of, lot of content on, on the podcast as well, um, uh, interviews and...

You provide transcriptions, don't you, for your podcast?

Yeah, yeah, I do.

So anyone who listens to your podcast or your videos, which has subtitles in

Italian, both of those can be imported into LingQ, uh, for your own use.

We, we have one item in there that, that is shared in our library, but

nothing prevents our members from, uh, subscribing to your podcast or

to your YouTube channel, and then importing those into LingQ as lessons.

And, uh, I can't think of a better way, uh, to work on Italian.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, I've used LingQ a lot myself in the past.

I've learned Russian with LingQ.

Um and I've used it for, for French, I think I use it for French.

Yes.

It's a great platform.

I always recommend it to people.

Um, and, uh, yeah, I mean, if, if, if, if you like this immersion based learning,

I think, uh, you're gonna love it.

It's a wonderful world we live in where there's so much content available

now in, in Italian or in Russian or in French or, or other languages.

And different ways of accessing this content.

So, uh, language learners today are very fortunate.

So with that, I mean, we can go on forever.

I want to get back to your channel and do some more Italian.

Uh, but thank you for dropping by and, uh, I will leave links

obviously in the description box...

thank you

...to your, uh, to your, uh, podcast and to your, uh, YouTube channel.

Great.

And people who enjoyed , how do you say?

How do you say...

... um, and, uh, people who enjoy these videos, please, uh,

uh, uh, you know, subscribe.

Click on the bell for notification.

And if you follow me on a podcast, please leave a comment.

I do appreciate it.

So thank you very much Davide there.

Thank you very much, Steve.

Bye-bye.

It was a pleasure.

Bye.