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Buondì.

Lately I’ve been feeling my age, which is fifty-eight, and planning for some sort of ‘retirement’, one that will hopefully involve doing less, though having a much-reduced income, too.

Like a lot of people, I once had big plans for life, but as the decades passed, health issues intruded, and the needs of adult children and a succession of rescue animals took priority, they tended to get set aside, if not entirely forgotten.

The plan now is more about downsizing my extensive committments (multiple businesses, multiple websites, etc.) with a view to simplifying things for anyone having to sort things out ‘after’, and making the interim period (days, months, years, perhaps decades) less hectic and more enjoyable.

In the area of Bologna where I live it’s increasingly common for small businesses such as clothing and hardware stores to disappear: first there’s an optimistic ‘business for sale’ sign, then – when there are no takers – an ‘everything must go’ promotion, then just an empty window, until the shutters finally come down and the real estate agent’s sign goes up.

Don’t these people have kids who could take over the businesses they’ve spent their lives building?

Well perhaps, but adult children tend to have their own plans, and besides, the world keeps turning until local clothing and hardware stores are no longer part of it. We have megastores now, and the Internet.

Similarly, at some point there will be no OnlineItalianClub.com. It would only take another stroke, and articles like this one would cease.

But in any case, who uses websites these days? For years now it’s all been apps, on tablets or smartphones. Half the world no longer has a computer and cares nothing of what a website is. If it’s not in the Apple store, it’s already gone the way of bows and arrows.

OnlineItalianClub.com still gets lots of people ‘joining’ of course, and some of them actually read these articles, but it’s a continuing battle to get people to actually use the free materials on the website (and the other websites, see the P.S.)

Beh, grumble grumble, don’t I sound old today? Yeah, I know! Give myself a shake and get on with it, I’m not a quitter, etc. etc.

And yet things move so fast these days (Help! A.I. is coming to eat our livelihoods) it seens crazy not to be focused on an exit strategy. That’s to say conscious, deliberate quitting, rather than the unconscious, accidental sort.

Which brings me to why you should quit studying Italian, or in my case Swedish, French, Spanish and Turkish (I’m pondering learning some German but…)

First of all, many people reading this will have already quit, or never begun.

People tell me all the time that they used to study Italian, and still read my articles, but actually…

Or they sign up for the club (and/or for EasyItalianNews.com, see below) yet never actually put the free resources they are presented with to good use.

That’s what I mean by ‘unconscious, accidental’ quitting, and to be fair, I’m as guilty of it as anyone else.

But there are other club members, surprisingly many, who study and study and seemingly don’t know when to stop.

What follows is for you guys, the language-learning clothes/hardware store owners who open their businesses each day for decades, always confident that their efforts will be appreciated and one day passed on to grateful heirs.

First of all, you do know you’re mortal, right?

That in the end, we’re all dust?

That all that studying, the conjugations, conjunctions and congiuntivi will one day be entirely in vain?

OK, just checking!

So, assuming we’re on the same page here, then whatever ‘studying’ you do is either because you enjoy the heck out of it (like doing crosswords or puzzles), or it’s IN PREPARATION FOR SOMETHING.

That something could be a holiday, perhaps, or retiring to Italy (crazy idea, in my opinion), or understanding Italian operas, or reading Italian books, or having something to do with your day instead of vegetating in front of the TV, or making friends, or a myriad of other reasons.

But either you’re studying for the sheer joy of it, or it’s for something. And if it’s the latter, then – at some point – you should quit studying Italian, ‘punto e basta’.

If you now have enough Italian to listen to operas in the original, or whatever lofty goal you set yourself years back, well then, quit studying.

Quit with the grammar exercises and vocabulary lists, stop going to lessons, and in the time you’ve freed up get on and enjoy life!

A common objection to this argument?

But I haven’t ‘finished’, I still don’t understand ‘everything’, I still can’t… and so on and so forth.

Fine, if you don’t want to quit studying Italian, then don’t. Just be conscious that it’s the studying itself that’s the goal, not something that comes ‘after’.

There’s no ‘after’, at least not for you.

This is not a religious polemic, by the way, so please don’t write in to chastise me. If you believe in heaven, or your religion’s equivalent, then fine. But there’s nothing in religious texts – as far as I’m aware – to suggest you’ll need Italian when you get there.

So there you go. Be a strategic thinker about your language learning.

When it’s time to quit studying, quit studying. Or do less of it. Or study some specific element that interests you particularly.

Studying doesn’t have to go on for ever, that’s my point.

Learning, on the other hand…

The current state of play with my Swedish is that I never, ever study. Haven’t for years. I did a few months of the basics from a book, then just took it from there, with conversation lessons online, reading, listening to the radio, and so on.

Yes, I’m well aware of my frequent, multiple errors, and conscious that – were I to actually study – I could improve the quality of my spoken/written Swedish and potentially understand written and audio texts with greater ease (as I would know more words etc.)

But I don’t bother, because I’m learning anyway, just by listening to the radio most days, and chatting to my conversation partner once a week.

It’s no miracle language-learning solution, but it is deliberate and sustainable.

More importantly though, I quit studying Swedish (many years ago now) because I felt I had ‘enough’, so the resources to do what I wanted to do. Understand a bit, chat a bit, read a bit, feel a little part of things.

The studying was the introduction to the language, not the whole learning path.

These days when I need some company, so switch on the radio, it’s as likely to be Swedish as Italian (point of principle, I never listen to English, except TV).

When I was in the stroke ward of Ospedale Maggiore back in 2021 (my claim to fame: Ayrton Senna was treated there after his fatal crash at Imola), I remember listening to Swedish radio on my headphones/smartphone to block out the hospital noises, and because it was familiar.

Italian hospitals never serve coffee for breakfast, by the way. It’s tea or orzo, only. Another reason not to consider retiring here!

If I’ve inspired you to consciously and deliberately quit studying Italian, then good. No need to feel bad about it. There was no finish line in any case. Just stop and go do something else.

Or perhaps you’ll reflect on WHY you’re doing what you’re doing, what you get from it, and consider whether there might be better options…

Either way, the clock’s ticking, so enjoy,.

Alla prossima settimana!

P.S.

And here’s the usual reminder to read/listen to Tuesday’s FREE bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news (I already complained about the ship picture, to save you a job.)

The regular text + audio bulletins are a fantastic, FREE way to consolidate the grammar and vocabulary you’ve studied, as well as being fun and motivating!

Take a look at their website to get started on improving your Italian immediately!

And/or get all three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news emailed to you each week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, subscribe (they really are FREE) by entering your email address on this page and clicking the confirmation link that will be sent to you.

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OnlineItalianClub.com | EasyItalianNews.com | Shop (ebooks) | Shop (online lessons)

No time to read this? Why not find something to study instead? A1 – Beginner/Elementary | A2 – Pre-Intermediate | B1 – Intermediate | B2 – Upper-Intermediate | C1 – Advanced | C2 – Proficiency | What’s my level? | Italian level test

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Buondì.

A quick one today, as I’m travelling – from Britain back to Bologna, Italy, if you must know.

My flight is with Irish budget airline, Ryanair, who’ll charge extra for just about everything they possibly can, though not yet for use of the onboard toilet as previously mooted by their CEO.

I refuse to pay more for extras, at least with a company that goes out of its way to upset me, so for my return flight my ticket permits me just a ‘single small bag that must fit under the seat in front’.

Cramming it with with second-hand books, soiled undergarments, computer, smartphone, and the cables and adaptors necessary when travelling abroad isn’t easy, but traveling so lightly is kind of liberating.

Talking of books, a peripheral goal for my trip, the main purpose of which was to see my aged parents, was to get a copy of the final volume of Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy, ‘The Mirror & the Light’.

They have it at my local library in Bologna, but it’s a huge read, approximately a thousand pages, and what with work and Bug-minding duties, that would take me more than the permitted four-week loan time. They have an online service, but the time allowed to read a thousand-page ebook is just two weeks, which I’d never manage in Italian.

I got the first volume in the trilogy the last time I was in the UK, in English, so zipped through its five hundred or so pages in just a few days. Having enjoyed that one, I borrowed the second volume, in Italian, from the library.

Henry VIII, one of the principal characters in the tale, is ‘Enrico’ in Italian, and the Italian dialogues felt more typical of a historical novel than Mantel’s clever English phrasing. But all good – it was a page turner too, even in Italian.

So I was pleased when I walked into a charity shop in Truro the other day (that would be a thrift shop in the USA?) and saw the final volume prominently displayed, and priced at just £3.99 to boot (about five US dollars).

The only trouble? It’s a hardback, so enormous, and takes up half the volume of my ‘single small bag’. True, I could have spent the same amount to buy the ebook version from Google Books and read it on my phone – which I’m fine with –  then fill my pack with teabags, instead. But the local hospice, or whoever runs the thrift store, doubtless needs my cash more than Google does. And ‘real’ books look nice on a shelf.

Anyway, the point of the above is to introduce the topic of reading a book written in your native tongue vs. reading in a foreign language.

My wife (Stefi, who runs our Italian language school) reads a lot in English, more so than in Italian or Swedish, her two mother tongues. Why? I suppose just because most of her favourite authors write in English, and she’s in the habit of it, having done it most of her adult life (we met in London in the ‘nineties.)

I’d say she’s pretty rare, though, even amongst people who are near-native-speaker level in a foreign language or languages. Unless you’re really used to it, reading in the foreign language is always going to be harder, and likely much slower, than reading in your mother tongue.

Either you’re willing to put up with that or you aren’t, but you can always console yourself that while a foreign language book might take three times as long (or more) to finish, it’ll be doing you good in terms of language-learning.

Reading in your foreign language, even if you understand much less that way, exposes you to a vast amount of new vocabulary (a lot of which you won’t know – but just chill about that) and gives you loads of examples of the typical grammar structures used in narratives.

For instance, the Italian ‘passato remoto’, which is barely used in speech (it’s not standard in spoken Italian, though you hear it in certain regions) but is ubiquitous in fiction. Read a few pages of a novel and you’ll figure it out easily enough. If you’re not going to use it in speech, a casual knowledge of the tense, picked up from reading ‘gialli’, is all you’ll really need.

Reading a book, once you get the knack of it, gives you the sort of familiarity with your foreign language that courses, text books and apps often cannot, assuming you’re reading appropriately. If nothing else, it gives you a feel for the language, and helps you know what’s important, and what isn’t.

Not read a novel in a foreign language before? It’s never too soon to try, though obviously the less you know of the language, the harder it will be. To avoid disappointment, manage your expecations before you begin.

I usually advice choosing something ‘light’ and familiar. When I was teaching myself Italian (by reading trashy novels) more than twenty-five years ago I read plenty of translated John Grishams. No offence intended, John.

The trick, by the way, is never to use a dictionary. Most of the words you don’t know won’t be worth the investment of time needed to understand them better, and anyway, there’ll be so many that if you investigate each one you won’t get past the first few pages.

What seems counter-intuitive at first, but works well when you get used to it, is to just keep reading, to just keep turning the pages.

You should feel free to skip the descriptive sections (the many shades of fall colors, the different types of trees, blah blah) but pay attention to the dialogues, and especially to who is doing what to who.

Follow the story as best you can and resist looking things up. Trust me on that, even if it doesn’t feel right at first. Or you won’t get very far.

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HOW TO READ A BOOK IN A FOREIGN LANGUAGE

Choose something ‘light’, that you’ll you enjoy.

‘Read’ it, rather than ‘studying’ it.

Ignore complexity, unless it’s vital to the plot.

Keep turning the pages, until you get to the end.

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Simple as that, really. It’ll probably take a couple of months the first time, which is why it’s important to choose a book you actually want to read, one that’s structured in such a way you’ll feel an urge to find out what happens next (thrillers, romances, etc.)

Oh, and just to say, series are good, as once you’re familiar with the principal characters, the context,and the writer’s/translator’s style, each volume is easier than the last.

Alla prossima settimana!

P.S.

Don’t forget to read/listen to Tuesday’s FREE bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news, will you?

The regular text + audio bulletins are a fantastic, FREE way to consolidate the grammar and vocabulary you’ve studied, as well as being fun and motivating!

Take a look at their website to get started on improving your Italian immediately!

And/or get all three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news emailed to you each week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, subscribe (they really are FREE) by entering your email address on this page and clicking the confirmation link that will be sent to you.

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OnlineItalianClub.com | EasyItalianNews.com | Shop (ebooks) | Shop (online lessons)