Buondì.

I’m writing the first part of this (yesterday) on a high-speed train (Roomie and I agree that the black and red ones are very pretty) on the way to Torino, which is Turin in English and, according to Wikipedia, in the Piedmontese dialect.

It’s been years since I’ve been anywhere new, mostly because of the pandemic, but also because of having a stroke (my second, in 2021), which makes we rather wary of straying too far from a well-equipped hospital. Oh, and then, a year ago, I took on the nearly full-time role of being Roomie’s keeper, and she doesn’t have a pet passport.

Before the pandemic there was at least a yearly jaunt to an Italian city, often Roma, but Stefi and I also had overnight stays in Cagliari, Venezia, Firenze and Milano, for the annual meeting of ASILS, which our Italian school is a member of.

For several years that meet-up with colleagues from around Italy went online, which wasn’t nearly as much fun, but now we’re meeting face to face again, for two days of discussion and gossip.

Stefi wasn’t keen, so is taking Roomie to Rimini instead, but I’ve never seen Torino/Turin, and after having read so much about it in our medieval history series of free articles with audio last summer, I thought I’d like to take a look.

The travel time from city with well-equipped hospital to city with well-equipped hospital, while just two and a half hours, is rather longer than the golden hour, which is considered the ideal maximum time that should elapse between your brain clogging up or springing a leak and emergency treatment being administered.

With modern medicines and techniques, it’s quite possible to avoid permanent disability, IF you get the unfortunate to a decent hospital, QUICKLY! I was paralysed all down one side, and couldn’t speak, which was alarming, but after a noisy ambulance ride through rush hour traffic, the medics fixed me up, good as new.

Unlike the unfortunate elderly woman in the bed opposite who had spent the night on her bedroom floor, after her daughter failed to answer her phone calls (why she didn’t call 112, I have no idea.)

This is a public service announcement – know the symptoms  of a stroke, and if they happen to you, or someone around you, get them to a hospital ASAP!

But today I feel lucky, so am throwing caution to the wind. Also because the company is paying, and writing in the business class carriage of a high-speed train makes a nice change from my kitchen table.

Right now we’re speeding up the right-hand side of the Appennini mountain range, which has some snow covering, in bright sunshine. Lucky me (so far), and two young people have just been past with the complementary coffee and snack trolley: “Lo gradisce un caffè?” Yes, please, a coffee would please me indeed. I’ll pass on the biscuit, though. Gotta stay a healthy weight…

Anyway, Torino, which was initially settled three centuries before Christ, so 2300 years ago. This probably being due to the confluence of rivers (I’m guessing there must have been a ford), and being a handy trading point, given the Alps to the west and north (so wool, milk products, leather, meat etc.) and the rich agricultural land of the plains, which stretch away for hundreds of kilometers to the east. A truly exceptional place to settle and build a villages, then a town, then a city.

Unfortunately, the Romans were expanding across Italy, then further afield into what are now France and Germany. They couldn’t help but notice Turin as a strategic point on the route to what was then called Gaul, so took over. I don’t suppose the original Torinese put up much of a fight.

Being part of the Roman empire had advantages, but those would have been greater or less according to where exactly you found yourself. The Carthaginian general Hannibal, who you will certainly have heard of due to his daring feat of crossing the Alps with an army of elephants (to invade the Italian peninsula), trashed Torino/Turin as he passed, which must have been a bummer for the locals (see our Roman history series of free articles with audio.)

Later the area hosted a battle between contestants to be Roman emperor. Later still, once the Western Roman Empire collapsed in on itself, there was the millennium that Italians prefer to gloss over, when what is now Italy was basically run by Vikings (see our medieval history series of free articles with audio).

Fast-forward a thousand years or so and Torino became the base of the Savoia family, who were initially dukes, then minor kings, and eventually the royal family for the whole of Italy – not that that turned out well, either.

I got most of this from our history series over the last three years, linked to above, but Wikipedia is worth a look, which I did while waiting for the train earlier.

I’ve done my homework, see (we’re just arriving in Milano, by the way), and when I get out of the station I’ve three hours or so before the meeting starts, when I plan to wander around, check out a few of the sights, and generally soak up the atmosphere. As well as figuring out what the Torinese have for lunch.

Tomorrow (Friday), I’ll add to this, then publish it at some point during the morning session.

And Monday, strokes permitting (check the symptoms!) I’ll be back working from my kichen table, in Bologna.

Greetings from sunny Turin!

I’ll keep this brief, as I have to rush off to the second day of meetings that I’ve travelled here for. Just a few impressions…

The railway station is grand, not as much as the the ones in Rome and Milan, but more impressive than Bologna’s, as befits a city several times the size of my adopted home town.

Once outside, I noticed the entrance to Torino’s metro line, but saw no more stations for the rest of the day. There’s just one line, apparently, handy for commuters who live along it, but not yet able to compete with Milan. It’s being extended, though, and there’s talk of another being built.

There are, on the other hand, plenty of trams, which started running noisily past my hotel room window at four forty-five this morning…

Out of the station I headed imperceptibly downhill towards the river, the Po, which I’d expected to be a fairly trivial affair so near it’s source and so far from the sea. But it was a proper river, as in London and Paris, with bridges and all.

Unlike London, the water was clear and the sun was shining, so I walked north along the bank, admiring the graffiti, until I reached the next bridge, then turned back into the city, via an enormous piazza, which was skirted with places to eat and drink, and buzzing with trams.

The streets on this side of the city center are grand avenues, Paris-style, but with porticoes to shelter you from winter rain and summer sun. The effect is of a place with money and self-confidence, a royal city indeed!

Fifteen minutes walk took me from the river to another enormous piazza, the royal palace, its many museums, and the extensive public gardens hidden behind it.

I paused to glance at a stump of surviving city wall, and an odd red brick structure that I’d learnt from Wikipedia was a Roman gateway, so dating back perhaps two thousand years and still standing. Something that old, you have to see it. A few seconds will do, though.

Torino isn’t Rome, where the Roman buildings are everywhere, sometimes ‘sunk’ so far into the ground that you have to walk down a flight of steps to reach them (actually the modern city has grown up around them, being built, then rebuilt on centuries of rubble), but it did remind me of Italy’s capital, in part.

I was also reminded a little of Budapest, if you’ve been there – another former royal city with a river and plenty of grand buildings.

Turning away from the Roman gate, I entered the narrower streets of the old town. While hitherto I’d been walking avenues that had clearly been designed, New York-style, in a sort of grid system (but with piazzas), the older part of the city is more organic in its look and feel, narrower streets, more randomly laid out, and thronged with groups of shop and office workers looking for some place to eat lunch, and gossip.

Not long after, checking out the location of the afternoon’s meeting, I bumped into several Italian-school-owning colleagues, and accepted their invitation to lunch with them, assuming that they’d have more ambitious plans than the Turkish kebap shop I’d spotted. They selected a vegan place…

It was cheap, though. And a good chance to network, swop pandemic experiences. Someone ordered a bottle of wine, another wanted chocolate salami, which was good.

Beyond that, I haven’t much to relate. Still peckish after my grilled vegetables and hummus, during the afternoon break I asked one of the locals what people ate and drank in Torino. Lots of meat, apparently, dried anchovies ‘imported’ from Liguria (remember, Italy wasn’t a country two hundred years ago), and a seemingly endless list of red wines of the type that don’t usually feature in my modest budget, but that you, I’m sure, would enjoy.

What stood out, though, was ‘bagna cauda’, a sauce made with anchovies, oil, and four heads of garlic. HEADS of garlic, not cloves. FOUR of them! No kidding. The sauce is served hot, hence the name, and is for dipping vegetables in, whatever’s in season.

I was advised to only eat it on Friday evenings, so the resulting stink will have cleared by Monday. You’ll find a picture and a recipe here.

Gotta go network!

A lunedì.

P.S. Half-price ‘Ebooks of the week’ – Final Days!

This week’s half-price offer on four ebooks we published back in 2018 ends on Sunday 5th February 2023. Until then, the cost of each title is just £3.99, instead of the regular ‘easy reader’ ebook price of £7.99.

Yue a Bologna (A1)

Yue, a talented young Japanese from a rural community in Hokkaido, wins a one-year scholarship to study opera at the ‘Conservatorio’ in Bologna, home to Europe’s oldest university. But the thought of leaving her parents and brother for a whole year disturbs her. And, before studying at the ‘Conservatorio’, she’ll first have to learn Italian…

Buy Yue a Bologna just £3.99 | FREE sample chapter (.pdf) | Read reviews! | Catalog

Le italiane (B2)

A cool-headed resistance fighter, an Oscar-winning actor, a doctor, a singer, an Olympian, an astronaut, a TV presenter, and a victim of the mafia. What do they all have in common? Read and listen to the moving stories of these eight determined Italians to find out!

Buy Le italiane just £3.99 | FREE sample chapter (.pdf) | Read reviews! | Catalog

Valeria, Michele e le maschere (B2)

Valeria has been single for months now. She meets men but after going out a few times they seem reluctant to commit, or even return her messages! She wonders whether the dating app, Tinder, might be worth a try? Michele spends his Saturday evenings alone, playing computer games. If only he wasn’t so shy, he’d meet more people. And then, maybe find a girlfriend? Perhaps the solution is online… Read and listen to find out!

Buy Valeria, Michele e le maschere just £3.99 | FREE sample chapter (.pdf) | Read reviews! | Catalog

La Via Francigena (C2)

“Venti giorni di cammino, di fatica, di entusiasmo e di scoperta. Venti giorni di avventura lungo una delle vie più importanti d’Europa, percorsa, negli ultimi mille anni, da principi, imperatori, cardinali, pellegrini, viandanti, giovani, vecchi, bambini, donne, uomini e animali. Una via che racchiude in sé la storia del nostro Paese, una storia fatta di accoglienza, generosità, passione e paesaggi mozzafiato: la Via Francigena.” Join Italian teacher and author, Roberto Gamberini as he follows this famous route of pilgrimage from Lucca in Tuscany to Rome in Lazio.

Buy La Via Francigena just £3.99 | FREE sample chapter (.pdf) | Read reviews! | Catalog

How do I access my ebooks?

When your order is ‘completed’ (normally, immediately after your payment), a download link will be automatically emailed to you. It’s valid for 7 days and 3 download attempts so please save a copy of the .pdf ebook in a safe place. Other versions of the ebook (.mobi/Kindle-compatible, .epub) cannot be downloaded but will be emailed to people who request them.

P.P.S.

Did you listen to Thursday’s FREE bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news?

If not, why not try to find a moment to do it today, as there’ll be another FREE bulletin tomorrow (Saturday). You wouldn’t want to miss out, right?

Subscribers receive the thrice-weekly emailed bulletins (text plus audio) via email, which is a helpful reminder to practice, I find.

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Buondì.

More from my muse, club-member Suzanne, who often emails interesting questions. Here’s her comment on my approach to learning vocablary, which I’ve paraphrased selectively:

‘I use EasyItalianNews.com and short stories in Italian to improve my vocabulary. It’s common pedagogy to use texts to learn at least 50% of the words used in them. Yes, I accept that paying too much attention to new vocabulary can lead to a feeling of hopelessness and being overwhelmed. But the same is true of of not caring about amassing a potent vocabulary…’

My emailed response was (quoted, not paraphrased):

You’re quite correct that standard language teaching often involves focusing on the vocabulary in a text, normally after the broader, then more focused comprehension tasks. But that doesn’t mean it’s the best use of students’ time. Improbable that the words in question, for instance, will be equally useful to all students in the group. Teachers do this because they don’t have better options, partly out of ignorance, too.

There’s no such thing as ‘amassing a potent vocabulary’, by the way, unless someone is preparing for a TV game show. Humans communicate using a range of frequent, well-understood linguistic tools. No point in knowing stuff that no one will understand. The opposite, in fact. Skilled communicators focus on refining the language that is most used, and using it in a way that gets noticed – see TV shows, advertising, etc.”

On the one hand, there’s the idea, perhaps familiar to us from our schooldays, that ‘educated’ people use big words, and lots of them! As adult language-learners we are always tripping over words and phrases that we’re not familiar with, so we naturally assume that memorising long vocabulary lists, as we may have done when children, will be a good use of our study time.

On the other hand, there’s the not-so-trivial matter of what we mean by ‘learning words’, and whether that actually helps. Plus there’s the fact that, as learners and as people, once past the most basic levels, we tend to use in speech and writing our own particular selection of words and phrases, which is likely to vary, at least in part, from person to person.

Consider two lawyers, who both love opera. We’d assume they’d have a similar vocabulary, right? In their mother tongue, but then hopefully in their foreign language (they’re in the same evening class!)

But Tom is a retired corporate lawyer, while Shania works as a public defence lawyer and volunteers in her free time.

Leaving aside the difference in their ages, just their jobs, and so their life experiences, make it likely they won’t communicate using the same set of words and phrases – one might find ‘eviction’ and ‘parole’ to be indispensable, while the other would perhaps consider M&A and I.P.O. essential linguistic tools of the trade.

So when speaking the same foreign language, in the same evening class, asked the same question about their jobs, their replies might go in completely different directions. See?

And then there’s the issue of what used to be called ‘active’ and ‘passive’ vocabulary, cioè words you use when you speak compared to words you recognise when you hear or read them.

Think about that for a moment – when you ‘learn’ a word, or ‘expand your vocabulary’, it could be your aim is to acquire an item so that you can use it when you speak – “This week I’m working on an ebook PROMOTION. It’s a half-price OFFER. Yes, I do a lot of MARKETING work.”

But perhaps not. Maybe you just need to have an idea, however vague, of what those words mean when you hear them? Who can actually define ‘marketing’, anyway? And is an ‘offer’ the same as a ‘promotion’? Always? I could have a good go at explaining these things, even in Swedish, but you might not care in the slightest.

This topic is a lot more complicated than it might initially seem, but we can make it simpler by asking ourselves what we actually need in terms of vocabulary, for our mother tongue and foreign language or languages, then what actions we should prioritise in order to meet that need.

If I were learning to sail a boat in Britain or the USA, for instance, I’d actually need to learn the lingo for the parts of a sailboat and the various verbs used in giving orders. Hoist the sail, for insance. But which sail? There are bound to be at least two hanging from the mast or those what-do-you-call-them, wire things. There are probably others ‘stowed’ below somewhere. Which sail, captain? This pretty colorful one in the bag? No?

Actually I know all that stuff, but in Italian, where I did once learn to sail, and owned a little boat. But I don’t know how it’s done in my native tongue. Hah hah!

What should I do to fix that before my hypothetical English-language sailing course? Well, I could study, if I could be bothered. Or I could just leap right in knowing that, given that I’ve sailed a boat many times and given instructions to my crew (wife), I’d probably pick it up quick enough. Or maybe not, who knows?

Which reminds me, ‘cazzare’ in Italian means something like ‘pull tight (on the rope)’, and conjugates in the way that regular verbs ending in ‘-are’ usually do. While ‘cazzo’ is a body part, and an exclamation, meaning something like ‘WTF!’, so is very rude. Check out this short Youtube video of non-sailor, Fantozzi, having issues with understanding the orders given (don’t worry if you don’t understand a word – just watch it anyway!)

Staying with the concept of ‘active’ and ‘passive’ vocabulary, for the moment, there’s also the matter of whether you can safely leave a word in the ‘more or less guessable when you hear/read it’ category, or whether you’re going to have to invest time and energy in ‘knowing it properly’.

In many cases, only you can know that, which was the point I made in response to Suzanne’s argument that ‘proper teachers’ ensure that students ‘learn’ at least some of the new words in a text.

My own approach, as a language learner, personally?

Once past the basics, where most sets of vocabulary are going to be worth investing in (numbers, colours, days of the week, etc.), I usually rely on the concept of ‘frequency’ to guide me.

Some words I’m going to hear or read all the time, the frequent ones. In which case, repeated exposure to them in context means I’ll have every chance to (often gradually, over time) figure out what they approximately mean, and how they’re typically used. I don’t have to think much about it, though. It just happens.

IF you listen and read, that is. If you don’t, if you just ‘study’, then sure, perhaps you’ll ‘learn’ more (in the short term), but how will you know that what you’re learning will offer a good return on investment? Also, while you’re busy ‘learning’, you’re not practicing listening, reading, or speaking.

A classic case in point are the extremely-common-in-English ‘phrasal verbs’, such as for instance, ‘get on with’ and ‘get off with’ (not opposites!) There are millions of them, and teachers waste vast amounts of advanced learners’ time badgering them to learn lists of these, so they can pass exams and/or make a good impression in oral tests.

But there’s no master list of ‘phrasal verbs everyone needs to know’, and certainly no master list helpfully divided into ‘active’ and ‘passive’ categories. Which is why trying to learn even just a few percent of the galaxy of phrasal verbs can be a poor investment.

The alternative? Recognise that they exist (that IS a good lesson for teachers to give), then get good at guessing their meanings from context.

That’s what I do in Swedish, which also has phrasal verbs. I swear, I’ve never studied even a single one, but when I read or hear a ‘multi-word verb’, I can at least have a stab at figuring out what it might mean.

You’re not good at guessing, you say? And in any case, you like to know things properly, you like ‘studying’?

Bene per te, but you’ll probably make a lousy language learner. Guessing is critical to comprehension, and very, very efficient (if not always very effective).

Back to our two lawyers, the probably-a-Republican-voter and the hip, woke youngster.

Bet they don’t understand what the other’s talking about, half the time, even in their own language. Bet they don’t overmuch care.

Language is like that. It’s a shared code, but no one has the whole corpus in their heads, and anyone who tried to acquire it would be a fool. What would be the point, when you can get by perfectly well with just a small percentage of the whole? And a little guesswork.

A venerdì.

P.S. Half-price ‘Ebooks of the week’!

Don’t forget this week’s half-price offer on four ebooks we published back in 2018. The cost is just £3.99, instead of the regular ‘easy reader’ ebook price of £7.99. But only until Sunday 5th February 2023.

Yue a Bologna (A1)

Yue, a talented young Japanese from a rural community in Hokkaido, wins a one-year scholarship to study opera at the ‘Conservatorio’ in Bologna, home to Europe’s oldest university. But the thought of leaving her parents and brother for a whole year disturbs her. And, before studying at the ‘Conservatorio’, she’ll first have to learn Italian…

Buy Yue a Bologna just £3.99 | FREE sample chapter (.pdf) | Read reviews! | Catalog

Le italiane (B2)

A cool-headed resistance fighter, an Oscar-winning actor, a doctor, a singer, an Olympian, an astronaut, a TV presenter, and a victim of the mafia. What do they all have in common? Read and listen to the moving stories of these eight determined Italians to find out!

Buy Le italiane just £3.99 | FREE sample chapter (.pdf) | Read reviews! | Catalog

Valeria, Michele e le maschere (B2)

Valeria has been single for months now. She meets men but after going out a few times they seem reluctant to commit, or even return her messages! She wonders whether the dating app, Tinder, might be worth a try? Michele spends his Saturday evenings alone, playing computer games. If only he wasn’t so shy, he’d meet more people. And then, maybe find a girlfriend? Perhaps the solution is online… Read and listen to find out!

Buy Valeria, Michele e le maschere just £3.99 | FREE sample chapter (.pdf) | Read reviews! | Catalog

La Via Francigena (C2)

“Venti giorni di cammino, di fatica, di entusiasmo e di scoperta. Venti giorni di avventura lungo una delle vie più importanti d’Europa, percorsa, negli ultimi mille anni, da principi, imperatori, cardinali, pellegrini, viandanti, giovani, vecchi, bambini, donne, uomini e animali. Una via che racchiude in sé la storia del nostro Paese, una storia fatta di accoglienza, generosità, passione e paesaggi mozzafiato: la Via Francigena.” Join Italian teacher and author, Roberto Gamberini as he follows this famous route of pilgrimage from Lucca in Tuscany to Rome in Lazio.

Buy La Via Francigena just £3.99 | FREE sample chapter (.pdf) | Read reviews! | Catalog

How do I access my ebooks?

When your order is ‘completed’ (normally, immediately after your payment), a download link will be automatically emailed to you. It’s valid for 7 days and 3 download attempts so please save a copy of the .pdf ebook in a safe place. Other versions of the ebook (.mobi/Kindle-compatible, .epub) cannot be downloaded but will be emailed to people who request them.

P.P.S.

Tuesday’s FREE bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news should, we are told, have been delivered successfully. We got ours. Hope you did, too!

Our bulk-mail providers tell us they have identified and resolved the problem. Fingers crossed!

Many thanks from the ‘easy news’ team to everyone who sent a donation over the last week. The appeal for support ended yesterday, but if you were meaning to send some cash yet didn’t get around to it… Donate to EasyItalianNews!

N.b. Subscribing is free, too. Subscribers receive three emailed bulletins (text plus audio) each week, with absolutely no obbligation (assuming there are no technical issues…)

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