Buondì. I’m going to keep this very brief, as I have the usual other Friday things to do, but also something new, which is exciting! For several years, the only language-learning materials I’ve paid for out of my own, very modest, pocket have been subscriptions to two newspapers, Le Monde (French) and El Paìs (Spanish), […]
Spotting the mistake in the recipe
Buondì. This evening we have some people coming to dinner. Like me, they’re foreigners, but local pride obliges me to show them some of the best home cooking that Emilia-Romagna, where I’ve lived for 25 years, has to offer. Deciding on the menu took a while, but in the end I opted to go with […]
Where to find discounted ebooks for learning Italian
Buondì. OK, so opera is a niche thing, I get it. Thanks to club members who bought a copy of Verdi e il Va’ pensiero and/or Nabucco, while they were on offer (until last night.) Let’s just say there weren’t exactly hordes of you. But that’s fine! I enjoyed putting them together, finding about about […]
When everything else has been abandoned, what remains?
Buondì. I’ve been lamenting all the language-learning activities that I used to do (and perhaps am still paying for) but which I abandoned for lack of time or energy. Roomie, our young house guest, is a big cause of so many elements of my former life falling by the wayside. Nowadays I spend up to […]
Are you just TOO OLD to learn Italian?
Buondì. Good grief, it’s mid-week already, time is ticking away, the days, the weeks, the months, the years, all seeming to pass ever more rapidly. It’s quite alarming! On the plus side, this second week of October would normally be when I’d start teaching English for the 30-week academic year, ending in early June. But […]
Presenting… Giuseppe Verdi and his Nabucco!
Buondì. I spent a good chunk of Sunday watching my first ever opera, on Youtube. It was Verdi’s Nabucco, ate up nearly two and a half hours from my precious ‘catch-up with-work Sunday’ (Roomie was briefly at the coast with my wife), and suprisingly, I enjoyed it! Why was I watching opera on a Sunday […]
When will I ever be finished?
Buondì. I was pondering the question of when I would ‘finish’ learning Swedish in the car this morning, as I listened to the news headlines. There was an interview with a former minister, I think it was, about how Turkey is continuing to block Sweden’s application to join Nato. That’s a topic that interests me, […]
Adult learners vs. toddlers
Buondì. Anita emailed with a question: “With two grandkids in the language-learning, language-exploding stage, I’m puzzled by one thing. They pick out nouns and then verbs from the babble of language around them. But when I listen to Italian, what I hear are the conjunctions, prepositions & other connectives (the quindis, perós, perchés, & the […]
Slow (but effective) language-learning
Buondì. Our Autumn/Fall Sale promotion is over, thank goodness. So once I’ve cleared the considerable backlog of work that’s piled up while I’ve been busy doing ‘commercial’ mailings, I’ll be back to writing the usual things about how I learn foreign languages (and how you probably should, too.) In case you’re new around here, that […]
2022 Autumn/Fall Sale: Just a few hours left to save 20%!
There are just a few hours left of the Autumn/Fall Sale. Today is the final day, so the last chance to save 20% on everything at our (now two!) online stores, EasyReaders.org (for ebooks) and NativeSpeakerTeachers.com (for one-to-one lessons). The coupon code you need to save 20% on the online lessons and/or ebooks is: 2022-Autumn-Sale-20%-Off And […]