Buondì.
Nothing much happens on New Year’s Day, does it?
Bug and I walked to the park, around the lake, and back. He slept most of the way, so wasn’t much company. There were a few people running, and some walking dogs, but apart from that, I was alone with my thoughts.
Typically, as soon as we turned the corner into our street, the little monkey woke up and, once home, he started to ‘talk’.
Right now, Bug just does vowels: arr! like a lion, uuu! like teenagers at a strip joint, and so on.
Consonants will come later, I suppose, an upgrade to the extensive range of vowel sounds (a consonant is a modification of a vowel at the start or end i.e. the ‘d’ and ‘g’ in ‘dog’.)
There’s already the hint of a ‘g’ at the start of Bug’s ‘goo’, and a definite ‘w’ at the beginning of ‘waaa!’ but that’s more a result of the position his mouth happens to be in when he decides to say something. Once he can do that intentionally (mamma!) he’ll really be talking.
More often now, he howls. We’re getting good at telling the difference between ‘Feed me now or I won’t stop yelling‘ and ‘Oh man, whatever I ate last is playing havoc with my bowels‘.
Talking of vowels, in my humble opinion one of the main markers of an English native speaker’s foreign accent when speaking Italian are the wrong-sounding vowels. And vice versa.
My Italian wife, for instance, when she says ‘no’ in English. Her accent is generally so good that she’s sometimes mistaken for a native speaker, but the ‘o’ in her ‘no’ is wide-mouthed and staccato-short, perfect for conveying contempt at whatever I’d suggested or asked.
The shrivelling effect on my self-confidence is perhaps not always intentional, but it serves well as an illustration of the effect of too much or too little vowel.
Bug’s vowels, which tend to be longer, English-style, can sound delighted, disgusted, or a range of shades in between.
Longer vowels give you that option, so my own ‘no’, stretched out and spiced up with intonational movement, gets to convey refusal, doubt and reservation, but also possibility, so more of a ‘no but yes if…’
Italians laugh at the way Brits and Americans emote with their ‘o’s, in the same way I find my wife’s ‘0’s dismissive (at best).
Try saying ‘O mio dio!’, for instance, without sounding English/American. If you began with an ‘Oh’, you got off to a bad start. Aim for Stefi’s contemptuous ach-like German-sounding ‘o’ and you’ll be closer to the mark.
Poi the diphthongs (two vowels pronounced together) in ‘mio’ and ‘dio’ tend to be long in English (eee-yoh!), which sounds like hysterical over-acting to an Italian. O listen, here’s a foreigner doing exaggerated pantomime Italian!
‘Ohhhh mee-yoh deeeee-yoh’, should rather be more of a rat-a-tat-tat ‘O-mio-dio’.
Così. Run out of time. I have to put the chicken and spuds in the oven, and prep the tortellini to chuck into the brodo in an hour or so (both from packets, due to my zoo-keeping responsibilities…)
If you want to work on your accent, by the way, you could try asking a native speaker teacher for feedback (see the offer below).
Don’t be too surprised if they talk a load of nonsense, as pronunciation is notoriously not taught on teacher-training courses, so is poorly understood by both teachers and learners.
But interact with a native speaker long enough and you’ll pick it up. Laugh at your teacher’s accent, then try to copy it.
A mercoledì.
P.S. Online Lessons January Sale; -20% Coupon Code
Don’t forget the NativeSpeakerTeachers.com 2024 January Sale which began Wednesday and ends this coming Saturday
Use coupon code
2024-January-Sale-20%-Off
to save 20% on the Italian, French, German and Spanish lessons that will help you make progress with your chosen foreign language this coming year.
All you have to do to discount the price of lesson credits by 20% is to copy and paste
2024-January-Sale-20%-Off
into the box in your shopping cart. Once pasted, press the ‘Apply coupon’ button and – this is important – SCROLL DOWN to check the CART TOTAL is reduced.
The prices of individual items don’t change, which can make you think that the coupon code hasn’t worked.
Have a go, just to see how it works:
- Select, for example, a pack of online Italian lessons with one of our teachers. Press the ‘Add to cart’ button below the product image to, well, add it to your cart. Or click on the image to read more, then look for the orange ‘Add to cart’ button on the product page.
- View the contents of your cart at any point by clicking on ‘Cart‘, or on the shopping basket icon at the top of the page.
- See your selection, ready to be bought? But at the full price… So, where’s that pesky coupon code? Ah! Here it is: 2024-January-Sale-20%-Off
- Control + C to copy it, Control + V to paste it into the box where it says ‘Apply coupon’ (on a Mac, use Command + C, Command + V, on a smartphone or tablet – I have no idea – ask a child…)
- Press the ‘Apply coupon’ button and scroll down to check the total has been discounted
- Magic! It worked. Now, were this a real purchase, rather than a practice run, you’d then press the ‘Proceed to checkout’ button and do the usual online shopping stuff.
- But as we’re just playing, have a go at removing your test purchase from the cart. There’s a little red X to the left of the product image (in the cart). Click it and whatever you no longer desire will be removed.
Beh, yes, I admit – it all sounds rather a palaver. Actually, though, it’s much easier and faster to DO than to describe in writing, I promise.
So, for real now – the coupon code ( 2024-January-Sale-20%-Off ) will work on anything/everything you see on the home page of the online lessons store.
Offer Details
- This promotion ends on January 6th 2024, after which the coupon code will no longer be valid
- The next offer won’t be until the April, so online students should stock up now…
- You can use the coupon code as often as you wish until the night of 6th January 2024
- Coupon code ( 2024-January-Sale-20%-Off ) won’t work with other coupon codes – choose one!
What, then, should you consider buying?
The ten-pack of online Italian lessons, now £200 for ten thirty-minute sessions, is a steal once discounted by 20%.
Use the coupon code on that one and you’ll be paying just £16.00 a lesson, that’s £32.00 an hour.
Go ask at a ‘proper’ language school how much an hour’s lesson would cost you (but beware, because at many places you pay for an hour but actually get just 45 minutes…)
Our regular online students wait for the offers and stock up with enough lesson credits to get them through until the next promotion, several months later.
That way they can take one or more lessons each week while never paying the full price.
Here’s that coupon code again:
2024-January-Sale-20%-Off
Use it here.
Maureen Hamilton says
Speaking of vowels. I have a pronunciation question.
If I say
I go to Venice now.
Vado a Venezia adesso.
Do I slur the last ‘a’ of Venezia with the first ‘a’ of adesso?
Daniel says
My native speaker says ‘it just goes on’, though I guess it would depend if you intended a pause between the two words, so as to emphasise when using sentence stress on the second syllable of ‘adesso’- vadoavenEZiaaDESo rather than vadoavenEZiaadesso
Felice says
Interestingly you never said anything about the space between the words (O mio dio) – rightfully so as they are ignored in the spoken language … yet omitting the spaces when reading italian text for me (non-native speaker) is a challenge (I’m sure it’s a similar story for non native english speakers, if not worse, given our predisposition to combine the end of one word with the start of the next).
I couldn’t also resist the temptation to note that one subtle difference in placement of the gap completely changes the meaning- O mi odio! – LOL)
Buon Anno Daniel 🙂
Daniel says
I think you have this back to front, Felice. The spoken language is not a sloppy variant of writing (ignoring the spaces), rather that writing is an artificial way of making spoken language ‘timeless’.
The features of connected speech you refer to (and see also Maureen’s question) are intrinsic to spoken language, and often also replicated in the written form, for instance with contractions such as I’m.
Your ‘subtle difference in the placing of the gap’ misses the point, in the sense that subtle differences in the placing of stress in a phrase constantly have this effect, while in the written form it’s merely a coincidence, and one which even the least experienced writer would struggle to mistake. N.b. o DIo the exclamation and Odio the verb conjugation have different stress patterns, so the gap thing only works in writing, and barely that!