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Buondì.
As mentioned last week, when I also needed to write the regular, weekly article in advance, I’m visiting Britain this week, flew over yesterday (Tuesday) and will be back to Italy next Wednesday night.
So I typed that sentence on a train sitting at Taunton station (Taunton is in Somerset, in England, in the United Kingdom). I have/had another two hours and forty minutes until my final destination, and so rather relucantly started this draft. But what to write?
You know that feeling when you travel, and suddenly find yourself listening to an unexpected language? I’ll write about that.
So, the Ryanair flight from Bologna was an hour late, and packed with Italians heading for the delights of London. No problem there.
And the National Express coach queues at Stanstead Airport coach station were also a buzz of Italian, as people from my flight swapped tips on how to get into central London (Stanstead is nearer to Cambridge than London). There was one anxious man who didn’t speak much English, so was keen to find a compatriot who could.
The coach journey was quiet, except for a young Italian girl and her boyfriend sitting across the aisle from me. “Amore”, she’d say to him, “did you bring the (whatever it was)?” And he’d reach into his bag for whatever it was, a battery charger, an apple, and so on, all the way to Baker Street tube station, where I and the anxious non-English speaker alighted.
It wasn’t until I descended into the underground station, to travel the couple of stops to Paddington Station where I would begin my rail journey to the south-west of England (“We are now coming into Tiverton. Please don’t fall into the gap between the train and the platform”), that I got my linguistic shock – in the foyer of the tube station there was a beggar, speaking ENGLISH!
Wow! None of beggars in Bologna, which has many, many more, speak English. A lot of them don’t even speak Italian, though the nice Ghanian who holds out his hat outside my local supermarket, and always hails Bug with “Ciao amico!”, is learning.
So begging in English, I was impressed! And then I remembered that this was England…
That’s language shock. I get it when I go away, when I come home, sometimes even at home, though less so since I’ve been learning Swedish and can understand what my mother-in-law is saying on the phone to my wife (nothing interesting.)
At the ticket office at Paddington I said ‘Grazie’ to the kind woman who suggested I buy a return ticket to Cornwall and so save approximately £20, which is not nothing. Oops, that should have been ‘Thanks’. Sorry!
But by the the time I was seated on the train, and chatting to an elegant old fellow at my table, who’d fallen on the platform and was embarassed to be covered in blood, my head had switched to English. Meno male, as I wouldn’t need Italian for a week. Meno male for him, as he was shocked enough already.
Unfortunately, the people opposite, a man and a woman who didn’t know each other when they sat down but now totally do, have been chatting non-stop for (checks time on computer) precisely two hours and seven minutes, and show zero sign of running out of conversation topics.
I’ve heard about their kids, their jobs, their dental and cosmetic operations, their holidays, their kids’ holidays (and jobs), their homes, former homes, homes they’ve bought and sold for a profit, and on, and on, and on.
Oh man, there are advantages to not being able to understand a word anyone is saying. It’s kinda peaceful.
N.b. If you do like to eavesdrop in your foreign language (“We are now approaching Exeter St. Davids. Please take all your belongings with you”), then you will need lots and lots of practice to understand the Italian equivalents of “It’s all to do with my sinuses” and “Do you have to sleep with your head up?”
See below for our ‘eBook of the Week’ offer, which has free online audio, no purchase required. Also see the reminder, after the ebook ad, to train your comprehension skills using the thrice-weekly bulletins from EasyItalianNews.com.
Which reminds me… EasyItalianNews.com received yet another email this week from a student of Italian complaining that their free bulletins of Italian news (with audio) were now arriving in ENGLISH! Why oh why? What sense could it have?? Could I please, please fix it?
Well, of course that was the frustrated person’s browser’s doing, rather than the Easy News team’s. If that explanation doesn’t make any sense to you, here’s how it works.
If you navigate the internet, so for instance visit the EasyItalianNews.com website, using a computer, tablet, phone, etc., the bit of software that does that for you is called a ‘browser’, given that you are ‘browsing’ with it, see?
Some, perhaps most, of these ‘browsers’ can do all sorts of additional, clever tricks, such as translating the website text for you, which is handy if you’re trying to figure out a Chinese railway timetable, or whatever.
The browser I’m using to type this (in the club website’s back-end) is a Google product, called Chrome. When, occasionally, I ‘clear its cache’ (the data equivalent of flushing a well-used toilet) Chrome will no longer know that I’m perfectly capable of figuring out news sites in Italian, Swedish, French and Spanish, so do not desire it to translate the texts into English for me, thanks anyway.
If, when Chrome then asks, I carelessly click the “Always transate Italian” button, rather than the “Never translate Italian” button, then the effect is exactly as the unhappy EasyItalianNews.com correspondent reported – the webpage appears to be in English.
Wow, who knew that Swedish/Italian/French newspapers have English versions? Actually, they mostly don’t. It’s the browser translating the content for you. Usually badly. Sometimes the Easy News team gets complaints about their English, which is in fact machine-translated Italian, so nothing to do with them, or me.
In Chrome, at least, the problem is easily fixed by clicking on ‘Settings’, or whatever it’s called in English (my computer is mostly in Italian) and looking for the ‘Translate’ options, which any language learner with a modicum of common sense SHOULD NEVER USE, but if they do, at least not embarass themselves by complaining about the consequences.
“The next station is Ivybridge” (in Devon). Still ninety minutes to go, so maybe time for an ‘aperitivo’. It’s been a long day.
Alla prossima settimana!
eBook of the Week, ‘Per colpa di una lettera’ (B2), £4.99
This week’s half-price eBook of the Week offer is the B2-level ‘Per colpa di una lettera‘.
Is B2 (upper-intermediate) too hard for you? No worries! We’ve reorganised our ebook catalog by level, from the easiest to the hardest. Find something more appropriate by following these links: A1 | A1/A2 | A2 | A2/B1 | B1 | B1/B2 | B2 | B2/C1 | C1 | C1/C2 | C2
As with other recent eBook of the Week offers, we only published ‘Per colpa di una lettera‘ last summer, but sales were slow. Don’t let that put you off, though. It was July, and who studies Italian in July?
‘Per colpa di una lettera‘ is an entertaining and readable story for intermediate/upper-intermediate-level students of Italian. If that’s you, do take a look, as reading and listening to Italian at approximately your level is a great way to improve your Italian comprehension skills – which you will, of course, need in the future – as well as being a huge help in consolidating the grammar and unfamiliar words you’ll encounter elsewhere.
Plus, a chapter a day of an ebook ‘easy reader’ is much more fun than memorising grammar conjugations and vocabulary lists! Below you’ll find a link to a free sample chapter. Why not give reading in and listening to Italian a try?
And for lower-level students? There’s no promotion this week, but the audios for the entire story of all of our easy readers are available online, no purchase required. Browse the lower level catalog pages and click on the audio links, until you find something that feels about right for you.
A1 | A1/A2 | A2 | A2/B1 | B1 | B1/B2 | B2 | B2/C1 | C1 | C1/C2 | C2 )
One morning Albina gets an unexpected visitor – because of a letter!
“Arrivo, arrivo! Che diamine! Un po’ di pazienza!” strilla Albina con voce acuta e civettuola, mentre qualcuno bussa insistentemente alla porta della sua piccola ma elegante casetta a due piani. È convinta che sia uno dei suoi ammiratori che le porta un mazzo di fiori.
- .pdf e-book (+ audio available free online)
- .mobi (Kindle-compatible) and .epub (other ebook readers) available on request at no extra charge – just add a note to the order form or email us
- 8 chapters to read and listen to
- Comprehension questions to check your understanding
- Italian/English glossary of ‘difficult’ terms for the level
- Suitable for students at intermediate level or above
- Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)
Remember, this week ‘Per colpa di una lettera‘ is 50% discounted, so just £4.99 rather than the usual ‘easy reader’ ebook price of £9.99!
Buy Per colpa di una lettera, just £4.99 | FREE sample chapter (.pdf)
Find more ebooks, at this and other levels: A1 | A1/A2 | A2 | A2/B1 | B1 | B1/B2 | B2 | B2/C1 | C1 | C1/C2 | C2
How do I access my ebook?
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, where available, cannot be downloaded but will be emailed to people who request them. There’s a space to do that on the order form – where it says Additional information, Order notes (optional). If you forget, or if you have problems downloading the .pdf, don’t worry! Email us at the address on the website and we’ll help. Also, why not check out our FAQ?
P.S.
Did you read/listen to Tuesday’s FREE bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news?
If you didn’t see it, why not subscribe?
Enter your email address on this page, look out for the ‘please confirm’ email sent to you, click the link it contains, then sit back and wait to receive three bulletins of Easy Italian News, each and every week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
Reading and listening to EasyItalianNews.com is an excellent, FREE way to speed up your progress with Italian!
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