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Buondì.

A quickie today, written early yesterday morning at Gate 19 of Bologna’s Marconi airport.

I was there to board a flight to the UK, to visit my folks in Cornwall, which is the pointy bit on the map, bottom left, opposite Britain’s bum/butt, down across the sea from Wales, which rather looks like a pig’s head.

Don’t know who Marconi was? We have an entertaining ebook which tells his story. It’s level B1/B2 (intermediate/upper-intermediate) though not on offer, given that I’m sort-of on holiday and can’t be doing with the inevitable customer service hassles that half-price ebooks seem to generate. But April 25th was International Marconi Day, believe it or not, so maybe look at the free sample chapter (.pdf).

Anyway, if you’re reading this article, I arrived safely and published it while drinking my breakfast coffee today, Wednesday. I expect it’s raining in Cornwall, it usually is. I’ll look out the window in a bit to see. Never mind, though, there’ll be Cornish pasties (if you don’t know what they are, good, more for me!) And proper beer.

As I type, I’m sitting next to two women who are speaking Italian and sometimes Spanish, which is interesting. And there are the usual airport announcements in Italian, French, and of course English.

Nothing much is happening right now at Marconi International Airport, it being only half past eight on a Tuesday morning at the end of April. So every ten minutes an automated announcement interupts the peace to remind waiting passengers that

“It is forbidden to leave the luggage unattended!”

a phrase which has been winding me up for decades, whenever I travel through this airport, multiple times each visit.

No, no, no! I silently scream.

The problem being that the English translation is a grammatical copy/paste from the Italian original.

Grrr!

Not with me? Then there’s a teaching point, I promise you.

In English the ‘definite article’ (= ‘the’ in English, ‘il/la/lo/gli etc.’ in italiano) is used to refer to known things, as the name suggests.

So, the girl sitting next to me, the automated announcements, the irritating grammar mistake, and so on.

When, in English, I want to ‘refer’ to something you know (the USA), something which is unique (ditto), or something which we’ve already mentioned (the weather in Cornwall), I use ‘the’. Singular? Plural? No difference, same article, all nice and simple.

Italian grammar being intentionally complicated, in order that teachers and blog writers can earn a living, the definite articles are different according to the gender of the noun following them, vary according to the spelling of that noun, and specify whether it’s singular or plural.

Che palle.

However the grammar complications, while a pain in the butt, don’t present problems of meaning. After all, a definite article is a definite article, right? Whether in English or Italian?

Wrong. In italiano, the concept of ‘definite’ is stretched to include things like ‘abstract’ nouns (l’amore, la religione, la filosofia, la verità) but also, as with the airport announcement, uncountable nouns, leading to translated monostrosities like:

“It is forbidden to abandon THE luggage/THE suitcases/THE personal belongings/THE bags containing THE duty-free purchases in the airport.”

Yuk. Watch out for that one. Italians never learn it, however many times I remind them, but you totally can.

For instance, ‘the Italy’, ‘the sport’, ‘the football/soccer’, ‘the Italian cooking’ all sound daft in English (depending on the context) but are spot on in italiano. Once you’ve noticed that, it’s easy to remember.

And from then on, when telling people (in italiano) how much you adore l’Italia, lo sport, il calcio, la cucina italiana, and so on, you’ll use the definite article and so really sound like a local.

Another thing that’s always bugged me about that airport announcement (“It is forbidden to leave the luggage unattended!”) is that whoever did the translation could have / should have transposed the elements that make up the sentence.

Phrasing the English version in one of the various ways that a native English speaker would communicate the same concept, though structurally dissimilar, would have been more professional. And the result less grating to my ear.

For instance “Luggage must not be left unattended”, which besides being free of maddening definite articles, eliminates the pointless ‘It is’ (actually just ‘Is’) structure that’s so ubiquitous in italiano:

“E’ bella, Bologna.”

“E’ difficile, l’italiano.’

And ad nauseum.

Second teaching point of the day: if you want to speak (and understand) more natural italiano, discard the initial subject or subject pronoun at least 80-90% of the time.

You heard, probably in elementary school, that English sentences follow the pattern Subject > Verb > Object?

S.V.O. is easy to understand and remember. However, in italiano, sentences are typically just V.O.

So instead of “Maria è bella” go with “E’ bella, Maria’, which is a verb-first pattern, the subject coming later, and only if necessary to whatever your communicative purpose is.

If we all already know that we’re admiring Maria, then totally don’t bother with the subject at all:

“E’ bella.”

Simple, short, ubiquitous, but totally wrong in English.

In italiano you’ll only need bother with the subject prounoun when emphasizing who you mean, for example in this pair of contrasting clauses:

“Lei è bella, io sono intelligente, invece.”)

Sono interessante gli errori, si può imparare tanto!

Translation?

Errors are interesting. You can learn a lot from them.

See how those two sentences are not structured in the same way? Give yourself a pat on the back for each difference you can notice.

Besides the Italian/Spanish women to my left, there’s now an Italian ‘ragazza’ to my right, a university student judging by the thesis I can see her typing on her laptop (psychiatry?) while at the same time recording noisy WhatsApp messages directly into my right ear.

Boarding now. Wish me a good flight!

What I’m reading/watching this week

Courtesy of the library app, I’ve read much of The Economist, The Guardian Weekly, The Week, and Money Week, all weekly magazines (the clue is in the names), because I’m trying to break free from the hourly/daily news cycle. But I have been looking at an Italian newspaper, ‘il Fatto Quotidiano’ most days, trying to figure out its weird political stances (i.e. that Israeli leader Netanyahu is worse than Russian dictator Putin.) The writing is accessible, at least. Also the Western Morning News, to keep in touch with my roots.
I finally finished ‘Il divo Claudio’ by Robert Graves, having had to borrow the ebook three times from the local library app to get through its four-hundred-odd pages. Fortunately, no one else wanted to read it in all that time. I must be a person of sophisticated tastes. Anyway, now I’m reading the much, much shorter ‘L’Arte di Spendere Soldi’ by Morgan Housel, which I had to queue up for in the library app, as there were sixteen other would be spendthrifts ahead of me. The best I can say so far is that it’s vaguely thought-provoking. And short.
TV-wise, we’re still on Series 1 of ER (in English), and the various characters’ love lives are starting to sort themselves out. I had a Bug-free weekend (Stefi took him to Rimini where he threw balls into the sea for someone’s dog) but was too cumulatively tired to waste Saturday night on a film, so went to bed instead.

P.S.

And here’s the inevitable reminder to read/listen to Tuesday’s bulletin of news from EasyItalianNews.com, which I haven’t, as I was on airplanes and trains all day yesterday. But I will.

Reading/listening practice will help you consolidate the Italian you’re studying, expand your vocabulary, and build vital comprehension skills.

EasyItalianNews.com is FREE to read/listen to.

Subscribing, and so receiving all three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news via email each week – on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays – is also FREE.

Just enter your email address on this page and click the confirmation link that will be sent to you.

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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.

Yesterday I paid a rare visit to our Italian school (in Bologna). Rare because my wife prefers to run things her way, so it seems best to leave her to it and do my own work stuff from home, where I’m writing this from an IKEA reclining armchair, adjacent to a window, in a debris field of Bug’s toys and books.

The purpose of my visit, other than to rally the troops, was to ‘salutare’ a regular online student, and occasional email writer, who had decided to take a course at the school.

And I mention this because? Paraphrasing and summarising our conversation, she was doing some online Italian lessons, but then the teacher disappeared so – searching for an alternative – she found us, used our free online resources, bought and read/listened to our ebooks, took lessons online with one of our regular teachers, and now – four or five years later – is taking an actual Italian class in Bologna, at an advanced level.

Four or five years from zero to advanced is good progress, especially self-taught plus online lessons. Though the lady has an excellent knowledge of another Romance language, which helps a lot, and has been learning languages on and off for most of her life.

In her same class, also advanced-level, is a guy from the middle east someplace (I’m being deliberately vague), who I assume gets his course paid for by the government at home, so isn’t in a hurry. He must be getting towards a year of full time study (oil money), six months at another school, then with us.

I chatted with him briefly and told him how much he’d improved since the last time we met, which would have been back in the fall.  Now he’s speaking fluently and confidently with barely an accent – a big change from months back when I observed a lesson he was in.

Two students, one class, approximately the same level, similar abilities. One’s learning part-time and managing her own portfolio of learning activities, the other prefers paying for a course, in a classroom, with a teacher and an ever-changing cast of fellow students.

Both are valid approaches.

Part-time study – whether following a course in your home town, self-teaching, or a combination of the two – will typically get you a level’s worth of progress per year. More if you’re learning a language that’s similar to one that you already know, less if you ignore Daniel’s good advice and obsess about grammar.

Spend the time and money to study full-time and you might make the same progress in months rather than years. Again, you’ll progress more rapidly with an ‘easier’ language and/or if you work hard and make appropriate decisions.

Either way, though, it’s the keeping at it that makes the difference in the long term. No one, and I speak from personal experience here, goes from zero to hero without consistent and prolonged contact with the language they’re trying to learn.

Thirty-two years ago, when the first season of ER was showing, I was just starting a new job (teaching English to Japanese children) in a seaside town in the south of Britain, accompanied by my new (Turkish) wife. She spoke minimal English, and didn’t have a work permit in any case, so spent much of her day at home watching TV.

About half-way through my one-year contract, the long-awaited work permit arrived and my ex went out and talked herself into a job frying chicken at KFC. The role required successful completion of an induction course, with various written tests to pass before she could get oily. But no problem: after six months of full-time English-language TV, she passed her training tests with flying colors and came home stinking of fried chicken and very proud of herself.

Time + contact = progress

There’s no mystery. Billions of people around the world speak more than one language, whether they’re bilingual or speak a second/third/fourth language they’ve learned at school, on a course, or from the TV.

Getting to foreign language competency is just a question of keeping at it, which is of course the hard part.

If you can find hundreds of hours of appropriate, motivating ‘learning content’, as my ex-wife did, it helps a lot. Over the decades I taught English to people who had reached amazing levels already, who could pass as bilingual, all as a result of reading Harry Potter books, immersing themselves in pop-music fandom, or faithfully following TV series which were only available in the language they were learning.

ER was fifteen seasons long, three hundred and thirty-one episodes in total. Imagine, if you could find some entertaining Italian equivalent, what that could mean for your learning? Learn a language from your IKEA recliner, armed with just the remote, and popcorn!

Or, if TV’s not your thing, come take an Italian course in Bologna. Citizens of many countries can spend three months visa-free in the European Union, which is enough to go from beginner to intermediate.

Course prices are here, with apologies for the shameless advertising.

Alla prossima settimana!

What I’m reading/watching this week

Quote from last week: “I’m still reading the second of Robert Graves’s novels about Roman emperor Claudius, ‘Il divo Claudio’ (in italiano).” I’ve a hundred pages to go. The ebook loan runs out in two days. Watch this space.

And as you might have guessed from the above, we started ER (on Netflix, in English), which features a very, very, very young George Clooney. Wow, that first season was thirty-two years ago! Those were the days, huh? Bug likes the ambulances, and occasional helicopter.

Half-Price Italian Easy Reader Ebook ‘Roma città aperta’

This month’s half-price Italian ‘easy reader’ ebook has been chosen because April 25th will be the eighty-first anniversary of Italy’s liberation from Nazi occupation (in World War II, for those who slept through history lessons…)

This one is from our ‘easy reader of the classic Italian movie’ series, so it’s the simplified story of the movie. Read/listen to it first, then find the movie online and watch it in Italian! We don’t promise you’ll understand everything, but our ebook will certainly help, besides being valuable reading/listening practice material itself.

Love movies? We have plenty more ‘film easy readers’. Browse them all here (though the others are not half price, sorry!)

This moving masterpiece of Italian neo-realism, set in WW2 Rome, tells the story of how resistance leader Giorgio, along with his friends, neighbours and family members, fight the Nazi forces occupying their city.

• .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 B1 level and above
• Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)

Remember, this month ‘Roma città aperta‘ is 50% discounted, so just £4.99 rather than the usual ‘easy reader’ ebook price of £9.99!

Buy ‘Roma città aperta‘ just £4.99! | Free Sample Chapter (.pdf) | Italian Movie Easy Readers | Catalog

Find more ebooks, organised by level, then type: 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.

And as always, don’t forget to read/listen to Tuesday’s bulletin of news from EasyItalianNews.com, will you?

Reading/listening practice will help you consolidate the Italian you’re studying, expand your vocabulary, and build vital comprehension skills.

EasyItalianNews.com is FREE to read/listen to.

Subscribing, and so receiving all three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news via email each week – on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays – is also FREE.

Just enter your email address on this page and click the confirmation link that will be sent to you.

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