Round up

Buondì.

I got an early start today, as Stefi has taken Bug to his petting zoo on the bus. Two buses, actually. Bug likes the bus, so barks happily at people, who pet him. Stefi likes the bus less, and complained that yesterday no one offered her their seat (she has Bug strapped to her front and a backpack with computer, lunch, and several kilos of female parphernalia, on her back.) That’ll be because you’re looking so young, darling, I reassured her.

Meno male because last night I was at a wild-animal-care meeting on the other side of the city, which didn’t start until the absurdly-late time of nine p.m., (because Italians eat late, apparently) and went on for two, long hours.

Each host was invited to share their recent experiences (bites, howling, sleepless nights, etc.) and everyone got to chip in with supportive comments and/or diplomatic suggestions (why not just close the cage door and go have a beer?)

I mention this because the meeting, obviously, was in Italian. I live in Bologna, have done for a quarter of a century now, and in recent years only speak English at home. Though I mostly talk to Bug in Italian, as I did with his predecessor, Roomie.

Anyway, you might imagine that I understand ‘everything’ in such situations, after so long in-country, but while that’s not an unreasonable supposition, it’s far from the truth. Various factors can and do throw me out, and it happens all too often.

For example, the topic – it’s not often I get to hear long conversations about unfamiliar animal health issues. Also, the speakers themselves – some of the people at the meeting I know quite well. Others barely at all. Knowing someone means being able to predict what they might say, and why. Strangers are harder, at least at first.

E poi, the acoustics were bad, and everyone was talking at once, and I’m an old fart, so don’t hear certain frequencies as well as I did.

I mention all this only because of the common misconception that listening and understanding a foreign language (also your mother tongue, if you think about it) is something that you either do 100% effectively, unsatisfactorily to the point of embarrassment and shame, or not at all.

Really, it isn’t like that. Not understanding a large proportion of what you hear – have you ever been to a DISCO? – is totally normal.

How can you, too, build my devil-may-care attitude to not understanding Italian ‘perfectly’?

See below for more on this.

Do you do this when you’re listening to Italian?

One of my many, many jobs is to scan our various websites for genuine comments (99% are spam), approve them, and sometimes to reply. For instance this week:

Q. I love Easy Italian News. I have been learning Italian for seven years , have visited Italy 3 times and intend to go again this year. I slow the News Reader down to .5 so that I can read it and hear it. I use an iPhone 11. Recently I had to download the Ap Jetpack so I could slow the news reader to .5. What has changed?

A. Jetpack’s owners do the mailing list for free, so basically they can do what they want. We’d like to run it ourselves, using commercial providers, but that would cost multiple thousands a year for such a big list, and we’re not yet there with the donations. (EDITOR’S NOTE: there’ll be an appeal for donations next week…)

In any case, we don’t recommend slowing down the audio, at all, ever. Italians don’t speak at half speed, so why train yourselves as if they did? But if you insist on doing it then we have no suggestions regarding the technological solution you use. Sorry!

OK, so we have two approaches here. Start with the slowed down listenings, then hope that your skills will improve magically, to the point at which you can understand audio or speech at normal speed (or faster!)

Or listen to normal-speed audio right from the off, and hope that your skills will improve magically, to the point at which you can understand audio or speech in a way which approximates what you do in your L1 (= first language, your mother tongue).

Either one is sub-optimal, of course.

WHAT I DO – if the materials are available, which they aren’t always – is to use graded/simplified (but not slow) audio when I’m starting out, AND ‘authentic’ audio, so also normal speed but more complex and unpredictable – for example radio or TV.

Then, as my knowledge of the language grows, and the availability of material created for students declines – as it does at higher levels – I transition to ‘authentic’ listening (radio, TV, podcasts) only. E così via!

Whatever you do with your learning, if it doesn’t naturally mutate over time it’s likely you could do better.

If I were coaching the half-speed woman, I’d suggest she combines or alternates different speeds, so 0.5, 0.75, 1.0, and not necessarily in that order. NOT WITH THE SAME SOURCE MATERIAL, as that way she wouldn’t be listening to something she’d never heard before at 1.0.

The aim would be to recognise the different experiences, and to get used to the ‘harder’ job of processing normal-speed speech/audio, so as to build confidence and experience, in preparation for future ‘live’ listening.

Seems obvious to me…

How to think like an engineer, car mechanic, or medical doctor

Still with comments at EasyItalianNews.com, this from Bianca:

Q. I couldn’t listen to the audio files. Not this time and the last time. It just keeps on loading. What could be the matter?

Well, who knows? But do you know any engineers? Or car mechanics? I daresay they wouldn’t be fazed by this one.

Take your automobile (so called because no horses were required) to the garage because there’s something wrong, and the staff there – after scratching their heads and muttering about this being an expensive job that is going to cost – will use their long experience, not to actually diagnose the specific problem, but to identify which part could easily and quickly be replaced (no matter the cost to the customer), which might, hopefully, solve the problem. If so, on to the next job!

Medical doctors do the same thing with time, as replacing a part is usually not an option. Headache? Really bad? Take these analgesics up to four times a day, and if it’s still bothering you in a month, come back, so we can run some tests.

Time is a great healer – less so with automobiles, admittedly – but the ‘come back if it’s still hurting’ approach works pretty well with websites, when one of the regular upgrades to the many components (at our end or at the user’s end) can easily break something, and often does.

If the problem is something big, the developers will get so much bad feedback they’ll eventually put it right. If not, then tough.

A. All our audio links are thoroughly tested before publication, and as you are the only one to signal an issue (the current bulletin is working fine for me), out of many thousands of people, we must conclude that this is your local issue.

Whichever link you are clicking on, try doing it from a different device i.e. your phone. If you don’t have a different device, try using a different browser or app. That will narrow down what might be causing the problem.

See? Car mechanic’s approach. Computer broke? Try it on your phone! And vice versa. Still no good? Ask your grandchild what you might be doing wrong.

The week’s best/worst customer service emails

Check out the two emails from ebook customers, below. Guess which one later told me I was rude?

Q. I purchased A2 e-book and paid 2.99 euros but I didn’t recieve the book. The Web site said after I clicked on download 404 error. I want the book or my money back or I sue you.

Q. I’m afraid I’m going to be one of those nuisance customers who can’t find their easy reader on their emails. The payment went through on 13th January. I have checked all my junk mail but I can’t find it! If you can help, I would be grateful.

It was the first one… I don’t take kindly to threats of legal action received first thing in the morning. You’ll sue? For €2.99? Bring it on.

The problem, incidentally, was that this particular cheapskate had managed to find a webpage on the club from 2012, more than ten years ago, selling primitive ebooks for an absurdly low price, something I’d long forgotten ever doing.

Obviously, the page should have been deleted (and now has been) but with such a large website, it’s inevitable that mistakes will be made. I refunded his payment.

And the other lady, who was super nice? (THAT’S the way to get customer service staff working on you problem!)

Turns out her web browser had ‘auto-populated’ the ebook order form – you know, when the fields fill themselves in based on what you typed last time – and had used an old email address, which she no longer had access to. So naturally, emails from the shop software didn’t reach her. Soon sorted out, painlessly, and so acknowledged by the customer with a nice ‘thank you’.

Alla prossima settimana!

By the way, after flatly refusing last week (she must have seen enough of me during the holidays), my dear wife has kindly agreed that I can work at our Italian school tomorrow, so Thursday 18th January.

It’ll make a nice change from the armchair, or the kitchen table (at it not on it), but I’m mentioning this now in case anyone reading is studying at the school this week, or is in Bologna for some other reason. Do seek me out to say ‘Ciao!’

And to finish, have a copy/paste from our ebooks store, an article I published there yesterday.

Alla prossima settimana!

Love Hollywood movies? You might hate these movie ebooks…

It’s been a good while since we did a half-price Italian ‘Ebook of the Week’, but new year, new energy, so here are two!

One of our more neglected ‘easy reader ebook’ categories is the Classic Italian movie series, for which we’ve done eighteen titles, going from WWII era classics, taking in spaghetti westerns that few people actually realise are Italian movies, and including famous Oscar-winners of more recent decades.

Get this straight – we aren’t selling the actual movies. You can find those elsewhere. What we do is get a text written by a real movie expert (an Italian teacher who is also an award-winning scriptwriter), which is then recorded, the idea being to make the movie itself more accessible for learners, while at the same time providing graded reading/listening practice.

One reviewer, Mary, put it very well, years back. She wrote:

“I took a look at the film of “Accattone” and was disappointed to find I understood next to nothing, but the setting, atmosphere and main characters really left a strong impression. Determined to understand more, I downloaded and started reading my EasyReader. It was so helpful. I found that, besides learning some interesting new vocabulary, I was also getting an impression of characters and scenes from the film. I read the story a couple of times and then took another look at the film. I was amazed to find I had a good grasp of what was going on. The EasyReader had made the film much more accessible. It had introduced me to the characters and helped me to understand the plot. I really enjoyed the whole cultural experience; EasyReader, EasyReader with audio, Accattone the film, and finding out about Pasolini.”

I couldn’t have put it better myself. A word of warning, though. Italian cinema over the decades has taken all sorts of non-Hollywood-style twists and turns, which you may not like. Some of the movies in our series are really depressing, or deliberately confusing, or leave fundamental plot lines unresolved, which some people hate!

Take, for instance, one of the most famous Italian movies ever, Fellini’s La dolce vita (it’s NOT half price this week), which was my own first attempt at watching Italian cinema. Not only could I not understand basically anything that was said, at all, but the actual story-telling seemed perversely-twisted, and none of the characters seemed to have conventional movie motivations. What were these people ON? Where was the good guy? Why doesn’t the hero get the girl? I rued the significant sum I’d spent on the VHS tape!

It would have been easier, obviously, if I’d had Mary to advise me, and one of our ‘easy reader ebooks’ to help, but that was two decades before they were conceived of and written. Oh well! Over the last eight or nine years I’ve greatly enjoyed working with Giovanni to put together our Classic Italian Movies series, and learnt a lot about cinema, Italian, and Italians.

Though I’d still not suggest anyone begin with La dolce vita… SO, this week’s half price choices are Il sorpasso (level A2, pre-intermediate) and Accattone (level B1/B2, intermediate/upper-intermediate).

I must have been busy when I wrote the blurb for this first one in our ebooks store…

Read and listen to the story of one of the most famous masterpieces of Italian cinema, Il sorpasso, directed by Dino Risi.

… which isn’t very helpful, is it? Students of Italian might like to find out more on this Wikipedia page, and/or just download the Free Sample Chapter (.pdf) to see if it grabs them.

Use the sample to check if the level is good for you, click on the online audio link to see how fast/slow the audio is, and so on. You could also read the reviews. I always do.

• .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 any level
• Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)

Buy Il sorpasso, just £4.99! | Free sample chapter (.pdf) | Classic Italian Movies series | Catalog

Classic movie ‘ebook of the week’ no. 2 is the much more gritty Accattone, the one Mary was writing about. Not only is it less cheery in tone (to put it mildly) but it’s also harder, in terms of level, so do check the free sample chapter before you consider buying a copy.

The blurb is more helpful this time, at least…

Pier Paolo Pasolini was already famous as a writer and poet when he directed his first film, Accattone. Few of the actors were professionals, they were simply kids from Rome’s slums. Each character in the film has a nickname, above all the main character ‘Accattone’ (beggar). Pasolini shows us the world of the underclass and of petty criminals. His images contrast with sacred music by the composer Bach. This re-telling for learners of Italian makes a great introduction before watching the movie itself. Or simply an excellent supplement to your study program!

… but there’s an Italian Wikipedia page for this one, too, the whole movie can be found on Youtube, and of course there are the reviews to check out.

• .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/B2 level and above
• Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)

Buy Accattone, just £4.99! | Free sample chapter (.pdf) | Classic Italian Movies series | 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, 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.

Don’t forget to read/listen to Tuesday’s bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news from EasyItalianNews.com.

These useful, FREE materials are published on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. Each contains a selection of ‘easy’ articles and an online audio recording, the idea being that regular reading/listening practice will help students build their comprehension skills, as well as consolidating the grammar they’ve studied and helping learn new words.

FREE material for learning Italian! | Subscribing is FREE, too

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