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Buondì.
This morning, but quite a lot lately, too, I was lamenting my lack of attention to the various languages that I’m supposedly learning.
I still manage to listen to Swedish several days a week – no longer every day due to various disruptions to my routine – but besides that (and living and working in Italy, obviously), nothing!
The French and Spanish news bulletins and articles pile up in my inbox, the Turkish is neglected, and dreams of starting with German were long abandoned.
This all being the fault of Bug, who’s been keeping me from getting a good night’s sleep for more than a year now, as well as taking up hours each weekday, and all of the weekend.
Though to be fair, there are also the demands of normal life, so the usual work routines (bills to pay, promotions, customer service – the worst part!) Plus, at this time of the year, work with various accountants to finalise results, pay taxes and so on.
Working with accountants never fails to cheer me up, as I realise how competent and effective I really am in comparison. Cheaper, too.
But due to all that, and ironically, since I write about language-learning and run language-learning related businesses (such as OnlineItalianClub.com), I must not have been paying attention when those more expert than I discovered an easy, quick way to learn Italian (and other languages).
Duh, Daniel, why are you beating yourself up?
I mean about not having got much better at Turkish in the last THIRTY years, still having not much more than schoolboy French (and I’m almost at retirement age), and not having found time for even the most basic Swedish grammar rules.
Basta with the daily self-criticism!
I just need to Google “easy, quick way to learn a foreign langauge” to find hundreds of influencers and experts who’ll be overjoyed to show me, step-by-step, no-effort-required, full-money-back-guarantee, just how to:
– speak fluently
– have a perfect accent
– understand everything I hear
– read without effort
– and even write (or at the very least, locate the necessary accented characters on my keybord)
Should take a couple of weeks, I reckon. Per language, naturally. Bug-permitting.
And yet…
Because of the bothersome small animals in my life, as well as the unpredictable, fluctuating, never-ending workload of managing four businesses, not to mention my language-learning aspirations, over the last decade, I’ve become a big fan of a certain Oliver Burkeman, former ‘time-management’ columnist at The Guardian (a British newspaper), now a writer of reassuring books about dealing with overload.
If you’ve not heard of him, get a flavour of what he writes from these free articles from his newsletter. Or go into a bookstore and buy something he wrote.
The gist of his take on ‘time-management’, it appears, is that there will always be too much stuff to do. So I should pick a few priorities to work on, then ignore everything else.
That’s obvious really, though there’s a little more to it. And, actually, it’s a lot harder than it sounds. So having a sympathetic, amusing, thought-provoking writer holding my hand helps.
Ever met a pensioner – or maybe you are one – who tells you that, since they retired, they don’t know where the time goes, they’re just so busy all the time, there’s been no time to catch up on all those jobs that need doing, etc.?
That.
Our jobs, our ambitions, our ideas about who we are now and who we’d like to be, who we SHOULD BE in the future, seem to naturally expand to fill, to totally over-fill in fact, our allotted time, which according to Burkeman’s previous book is ‘four thousand weeks‘.
In short, being inhumanly busy, while at the same time fundamentally dissatisfied, is the human condition. Get used to it.
Sound familiar?
You’re learning Italian, or you sort-of-are-sort-of-aren’t learning, or you’d like to learn Italian, or you used to learn Italian, and yet… there’s always more to do, isn’t there?
– speak fluently
– understand everything you hear
– read without effort
– and even write (or at the very least, find the accented characters on your keybord)
Even if you make progress, the goals receed constantly into the future.
Perhaps you, like me, are never satisfied with what you’ve achieved, with what you can actually say/understand/type now?
Maybe we’re instead looking to the future, to some sort of ‘after’, when the desired standard of whatever we’re aiming for will have been reached, notwithstanding Bug, and life’s other demands?
Language learner! Be you not vulnerable to the glib promises of influencers, websites and Youtube videos! There is no easy, quick way to learn Italian (or any language)!
Shame, really.
Wouldn’t it be great if you could just add another language to your brain with a download (this is not an original thought, I know), as you can with your smartphone or computer?
Or possibly not, as then there wouldn’t be much satisfaction in it. If everyone could do it, effortlessly, what would be the point?
I used to tell my students, and still sometimes write, that learners should measure their progress by looking back at how far they’ve come, not forward at some future point at which they’ll be ‘finished’.
With foreign languages, that point never comes.
When we used to have a language school full of Italians learning English, the least satisfied students were always those at the very top levels. They couldn’t understand ‘everything’! They felt they weren’t ‘fluent’!
There’s no easy, quick way to learn Italian (or any language) because languages are HUGE, INFINITELY COMPLEX, organic systems, which are ALWAYS CHANGING.
Whereas life is short, and stressful.
Being better than you were before, being better than other people you know, being better than you might once have expected to be, are all achievable goals, even in the short-to-medium term.
Being perfect, knowing ‘everything’, doing it effortlessly, not so much.
Imagine knowing Italian perfectly now (I totally don’t). Let’s say you know it well enough that you could do anything you can currently do in your mother tongue, and I mean anything.
It took you a lifetime to learn English, or whatever your mother tongue is (yet you still can’t understand rap music or letters from your bank…)
But the ‘easy, quick’ influencer-promoted miracle method got you the same result with Italian, much faster, with much less effort, and for only $999 (full money-back guarantee if not satisfied!)
Now you’re done with learning Italian (or whatever language). Thanks, Google, thanks influencers!
So stop for a bit. Take a siesta, cook dinner, go for a walk, put the dirty clothes in the washing machine, catch up on streaming series you missed those weeks or months that you were busy learning Italian.
Start again with the languages on Monday, maybe. Or after the summer. Or in the new year. Or when your kids have left home, or when you retire.
But oops! Here we are, back with our language-learning, and we immediately notice that things seem a little harder than before, that perfection feels a little less achievable.
Our ears take more time to tune in, the right words slip less easily from our tongues, and those bloody teenagers have twisted all the grammar around and are now using words to mean the opposite of what they’re supposed to!
I’ve gone on long enough, I have to exercise, especially as I’ve skipped the daily-walks because of being ‘too busy’ so far this week.
Having published this, I’ll be off to the park, to walk around the lake with my earbuds in listening to the news in Swedish. And then, on my stroll home, perhaps a little French.
By mid-morning then, having followed Oliver’s useful advice to ‘do the next necessary thing’ (whatever I decide that is) and to let everything else go hang, I’ll likely be feeling better about my foreign languages.
Not to mention fitter
N.b. If you’ve no idea what the ‘next necessary thing’ might be, read this: How to learn Italian (or any language)
And/or check out the (FREE) materials on the club website (links at the top of this article).
And/or follow the links below.
Alla prossima settimana!
Opera lover? Save 33% on these ten ‘easy reader’ ebooks!
Not everyone learning Italian likes ‘opera lirica’, but a lot of us do, so when things were quiet during the pandemic we asked one of our ebook writers to have a go at creating ‘easy reader’ ebooks based on famous Italian operas.
The idea was to create texts (plus exercises, online audio, etc.) that would function as both Italian reading/listening practice, but also to encourage learners to try the actual opera, in the original Italian!
The level of the ebooks is low-ish, mostly around intermediate. The ‘level’ of the actual operas, which you can mostly find online, is clearly a lot harder. Normal Italian can be hard to understand. Sung Italian, from a hundred or more years ago, perhaps with lots of people singing at the same time, can be a real challenge!
Our ebooks make that easier. Before we started publishing them, I’d barely watched/listened to an opera in my whole life, but as part of the marketing process I sought them out online and listened to each, all the way through. My wife and I even went to a couple last year.
Knowing the plot beforehand helps, as does familiarity with the music. It’s not entirely unlike listening to an album for the first time (back in the days when such things were common). Often you’d get more out of it the second or third time you heard it, and sometimes you can relisten again and again.
Anyway, take a look at what we have in the Opera section of our catalog, or follow the links below.
There are NINE actual operas, or rather our simplified retelling of them:
Nabucco (A2/B1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
Aida (A2/B1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
Il barbiere di Siviglia (B1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
Tosca (B1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
La Bohème (B1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
La traviata (B1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
Madama Butterfly (B1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
Turandot (B1/B2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
Rigoletto (B1/B2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
Plus there’s one ‘normal’ easy reader, so a story about opera rather than the story of an opera, Verdi e il Va’ pensiero (B2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi)
How to get your 33% discount??
You need to use this week’s coupon code, which is: OperaEasyReaders-33%
1.) Add your selection of ‘opera’ ebooks to your cart;
2.) Go to your cart and paste in the coupon code, OperaEasyReaders-33%, then press the Apply coupon button;
3.) SCROLL DOWN TO CHECK THE CART TOTAL before proceeding with payment. The 33% discount is applied to the CART TOTAL, not to the individual ebooks;
4.) You can use coupon code OperaEasyReaders-33% as often as you wish until the offer ends (this time next week), so if you’re unsure, try buying just one title. That way you can see how the buying/downloading process works.
Not interested in Opera?
Browse our catalog to see other categories, or find more ebooks, organised by level:
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.
Here’s the usual reminder to read/listen to Tuesday’s bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news, a fantastic, FREE way to consolidate the grammar and vocabulary you’ve studied, as well as to improve your Italian reading and listening comprehension skills!
Visit their website to get started immediately!
Better still, subscribe (also FREE) and so get all three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news emailed to you each week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. Just enter your email address on this page and click the confirmation link that will be emailed to you.
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Sieglind says
So pleased to see you’ve discovered Oliver Burkeman Daniel. As you say, the process of deciding what the priorities are and what to leave is not as simple as it sounds. I find the word “why” helpful. Why is it a priority? Why do I want to do it in the first place? Why should we be or do anything?
If we’re doing anything to impress others it’s best to forget about it because they generally hardly notice and don’t care anyway. So why do we try?
In case you hadn’t noticed, I love this subject 🙂
Good luck with decluttering your “Should List”!
Daniel says
Not so much ‘discovered’ as mentioned here for the first time. I’ve read his stuff for years, and bought the books. His take on things is always refreshing.
Also for years I’ve read Seth Godin’s daily musings, which range more widely. Being in business, I expect you’re familiar with him, but for those who aren’t: https://seths.blog/subscribe/