Time lags

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Buondì.

As explained in the previous article (Bye-bye Bug), since Friday last I’ve had much more time ‘to study’.

Much, much more time.

The weekend – without walks, parks, or food tantrums – felt endless, and not in a fun way. I was even looking forward to Monday, and envying my wife, who would have to take the bus to work then sit at a desk most of the day.

Friday or Saturday evening we walked to a local restaurant and consoled ourselves with a ‘primo’ followed by a ‘fritto misto di pesce’, those helped down with several jugs of sparkling white wine. And then we were bored again, so went to bed early.

Looking to pass some idle hours, I browsed the podcasts on https://www.raiplaysound.it/. As it’s been years since I listened to Italian radio – except in the car – I had high hopes, but the podcast I listened on the US midterms was disappointing – rather like listening to a monologue from a school teacher. I much prefer the Swedish version ( https://www.sverigesradio.se/poddar/usapodden ), though of course I understand less of it.

Still browsing the neglected media apps on my phone, I read an article in Spanish about post-mastectomy breast reconstruction – don’t ask me why – then watched videos of French rioters burning down their ‘mairies’ (= town halls).

Later I opened the library app and flicked through ‘Le Figaro’. I won’t link to their site as there’s a paywall. And if you don’t live in the ‘Provincia di Bologna’, with it’s generously-funded public library service, your only option would be to pay for the content. The library uses https://www.pressreader.com/, which isn’t bad if you’ve the budget for it.

So the days passed until – I say – it’s Wednesday again! The house is tidy, at least, and I’ve got lots of work stuff done.

But there’s definitely a time lag involved here, between the moment when Stefi and I ‘got our lives back’, so to speak, and the point at which our days will feel well-lived again.

We’ll get there, I’m sure, just like you do after the end of a teenage romance. It’s all passion until – Boom! – everything’s different. Eventually you adjust.

Talking of time lags brings my mind back to language-learning causes and effects.

Suppose you want to ‘learn Italian’, or improve the Italian you already know, or whatever more specific goal you may have (specific is GOOD).

If you do nothing, then naturally nothing that you desire will happen. No progress will be made. You probably won’t be surprised.

But if you get your act together and do something – read an article, listen to a podcast, whatever floats your language-learning boat – then it can also feel, rather depressingly, as if nothing has happened, no progress has been made.

Be aware.

Don’t be suprised if it feels like you got nothing back from the Spanish article on cosmetic surgery or the French ‘how to riot’ news clips. That’s totally normal.

Take a beginners’ Italian course and – for a short while – you’ll still be a beginner, even though each hour that passes adds much to your store of knowledge and experiences.

Then suddenly you’re not a beginner any longer. Boom!

You’ll know it’s happened when ‘conjugate’ no longer reminds you of ‘conjugal’ but instead describes the necessary work of finding the right bit of the verb you want to say or write.

Less-gramatically, you’ll know you’re no longer a beginner when simple interactions no longer seem like miracles, when you can ask for things in bars without resort to English, and so on.

Time lags, then flies. Happens all the time.

(“Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.”)

How to stick at it (the reading, the listening, the interacting, even the grammar study – if you absolutely must) long enough to see the desired effect?

What works for me is to focus on the process, by which I mean on the ‘doing something’, then on the ‘doing that something again’.

‘Fake it until you make it’, as they say. Except it isn’t faking it, you just haven’t made it yet. Or, at least, there’s no evidence of that having happened.

Objective: ‘read more in Spanish’ (rather than ‘learn Spanish’ or ‘improve my Spanish’, which are anything but specific).

Method: take a break from the computer at the time when – until very recently – my work day used to end so I could go collect Bug from the petting zoo. Walk to the piazza at the end of the street. Sit on the wall. Fire up the RTVE Noticias app or download EL PAÍS (el periódico global) from the library. Pick an article. Read it (while keeping an eye out for any of Bug’s little friends and their keepers passing by…) Repeat tomorrow.

Remember, if you do nothing, nothing will happen.

To which we can add, if you do boring stuff, nothing interesting will happen.

Boring is bad in language-learning, and probably life too. Choose something interesting (breasts, mid-terms, the French behaving badly) and there’s more chance of maintaining your ‘process’.

Which reminds me: below you’ll see the usual reminder to “read/listen to Tuesday’s bulletin of news from EasyItalianNews.com“, which is designed (was designed, actually, by me) to exploit precisely this ‘process + time = progress’ strategy.

You don’t have to ‘study’ it. You don’t have to look up all the words you don’t know in the dictionary. You totally, totally don’t have to ‘understand’ it, whatever that means.

All you have to do is to make it a regular thing, so read/listen to each bulletin (they’re free).

Do that for six months or so. If it doesn’t have any effect, email me to complain. No one ever does. But some people donate each month, so must – presumably – be happy.

We work hard to add three bulletins a week to your ‘read and listen to Italian’ process, and there’s no reason you can’t add other sources of audio and text to those.

All you have to do is go sit on a wall someplace and read/listen.

Time passes. Then suddenly…

Alla prossima settimana!

P.S.

And here’s a reminder to read/listen to Tuesday’s bulletin of news from EasyItalianNews.com.

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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