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Buondì.

With apologies to the person who wrote to me after last week’s article, Frustration, then joy, telling me she wasn’t interested in chess, and so had – I assume – ignored the analogy I’d crafted for language learners.

‘Chiedo scusa’ but there’s much to be learnt about the approach to and processes involved in learning Italian from other areas of learning.

Chess – there, I said it again, ‘chiedo scusa di nuovo’ – is played regularly by approximately SIX HUNDRED MILLION clever people, almost all of them much smarter than me.

There’s one little lad in China who’s just starting out, but he’s only six and, anyway, will have outstripped me by the weekend.

Just the website Chess.com has two hundred and fifty million registered players, many of whom (like me) probably never use their site or app. But still, it’s a big number.

Compare that to the estimated two million people learning Italian, and the perhaps eighty or so million who speak it.

It’s no surprise then that just dipping my toe in the vast torrent of chess blogs and articles generated by chess professionals, enthusiasts, coaches, app/website owners and so on has exposed me to loads and loads of learning ideas.

Most of them I was already familiar with, obviously, being a language-learning professional and general smart-arse. Although suprisingly awful at chess.

However, if you have no idea how to improve your Italian, spend a few hours researching how to learn or improve your chess game, or whichever other ‘passatempo’ grabs you.

I guarantee you’ll either be stimulated to try new things, or reassured that you’re likely already on the right path. Either one is good.

Below are a few things that drew my attention from this week’s efforts to drag myself from the depths of chess despair (it’s very hot here, so I’m stuck in the house with the air-conditioner and not much else to do.) They’re in no particular order:

– Don’t try to memorise chess ‘openings’ (sequences of inital moves and responses, with many variations) but aim, instead, to understand the underlying ideas (Hah! Easier said than done!)

– Don’t fret about your ‘ranking’ (which would be your ‘level’ in language learning), as there’ll always be hundreds of millions of people who are better than you (don’t I just know it.)

– Focus on ‘process’ rather than ‘outcome’ goals, i.e. doing a certain useful activity often, rather than setting targets, which may be unreachable in the short term.

– Spend a third of your time ‘playing’, another third on analysing your played games to learn from them, and lump all the rest (theory, Youtube videos, memorising…) into the final third.

I know already to beware of people selling particular learning approaches, for instance ‘spaced repetition’. There are apps for that aimed at chess players, just as there are for language-learners.

Italian has an endless supply of irregular verbs and other complications. Chess has an infinite number of possible moves and positions.

Is memorisation, even aided by a ‘spaced repetition’ app, going to be the most useful approach? I very much doubt it.

One obvious problem is knowing just what the most useful things to memorise are. Which, for instance, are the most useful irregular Italian verbs to burn your brain cells on?

Beh, the answer is not ‘none’, but nor is it ‘all of them’.

I remember memorising ‘andare’ (to go) on a red, double-decker, London bus, back in 1997, on a particularly long commute.

With the infinitive written on one side of a piece of paper and the present tense conjugation (vado, vai, va, andiamo, andate, vanno) on the reverse side.

I suppose I’d have had a few dozen more slips of paper with other verbs on, all stuffed into an envelope, ready to be fished from my backpack and reviewed whenever the possibility arose.

Did that help me learn Italian in advance of moving to Bologna the following year?

Not really, no.

But it passed the boring bus journey, and gave me a feeling of doing something useful, even if it really wasn’t so very helpful.

Language is complicated, and the best way to get a feel for a new one is to begin to immerse yourself in it, the easiest ways being courses/texts/listenings suitable for beginners, or whatever your level is.

Plus, you have to ‘play’ for a third of your time, remember? Interacting with a native speaker online is a good way to do that, and what I do weekly for my Swedish (along with near-daily listening).

Anyway, what I’m suggesting is, if you don’t know how to learn one thing, try to learn something else! Then see if there are any transferable techniques.

Can’t cook? (This for the lady who isn’t interested in chess.) Maybe get a friend to show you their favorite recipe, give you tips on ingredients, utensils and so on. Then, another day, try it yourself at home. You’ll learn a lot, even if you burn your pans. And/or yourself.

Will learning thousands of recipes make you an expert chef? Probably not. Neither will watching ‘The Bear’, for that matter.

All that said, yesterday I did try to memorise something. Stefi, my wife, main woman at our Italian school and editor of EasyItalianNews.com, tested and encouraged me.

What did I memorise, and why?

Turn away now, not-interested-in-chess lady, as I will FROM MEMORY type what I learnt yesterday afternoon and dreamt about most of the night.

So the white player (could be me, could be the other guy) begins the game with e4, which means he (it’s usually a he) moves the pawn in front of his king two squares forward, from e2 to e4 (chess colums are labelled from a to h, rows from 1 to 8).

What are the typical responses? What are they called (for future research/memorisation)?

In order, from the c (third) column to the e (fifth) column, the black player might move Nc6 (‘N’ is the knight/horse’s head) two places forward and one to the left = Nimzowitsch Defense. I cheated and just checked the spelling of that one.

Much more commonly, still in the c column, black could move his pawn forward one square (c6 = Caro-Kann Defense) or two (c5 = Sicilian Defense).

Or what about the d column? Jump the pawn in front of the black queen two squares forward and you have d5 = Scandinavian Defense, which pleased my wife, as her mom is Swedish.

The e colum has two typical openings for black, e6 = French Defense, and e5 King’s Pawn Game.

There, I remembered it all! Well done to me.

Later, with Bug wailing in front of a blaring TV, I tried an online game, was drawn as black, white (who apparently ranked lower than me) played the hoped-for e4 first move, so I thought ah-hah, I’ll faze him with the uncommon and unspellable Nimzowitsch.

I only knew the first move (Nc6, remember?) but it solved the ‘no idea where to begin’ problem, and did indeed faze my opponent, who spent rather a lot of time thinking, then did a series of duff moves.

Did I win the game? Nope. Gave my queen away, very stupidly, and couldn’t recover. Lost sixty points off my already-poor ‘rating’, too.

But still, I was pleased to have learnt at least something, so more confident in my future learning approach.

The plan is, if white, always play e4 (for now), while if black, I’ll experiment with the defenses I’ve memorised. Which should help me understand black’s moves when I’m white, if you see what I mean.

So now I ‘just’ have to memorise and understand the typical sequences. At least the first few moves and likely responses for each. There are, what, five biggies? Plus the curve ball, for unsettling people.

Maybe I’ll try one each day, or more likely one a week. Haven’t decided. Probably the later. But now, when I’m white, play e4, and see black move his pawn to c6, I’ll think – Caro-Kann!

Did I mention focusing on ‘process’ rather than ‘outcome’ goals? The processes here are focusing on the inital move, then the typical sequence, and playing regularly, trying them out when I’m black, recognising them when I’m white.

So, what’s your learn-Italian plan?

You have one, right?

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.

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