Buondì.
“It’s easy for you. You live in Italy! But where can I find native speakers to practise speaking with?”
Actually it wasn’t easy for me, despite living in Italy. For most of my time here, I’ve spoken English at home and English at work, and that had three consequences:
1.) I have three bilingual children. They’re bilingual because my Italian wife and I always spoke English together, and I spoke English to them individually, THEIR WHOLE LIVES.
2.) I was able to pay the mortgage and put food on the table as, until a few weeks ago, I earned my living teaching Italians English.
3.) It took years, actually decades, for me to learn Italian. And badly at that.
“Oh but when you went out with your Italian friends, you could chat with them and…”
YOU try moving to a country where you don’t speak the language, where you start knowing no one, where the employment market is biased towards the locals. Have three babies there. Then see how much time you have for making friends with the locals!
I totally sympathise with migrants who never master the language of the country they now live in (though their children do, because of their parents’ sacrifice). I own an Italian language school, and STILL don’t have time to take Italian courses.
But what I write here is only peripherally based on my experiences learning Italian, which happend mostly as a result of reading cheap detective novels translated from English (because the imported English-language originals were too costly in Italian bookshops).
Instead I write about my experiences as a language teacher, which are extensive, and also about more recent adventures ‘teaching myself’ other languages, such as Swedish.
It’s easy for you. You live in Italy!”
Ah yes, it’s easy for me, learning Swedish in Italy, where there are very few Swedish people, no courses, and few resources. You got me!
Not easy for me, but that’s fine, as it’s no easier for many of you reading this, I know.
Though I have the advantage of being a teacher, so know well how to proceed, and thus have a ready stream of article ideas.
You don’t have to live in a country to learn the language. I don’t live in Sweden but am learning Swedish just fine, thanks. There’s absolutely nothing to stop you doing what I do, which is spend masses of time listening to the radio in the languages I’m learning, occasionally read the news, and do regular online chats with native speakers (Hej Lars!)
“But I don’t have friends to practise Italian with!”
Ah no.
And if we’re being honest, even if you did have friends to practise Italian with, they’d probably soon get fed up with you.
Or you’d get frustrated at the limitations of what you could say in Italian.
Either way, like teenage romances, it probably won’t last.
The solution is…
Money.
Buy yourself some friends!
No, I’m not kidding. The internet is chock full of people who’d be happy to do conversation practise with you, sometimes for very little cash.
Assuming you’re not a monster, and that your new, ‘paid-for’ friend is smart enough to see which side their bread is buttered on, there’s no reason that your half an hour a week (or more often!) shouldn’t be the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
I’m not a rich man and, as I explained, I never got around to taking Italian lessons. So learning Italian took me much, much longer than it should have. My bad.
But when I’m learning languages NOW, priority no. 1 is always listening and reading practice, while priority no. 2 is to buy myself some friends to practise with.
Next time I go to Sweden and chat with my wife’s cousins in their own language?
(She’s bilingual Italian/Swedish but never speaks to me in either language, see above.)
They’ll be amazed at my progress!
That’s the idea, anyway.
A mercoledi.
P.S.
NEXT WEEK, starting on July 4th, THERE’S THE SUMMER SALE AT EasyReaders.org (ebooks) AND NativeSpeakerTeachers.com (1-1 lessons)!
Which means that if you don’t already have an online teacher to practise with, you can save 20% on the prices here.
And yes, you could probably get someone cheaper. But then you’d have to select your own ‘friends’, which takes some trial and error, and you wouldn’t have our teaching management team on call in case of problems.
P.P.S.
Don’t forget to read/listen to Saturday’s bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news. It’s FREE!
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OnlineItalianClub.com | EasyItalianNews.com | EasyReaders.org (ebooks) | NativeSpeakerTeachers.com (1-1 lessons)
Janet says
Or find yourself a conversation partner on the internet site Conversation Exchange – http://www.conversationexchange.com – for which no payment is required.
Daniel says
You pay with your time, Janet. In my case, for instance, the school would charge €50 per hour for me to teach English (I never saw any of the money…) Trading my time for a chat with a random native speaker of the language I’m learning doesn’t seem like such a great deal when put like that.
But also, I have never known this type of conversation exchange to work well for one simple reason – when two people establish some sort of relationship (say you meet a new friend, or romantic parter, or business client) there’s a period in which, perhaps subconsciously, they ‘negotiate’ the ‘terms’ of their future interactions, for instance what they will talk about, if anything, with what level of formality, and so on. One of the key things is WHICH LANGUAGE, and once you start speaking a language with someone, it’s very psychologically bothersome to switch. Say I’m trading English for Swedish. The Swedish person speaks English well, so has to work hard not to do so, especially if she’s not used to speaking to foreigners in her own language. But she persists, I get my hour of Swedish, and then it’s time for her hour of English. Hard for me to ‘switch’ (even though I do it often) but also hard for her. And then for hour three, we have to switch again!
It’s a mess, trust me.
Better ‘exchange’ systems get you points for helping person B that you can then use with person C, so avoiding the mess.
But if you think about it, that’s what money is. Just ‘points’…
I rest my case!
Chris Maude says
I absolutely agree, Daniel. I have stopped using Conversation Exchange and similar sites. Mostly because of the very patchy results over a number of years and often, people are not who their profile claims. Money is tight being retired, but paid-for tutors are the only way forward for me now. I found your post encouraging, from the perspective of putting a context around setting realistic expectations. I love learning Italian, and doing my best towards my goal of speaking decent conversational Italian works for me. Grazie. Chris
Patricia says
People could look for conversation groups, often called meet-ups, or friends of Italy or other nationality affiliated groups that meet online. I moved from Seattle to Virginia two years ago and still meet with both my Italian and French conversation groups, plus a weekly session with a wonderful native Italian mentor through Daniel’s school. Right now I’m looking forward to the summer history reading series, Il Rinascimento
Daniel says
Agreed. What’s the point in learning a language at all if you’re only going to use it with your teacher/conversation partner? And 1-1 is very different from group interactions, anyway. Joining some sort of group or participating in a ‘community’ that uses the language you’re learning is higly-recommended! Though personally I’d prefer to be joining a group of native-speakers who are focusing on something other than their language. Taking a course taught in the language you’re learning (i.e. an art history course in Italian) would be one option, especially if there are interactive components.