31 Day italian challenge giorni 8, 9, 10, 11, 12 e 13

Ciao a tutti,

I had literally got to day 13, and somehow lost it all, by accidentally clicking on one of my bookmarks above my tab, so this one won’t be any means be as good as the one I just lost. I swear, doesn’t it automatically save drafts anyway? Ma no! It didn’t! Arrrrrrrh! 

giorno 8 è “How to Create Consistency and Explore Italian”

Per oggi we had to read un articolo from either la repubblica or the blonde salad. I chose the latter, because I find news stories quite boring. I read un articolo on some headphones, i liked the campaign clip that went with it, although it was very random, it was good being in both english and italian, because it helped me recognise new words! 

Giorno 9 è “How to Build Your Vocabulary in Italian through Learning About Things You Like”

So we had to again read another articolo this time I read one from diario di una studentessa matta which was her latest blog post called Addio a Marcella Hazan, seeing the picture of Marcella reminded me of my acquired through Matteo, Nonna, and my own grandmum back in Nuova Zealanda, she just looked molta carina and super adorable! And I now really want to buy her book “Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking” of Amazon, maybe I might get it for myself for natale! 

Giorno 10 è “One Method for Training Your Ear in Italian”

Musica Muscia Muscia, something that the itunes on my computer definitely rocks to whenever I press play. I recently downloaded lots of italian pop music, much to Matteo’s dismay, he said he and his friends make fun of people who listen to the music i downloaded, such as Anima libera or Marco Carta. But I like that stuff, its easy to listen too. I am really into Giorgia at the moment, and I really like Simona Molinari, especially because she feat. Peter Cincotti a lot also. I had a little bit of a giggle when Matteo told me that Papa Stefano (Matteo’s dad) had punched Eros Ramazzotti when they were younger, when he saw I had a couple of his tracks on my playlist. I love pop music, its easy to listen too, therefore makes it easier to learn for me to sing along with 😀 I definitely always seem to only have musica italiana in my head lately! I’m always humming along to a track of Elisa or something when I’m walking to the underground! 

Giorno 11 è “How to Have Fun and Enhance Your Pronunciation with Rachel Reardon of Mango Languages”

I listened to the podcast, which was very interesting, then straight afterwards jumped onto the mango languages website and had a go of the free trial. It was a bit disappointing because it was so basic, i already know how to say how are you sir/madam, or good evening and ciao, but then I guess it is for beginners. I did like the little snippets they had about the culture, and the kissing when greeting each other, that was quite cool. I’m sure if i went into the course a bit more it would be good. But then I am a sucker for a good sales person. I though Rosetta stone sounded amazing! But then I haven’t been able to afford to try that one. But I think Mango looks good, because it focuses on allowing people to speak sentences that you will actually use straight away, so it would be good for me to practise at home with Matteo. Can it be purchased and used from the UK? Perchè I tried to find a UK site and it just sent me to the US one. I wish the UK libraries here had a subscription to it, but then I guess that again is only for the US of A! The Mango premier sounds amazing, teaching people through movie watching! AWESOME! But again that is being launched through the libraries. I guess being here in London, I do have italy at my doorstep, so I guess that is one up on the US! 

Giorno 12 è “Knowing the Most Commonly Spoken Words in Italian”

Oggi we were given links to www.surfacelanguages.com which jumped onto a website with the 500 most common italian words! Ieri I actually went through the lists from the links on the blog post at work, as it was nearly home time, and I was sitting at the reception desk waiting for a parent to ring the door buzzer, so i could let them in to pick up their child from after school care aka Night Owls, so i just sat at the desk, reading the words out loud. I think everyone at work knows that I am learning italian. To certain co workers, I tend to speak italian, then translate to them right after what I am saying. They’re slowly getting used to it! I went through some of the lists again tonight. I might go through them again tomorrow, and put some useful words in my genius app to review later!

And finally….

Giorno 13 è “All the Sounds You Might’ve Missed in Italian Pronunciation”

Oggi we watch a video on our to pronounce the vowel sounds, since there are only 7 vowel sounds to pronounce, and provided we have perfected those sounds, even if we mis pronounce the consonant, an italian should still be able to understand what we have said, as long as our vowel sound is correct. And there was a 15 minute video. 

There were two videos, but I think I will watch the second one tomorrow, as I have already spent about 90minutes reviewing and catching up with everything.

Although I do not agree with the way Cher has written how to pronounce the “E” sound, especially after watching the blog, then double checking with Matteo, she is making it look like it is a harsh “AY” sound, where as it should actually be a soft “EH” sound. I did comment on the post regarding that. 

I did really like the videos of that guy, he definitely keeps you engaged. and am definitely going to use “Uffa!” a lot in every day life! I think I will check him out a bit more! 

Well now it is time for me to go to bed as it is well after midnight, and I do have to get up early-ish tomorrow! 

Ciao ciao

bacio

Anna x

La febbre!

Ciao a tutti,

Unfortunately I have been battling that dreaded la febbre all this week, coughs, slight temps, blocked noses, and un milione tissues, is why I have been rather absent this settimana. Luckily, even though I have been battling this febbre, while still doing long hours in reception at la scoula primaria I am currently working at, I am finally relieved to get to la fine settimana! E oggi è la prima giorno I am starting to finally feel better! 

So even though my italiano has been a bit on the back burner because of la febbre I have been supplementing it by reading the book “When in Rome, chasing la dolce vita” by Penelope Green, which is about an australian girl who at 28, chucks in her high paying job and fast paced life, to go live the dream in italy. When she knows nothing of the language, even after doing a 3 month stint in Perugia to learn the language. It’s the 3rd time I have read the book, and she’s written 2 others, that follow the first, but instead of being in Rome, she is then in Napoli and Procida. It is an amazing trilogy, which has little snippets of italian all through out the books, and even the last one has some recipes! So that is great! But that is my supplementing my italian practise whilst I’ve been sick. But now i should be back on the band wagon, and getting back into learning this bella lingua!

Ciao

A presto!

La bella musica

I came across quite a bit of italian music on youtube last night. And I really enjoyed this one! 🙂

31 Day Learn Italian Challenge – Giorni 3, 4, 5, e 6

Well I haven’t had much tempo lately to get on wordpress since I lavorato 50 ore questa settimana. Ma ora è la fine settimana I finally have il tempo.

Per giorno 3 of our 31 day challenge, we have been given 8 different tools to help with our italian, things like word reference, forvo, anki, memrise, italki, Ted open translation project, fraze.it, and reading and writing. I have genius instead of anki, because I can use it as an app on my imac, so that is quite handy, although I haven’t actually gotten around to memorising anything from it yet, but when I see good sentences I think I might use, I pop them in for me to review later. 

I tried Memrise for a bit but got frustrated with their pictures, and couldn’t find any I liked, and I was just going through things I already new, maybe I can try it again and see wether its better. I also had about a 5 day italki experience, probably should log back in to see it again and have another go, especially since we will be using that for a lot of the challenges. Although I think I could maybe convince some italian friends “fingers crossed” to do the skyping with me to help. But sure I can try it with a stranger too. 

Since I have been too tired to do anything on the computer because of lavoro I have still made sure I have not let a day slip by where I haven’t done something to progress my italian learning abilities. Earlier on in the week, I read a chapter a day of Le avventure di pinocchio to Matteo so he could listen to my pronunciation, he said he could understand about 50%, although the second day I did it he wasn’t really paying my attention, I managed to put enough expression in my voice, which he said was good, like I was really telling a story, although I didn’t really understand what I was saying, I guess it was all the story telling I used to do when I was younger to children at story time. And I also used my dual language version of Alice in Wonderland, I’ve read about two chapters of that also, so that is with english on one side and italian on the other. I am started to recognise some of the sentences and imagining the scene in my head better in italian, hopefully by the end of the book it will make more sense for me. 

Giorni 4 è Create your own avventura. 

We learn that a lot of the challenge will be based on what works for us, and we need to assess what level we are up too. I personally think I’ve done enough italian work now to be at an intermediate level, I still don’t completely understand a lot, but I am definitely past a beginner level, I could easily walk into a local bar and ask for a coffee no sweat! but i’m sure I will look at both of the challenges for both levels. And I can’t wait to get out of my comfort zone. I mean I think I’m pretty used to not being in a comfort zone, when you leave everything you have ever known of life to start una avventura you learn to just go with it, and not worry to much about comfort zones. So I think I should do alright with that.

Giorni 5 è Parla Parla Parla

I have got back onto italki now, and added some people. Although since I’m not a “premium member” it only let me add too, I guess I’ll try add some more tomorrow instead. And I’m chatting to one guy on it from italy who seems nice. Although I know Matteo would prefer if I only talk to girls, which I am fine with as well. So hopefully one of the girls I added will start chatting with me soon! 😀

Giorni 6 è How to flex i tuoi muscoli in italian

Our challenge for today is to go on to italki and write a notebook entry and write about our favourite childhood memory, then correct someone’s entry in english. So this is what I wrote:

Principessa Anna

Il mio ricordo d’infanzia preferito è di principessa Anna.
Lei era una bella principessa, lei aveva carina ondulati capelli, e tutti la gente amava sua.
Sua regina Mamma era sua migliore amica.
E vissero felici e contenti.

Will be interesting to see the fixed grammar when someone does it. 🙂 

Well someone just did it while I was still typing, so here is the fixed version and their comment.

La Principessa Anna

Il mio ricordo d’infanzia preferito è la principessa Anna. 
Lei era una bella principessa, lei aveva dei bei capelli ondulati, e tutti la gente la amava. 
Sua madre, la regina, era la sua migliore amica. 
E vissero felici e contenti.

 

Non hai fatto errori di spelling ma la costruzione delle frasi va migliorata.

So now I am all up to date with my days of the challenge. Can’t wait for domani!

 

31 Day Learn Italian Challenge – giorni 1 e 2

Ciao a tutti

Al momento io sono prendendo una sfida 31 giorno! So I figured I might as well blog it while I’m doing it. Cher hale from cherhale.com has created the 31 day challenge, so it is a great opportunity to put some more of my italian into practise, and hopefully have a better understanding after the month. 

Giorno Uno

La oggi sfida è “5 Questions You Need To Ask Yourself About Learning Italian To Truly Make Progress”

1.) Why do you want to learn Italian?

Honestly, this reason to me changes all the time, Cher was so lovely to ask me to answer this question before the challenge so she could put it on her blog, but I guess I have so many reasons now, previously in high school when I was 13 and even at uni I tried to learn french for about half a year, and gave up, although that has helped me with knowing about false friends and masculine and feminine words. Then while I was in Australia I got quite addicted to watching that tv series Weeds, and decided I wanted to learn spanish, and when I was 18 I bought a little Italian Phrase book and had a little txting italian friend for a while, she could work out what I was saying, but my grammar was all over the place. Then when I was about 20 my friend had just gotten back from Brazil so I then got fascinated with Portuguese, he even translated a song I had written in that language for me to sing. So I have definitely always been very fascinated with the Romance Family of languages. But as I’ve gotten older Italian has been the one that has called me, and the one that I have a real desire deep down in my soul to learn. Maybe it’s because I have ancestral roots in Italy from a little Island of the coast of Sicily called Stromboli, maybe its because my boyfriend is Italian, maybe its because I want to connect with his family more deeply in a way I can’t do with words they don’t understand, maybe it was because when I was in Italy the italians kept mistaking me for one of their own kind and then I opened my mouth and ruined it, maybe it was because going to the Ignite Catholic Conference (www.igniteconference.com.au) last year, and knelt down and prayed after going to reconciliation and asking God where in Europe does he want me to go (I had planned a massive trip around Europe but hadn’t put anything in concrete) and all that came up in my mind was Italy over and over again. So for me I have a very solid faith filled, family filled, love filled desire to fuel my learning of this bella lingua!

2.) What are your concerns about the next 31 days?

I think my concerns are definitely having enough time to be involved, now that I’m back in full time work and only have my evenings free to wind down, I think I will need to turn my italian practise into my wind down time.          I’m also worried that I will forget all the grammar I’ve been learning, and forget that when I translate from English to Italian it ISN’T word for word! That it is very different, or I don’t need as many italian words as I would if it was in English!             And I’m just opening my italian accent won’t sound to mongrel with my normal Kiwi accent. 

3.) What progress do you want to make in the next 31 days?

I want to start recording myself on the webcam, and hoping that a native speaker actually understands me. I want to be able to conjugate my words better. I want to be able to form a decent conversation with mio ragazzo and surprise him by the end of the challenge

4.) What are your big goals for Italian?

Improve pronunciation definitely, be able to understand Italian better, even if I can’t speak it back fluently. To be able to have a somewhat awkward but fluent conversation. To be able to read and imagine the story in my head in Italian

5.) What are your micro goals for Italian?

To be able to read a children’s picture book and understand the context. To be able to pronunciate things better and with more ease. 

 

Giorno due 

What Method Should You Use To Learn Italian?

To answer that question we must first answer these three questions

1.) What are your current hobbies?

Reading, Watching Movies and Television shows, Listening to Music and going out for dinner.  – I have actually combined these four things to improve my language learning abilities, my italian books of Alice in Wonderland and Le Avventure di Pinocchio just arrived today, I’ve got a few italian movies to watch on the laptop, I’m listening to italian music on itunes and I’m making sure we go to italian restaurants when Matteo and I go out.

2.) How do you learn best?

I think I learn well in many ways, visually, listening, and through doing. If someone gets me to do it for myself, rather than just show me, I am likely to pick it up much better.

3.) When do you learn best?

I think I definitely learn best after being well rested, so probably first thing in the morning after I wake up. Or in the late afternoon early evening. Although when I’m tired like I have been recently working from 8am – 6pm. So it hasn’t been very good for my language learning skills the last couple of days. Hopefully I will get used to the long hours and be able to put my language learning skills back in action. 

 

Well it is time for this piccola ragazza kiwi di andare a dormire

Sogni D’oro

A presto!

Anna x