So much italian fries my brain

Arrrrrrrrrrh!

Amo questa bella lingua così tanto! Ma it just hurts my head so much from all this learning, i feel like my brain is frying! Is that normale? I guess I just want to understand it all so quickly and not have to do the hard work, but then I know the hard work is the most important foundation of lingua learning. I guess I will get it eventually, I just have to encourage myself to stick to it. I really want this, more than I have wanted something before. I want to surprise everyone back in italy with our much I’ve progressed, even being in an english country. I guess I really just need to believe in myself which is the main thing. I went on amazon this morning and purchased a dual language book of Le Avventure D’Alice Nel paese Della Miraviglie, e Le avventure di pinocchio. So hopefully that will improve my reading and pronunciation abilities.

Just had a big heart to heart with Matteo (il fidanzato) about language learning, because he had to do it from the opposite end, learn english from italian, and he said when he first met me and was having to speak english all the time he was always translating it from italian to english first, and it just always took so long, but then when he got here to london and started talking in english all the time and HAVING to actually speak it all the time, he started thinking it that language, so that cut out that whole long process of always having to translate in his head, he said his father said to him that you truly know a language when you start thinking in that language.                                                                                                                                                 But that when it comes to me I shouldn’t be so hard on myself when it comes to my language learning, that i should take it slowly and I will get there, and when we go back i should try and join in the conversations in la cucina con mamma e nonna! Which i shall definitely try to put into action when I get there! But as expatatbirth said to me in one of her comments, is that I should try to subconsciously pick it up as well, by having italian on in the background. I guess our brain is a wonderful thing with how the subconscious mind works. So I shall definitely start doing that. Domani will be my italiano grande giorno where after I go shopping in the morning to send some cake mixes to italy for mamma (since she can’t get Betty Crocker in Italy), I think I will do some exercises on duolingo, read some amazing blogs, listen subconsciously to gladiatori di roma and she if i pick anything up! 🙂 

Well it’s bedtime for me now! Got an early start in the morning!

Ciao tutti!

A Presto

Anna x

Ahhhhh selfie with the timer at il colosseo 

 

Brutti articoli

Articoli, articoli, articoli! Something I always struggle with when it comes to my imparare l’italiano. I am forever forgetting which indefinito o definito goes with which word. Although oggi as I was sitting on the underground treno to make my way to lavoro I took my new Collins easy learning Italian Grammar & Practice libro with me, and Wow did I find some things to help me when it came to those horrid articoli that I so much dread. It gave me such great understanding and little hints and tricks I had never seen before in reading blogs and doing online italian languages courses. It just made so much sense to me after lettura it!

That the articolo definito masculine singular noun you get to use:

il with most nouns starting with a consonant                                                                                                                                           lo with nouns starting with z or s + another consonant, gn, pn, ps, x or y                                                                                                   l’ with all nouns starting with a vowel

Then for the masculine plural:

i with most nouns starting with a consonant                                                                                                                                             gli with nouns starting with z, s + another consonant, gn, pn, ps, x, or y as well as with nouns starting with a vowel

And the articolo definito for the feminine singular nouns are:

la with all nouns starting with a consonant                                                                                                                                               l’ with all nouns starting with a vowel

And for the plural with all nouns that start with both consonants or vowels is le

I thought this was such a handy piccolo excerpt to help me realise which definitive articles go with which nouns. Because that is definitely what I think I struggle with the most at the moment, as well as the adding a definite article with other words, but then in the grammar book it has a little page for that too! A truly handy little tool! 😀

I am just so innamorato with this bella lingua, and every time I am on my computer, I am always reading blogs, studying on duolingo which I love! I am always surprised with how much seems to be crammed inside the brain that I think doesn’t suck anything in. And reading great blogs, such as Cherhale.com with her iceberg project of delving into deeper italian, and then  http://learnitalianwithlucrezia.com who is just amazing! I’m starting from the very beginning of her blog, so it’s gonna take me a while to get to the latest page, but I don’t want to miss out on any of the amazing things she says!

I just hope that I will soon just soak up this bella lingua like a sponge, so by the time i get back to roma to see mia romana la famiglia I will be able to surprise them with everything I can parlare. I mean I would be very buono at having a conversation with a stranger. Ma la problema is mia romana la famiglia aren’t strangers. They are amazing, Mamma, Nonna e Sorella, if only I could communicate with them properly. I mean we managed to build a relationship without words, which is definitely a special type of relationship, its the art of communicating beyond words, although it is very frustrating. So I just so hope and dream for the day I get back to mia casa lontana di casa I can be such a big surprise for them them all. To be able to communicate to them, to Mamma e Nonna, I think it would make them so felici!

As Nelson Mandela says ❝If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his own language, that goes to his heart.❞

well that is enough for this evening.

La fine

A presto

Ciao Ciao

Anna x

 

p.s… on a side note, the link to those blogs don’t seem to work if you click on them…. just copy and paste! Problema solved