Re: Robierre’s French & Italian C1/2 journal
Posted: Wed Nov 11, 2015 9:19 pm
Week 19
Italian
Charles Bukowski (Pulp, 182 pages) was a real fun; surreal, violent, cynical, extremely colloquial - more or less it has all the characteristics that I usually hate in literature but somehow I found it enjoyable. Maybe because of the way the American English slang was translated to Italian lingua parlata.
Curently reading+listening:
Pier Paolo Pasolini: Ragazzi di vita (1956) (p. 19/282, episodes 1 and 2, Ad Alta voce)
This will be a hard work. Pasolini (Italian writer, poet, filmmaker and intellectual) is generally known as one of the most eloquent Italian writers and his passion for dialects reflects in all of his works. Ragazzi di vita combines Romanesco (in dialogues) and narrative registers of the standard Italian. I already wrote somewhere and I want to repeat it: you can't fully understand the Italian language and culture without the insight in local dialects. For me this is a very exciting part of the language learning. The book provides a basic Romanesco-Italian dictionary and that should help me a lot. I don't expect that the understanding will be high as with other books I read in Italian but hopefully I'll learn many new words and expressions.
Just like with Calvino, I discovered on the very begging of the novel an old song called E sotto er monumento de Mazzini. It was a good occasion to learn some new dirty parolacce.
Another nice old song in Romanesco: Barcarolo romano (qua invece non ci sono delle parolacce)
French
Officially stopped attending my French class. Reason: tired after work, I just wasn't able to concentrate. The alternative might be Italki teacher during the weekends.
Italian
Charles Bukowski (Pulp, 182 pages) was a real fun; surreal, violent, cynical, extremely colloquial - more or less it has all the characteristics that I usually hate in literature but somehow I found it enjoyable. Maybe because of the way the American English slang was translated to Italian lingua parlata.
Curently reading+listening:
Pier Paolo Pasolini: Ragazzi di vita (1956) (p. 19/282, episodes 1 and 2, Ad Alta voce)
This will be a hard work. Pasolini (Italian writer, poet, filmmaker and intellectual) is generally known as one of the most eloquent Italian writers and his passion for dialects reflects in all of his works. Ragazzi di vita combines Romanesco (in dialogues) and narrative registers of the standard Italian. I already wrote somewhere and I want to repeat it: you can't fully understand the Italian language and culture without the insight in local dialects. For me this is a very exciting part of the language learning. The book provides a basic Romanesco-Italian dictionary and that should help me a lot. I don't expect that the understanding will be high as with other books I read in Italian but hopefully I'll learn many new words and expressions.
Just like with Calvino, I discovered on the very begging of the novel an old song called E sotto er monumento de Mazzini. It was a good occasion to learn some new dirty parolacce.
Another nice old song in Romanesco: Barcarolo romano (qua invece non ci sono delle parolacce)
French
Officially stopped attending my French class. Reason: tired after work, I just wasn't able to concentrate. The alternative might be Italki teacher during the weekends.