Lingua's 2019 Italian, Sicilian, Latin, German, Portuguese Log

[lingua]

Italian

Listening
Film 361 minutes
dplay: Pizza Hero: la sfida dei forni S1 E1-3
DVD: La donna della mia vita & Tutte le donne della mia vita

I found a short series on dplay called Pizza Hero. The host visits three Pizza places in a specific city (the first three episodes were Roma, Milano & Napoli respectively). He tries their pizza and one wins a minor makeover of their restaurant. It's OK. There are only 8 episodes as I recall so I will complete it rather quickly and move on to something else.

Speaking/Recording
One 60 minute italki session this week.

Grammar/Vocabulary/365 Challenge:
Spent minimal time on Decks. I am down to only 600 reviews on Clozemaster which I should be able to complete this week and will start adding 25 new sentences each day and try to keep the reviews under control.

Reading:
Tutto quello che sai sul cibo e falso by Sara Farnetti <-- 46%
Il libro della pasta fresca e ripiena by Roberta Schira <-- 16%


Latin: I seem to have forgotten very little of the latin I learned after reviewing Decks & Clozemaster daily. I did some grammar review too.

Sicilian: Spent time with Decks and read the first two chapters from Introduction to Sicilian Grammar. It included pronunciation and some information about the evolution of Sicilian, the influence of Italian on Sicilian, the 10 different sub-dialects of Sicilian in Sicily and examples of different pronunciations of words such as peri instead of pedi (foot) or cura instead of cuda (tail). It can make the language a little more difficult to learn.

[PfifltriggPi]

That Sicilian book seems interesting. Does it go much into the Mediaeval forms of the language? As a certified booknerd, I'm mostly interested in the Scola Sicilana and the Mediaeval litterature. I'll probably end up getting it regardless at some point, though. The dialetti are interesting.

[lingua]

The Sicilian grammar book doesn't specifically focus on Mediaeval forms. However, it does state that it is focusing on the Sicilian language as it was prior to the changes caused by the influence of Italian.

[lingua]

Book #63: Tutto quello che sai sul cibo è falso by Sara Farnetti. When I started this book I had a hard time focusing because it felt disjointed but about half way through it smoothed out or maybe I got used to her style. This book focused on the glycemic index (GI) and how to combine foods to keep the body from peaking or crashing. She presented menu plans that would help. No doubt influenced by being Italian she stressed that pasta does not make you fat like some would believe. She also embraces red wine. She was negative against the Italian breakfast of an expresso and pastry. Her menus were very simple and included three courses which were usually some type of salad, pasta or meat and a vegetable. Her menus proposed having meat or fish as the main course for lunch and pasta or other carb for dinner Everything was prepared simply with only 2-4 ingredients. Even though there were no recipes the description of the dishes included the sparse ingredients. You could add a piece of bread to most meals but if you ate pasta or something that had a high GI then she recommended omitting the bread. The author has a PhD in physiopathology of nutrition and metabolism as well as being a doctor of internal medicine if I understand correctly.

tuttoquellosai.jpg

[lingua]

Italian

Listening
Film 307 minutes
dplay: Pizza Hero: la sfida dei forni S1 E4-8 (which concludes the series) & Il pranzo di Mosè S1 E1-2

Il pranzo di Mosè is hosted by Simonetta Agnello Hornby an Italian writer (novels and food related) from Palermo who has lived most of her life in England. She does a meal with her sister for some kind of social event such as birthday or party. Mosè is a small village in the Agrigento area of Sicily.

Speaking/Recording
One 60 minute italki session this week.

Grammar/Vocabulary/365 Challenge:
I completed my entire backlog of reviews on Clozemaster and have started adding 50 sentences a day so hopefully I can stay caught up now. I am working from the top 100-500 words and the grammar challenge for prepositions (25 each). I spent a little time with Decks and a couple of hours with verb conjugations. I am trying to get to where I can more easily recall the various forms. While I recognize them when reading I am less successful in remembering them for actual usage.

Reading:
Mai più a dieta by Sara Farnetti <-- 41%
Il libro della pasta fresca e ripiena by Roberta Schira <-- 33%


Latin: Mostly I'm doing ClozeMaster and Decks though I briefly started reading the very old book Julia and a section from Adler's The Art of Everyday Latin (part 1).

Sicilian: Spent time with Decks and read chapter three from Introduction to Sicilian Grammar on nouns and adjectives. Also listened to a couple of short YouTube videos by Cademia Siciliana on greetings and pronouns.

[lingua]

Book #64: Mai più a dieta by Sara Farnetti. This is the same author as the last book I wrote about two posts ago. This was more of the same except each chapter focused on a particular ailment or condition such as bloat, detox, living without sugar, etc. Each chapter ended with a functional menu of 2-3 dishes to eat that would help the particular situation along with information about what each ingredient provided. I felt it was a little redundant because the meals aren't that different from each other. This book included recipes for each dish. The types of dishes included were mostly 2-3 ingredients (plus seasoning). I think most people would get bored pretty quickly. As in the last book this author leans towards raw or lightly cooked foods for the most part so as to not lose nutrients.

nonpiuadieta.jpg

[StringerBell]

Hey Lingua,

I saw this course on edX and thought it might be something you'd be interested in: Dialetti in Italia
https://www.edx.org/course/dialetti-in-italia-2

[lingua]

Thanks for telling me about this Stringerbell. I was aware of the course on FedericaX but their site is so awful I couldn't bring myself to use it for long. In fact they have a course on Pizza which I wanted to take but gave up on it quickly. Their site seems to be using technology from the 90s. uninettuno (in Roma) isn't much better. You'd think that the Italians with their emphasis on design and fashion would do so much better.

[lingua]

Italian:
Reading: Il libro della pasta fresca e ripiena by Roberta Schira: 68%
Reading: Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto (translation by Giorgio Amitrano): 16%
edX: Dialetti in Italia: Lesson 1 (Unit 1, 2) & Lesson 2 (Unit 1)
italki: One 60 minute session
Decks: Averaged about 16 mins per day
Clozemaster: New: 175 & Reviewed: 502 sentences (text input)
Grammar Book: Le preposizioni italiane: Chapter 2 Lo spazio (prima parte)

I started Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto this week on a whim. It's a book I purchased last year when I was looking for YA type books in hopes the vocabulary would be more accessible. I vaguely recall starting it at one point last year and still encountering too many unknown words but this time around I am finding it much easier which is an indication my vocabulary has greatly improved over the last year.

I started the edX course Dialetti in Italia. edX seems to have changed their structure because I either need to pay $60 for the course or I need to complete it by Nov 9th (or it will be gone forever) so I'm compelled to get through this quickly. So far the course is about dialects in general and has many links to various dialect sources. The videos in this course are short (7-8 minutes).

Le preposizioni italiane is published by Alma Edizione thus geared towards students of Italian. I bought this book in Italy quite a few years ago. Chapter 2 is about da, di, in, a. I don't make many errors with these four prepositions but there are a few cases where I get them wrong so this should clear up my minor gaps.


Latin:
Decks: Averaged about 15 mins per day
Clozemaster: New: 0 & Reviewed: 696 (multiple choice)
Reading: Cornelia by Mima Maxey: Chapters I-III

Previously I had started the Julia book but I saw that Cornelia is even more basic so I switched. The chapters are one page so the fact I did three chapters isn't very impressive. These two books are along the lines of: This girl is Cornelia. Cornelia is not big. Cornelia is a small girl. This girl is beautiful and also good. Cornelia is not a boy; she is a small girl. Cornelia is not a teacher. Cornelia is a student. I can see the wisdom of this type of book for beginners.


Sicilian:
Reading: A ccanciu ri Maria. Testo a fronte siciliano by Nino De Vita: Read first page
Decks: Averaged about 6 minutes per day
Textbook: Introduction to Sicilian Grammar: (nothing this week)
Textbook: Learn Sicilian / Mparamu lu sicilianu: Chapter 1 exercises

A ccanciu ri Maria is a poetry book about a romance. I bought it from mondadori.it on impulse some months ago. I had thought it would be completely in Sicilian but as it turns out the book is half Italian and half Sicilian. When I read the two textbooks I have I see the similarity between Italian and Sicilian. But when I read this book I'm completely lost.

[dampingwire]

Their site seems to be using technology from the 90s. uninettuno (in Roma) isn't much better. You'd think that the Italians with their emphasis on design and fashion would do so much better.

I've occasionally watched things on Uninettuno (via the Hotbird satellite) and I've found the content quite good. The presentation is very much Open-University-a-la-1980s (which I'm afraid won't mean much to non-UK readers).