Extensive Reading in Italian - Is Passato Remoto a 'Problem'?

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reineke
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Re: Extensive Reading in Italian - Is Passato Remoto a 'Problem'?

Postby reineke » Thu Apr 26, 2018 9:07 pm

You can't hide from passato remoto even if you don't read a single Italian book in your life. You will find this tense in all kinds of TV fiction including dubbed anime. You'll find plenty of passato prrossimo in written fiction. Both tenses serve a purpose. Novels should help you better understand and internalize these tenses. In addition to novels, history documentaries are full of passato remoto. You should know how it's used in relation to other tenses.




Sull'uso del passato remoto
http://www.accademiadellacrusca.it/it/l ... ato-remoto

Ancora sull'uso del passato remoto
http://www.accademiadellacrusca.it/it/l ... ato-remoto
Last edited by reineke on Sat Feb 09, 2019 4:58 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Extensive Reading in Italian - Is Passato Remoto a 'Problem'?

Postby zKing » Thu Apr 26, 2018 9:58 pm

Thank you, everyone, for all the replies. Looks like I will not worry about it and just read.

And now that I've skimmed through my old notes, Italian conjugation isn't really THAT bad. I think there are a couple hundred sentences that would cover almost all of the non-irregular ground. I just should just drill these on the side now and then. ("I love, you love, he loves, we love, y'all love, they love, I believe, you believe, ... , I will love, you will love, ... etc. etc."

1st/2nd/3rd person
x
singular/plural
x
-are -ere -ire + essere + avere
x
number of tenses
= 30 x tenses

Yes, there are 15 or 16 tenses, but I think there are like 5-6 that are really important and many of the tenses are really compounds of the others.

So cramming maybe ~200 core sentences repeatedly to start? I wouldn't even bother SRS'ing them, I'd just repeatedly do them in a cycle until they are overlearned.

I'm sure I'm not the first to do this. Can anyone report on how effective this is?
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Re: Extensive Reading in Italian - Is Passato Remoto a 'Problem'?

Postby Ccaesar » Fri Apr 27, 2018 9:08 am

Drilling conjugations:
In the past doing the following (when not using SRS) has worked for me.
1) Open the book, read the conjugation 10 times.
2) Cover one row with your hand and guess- then check if you are correct- do this untill correct
3) Take a pause of a few hours, a day or so
4) Ask a friend to check your memorization of the conjugation meaning your friend holds the book whilst you say the conjugations out loud.
5) Rejoice you got it!

Buon lavoro! :)
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Re: Extensive Reading in Italian - Is Passato Remoto a 'Problem'?

Postby Uncle Roger » Fri Apr 27, 2018 11:38 am

The Bible (both Testaments I reckon) has a lot of passato remoto.
"Fu in quel tempo", "Dio creò la terra", "In principio fu il verbo".

For the memorisation side of things, anybody not doing spaced repetition is doing themselves a major disservice, please please please give it a try.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cVf38y07cfk


Anki is my favourite. Give ready-made content a try, but you get the most value from doing your own.

https://ankiweb.net/shared/decks/italian

Ccaesar, given that you are a Danish native speaker I might be interested in work exchange.
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Re: Extensive Reading in Italian - Is Passato Remoto a 'Problem'?

Postby zKing » Sat Apr 28, 2018 1:46 am

Uncle Roger wrote:For the memorisation side of things, anybody not doing spaced repetition is doing themselves a major disservice, please please please give it a try.
[...]
Anki is my favourite. Give ready-made content a try, but you get the most value from doing your own.


Oh, I'm quite familiar with Anki and its ilk (see my log); I've been using it for years. I'm using it for Cantonese vocabulary at the moment, but I can't stand to spend more than 20-30 minutes a day in Anki land or I go bonkers after about a month. I also agree that SRS is great for memorizing (most of) a very large "A=B" style list of data, but I don't think it is setup very well for grinding in small sets of data and overlearning it to the point of automaticity without trying to bend its usage too much. Anki is very flexible and can be used to do a lot of things... We've all read about people, in order to learn a language through flashcards, cramming massive volumes of sentences in their decks and spending the lion's share of their time in an Anki coma for multiple hours a day. It does work for some people, but I'd rather stab hot forks in my eyes.

While I agree that SRS can be made to work for what I'm trying to do, I only put up with Anki when I absolutely must. :D
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Re: Extensive Reading in Italian - Is Passato Remoto a 'Problem'?

Postby Uncle Roger » Sat Apr 28, 2018 7:46 am

I agree that it can be hard to stay more than 30 mins on Anki, but that's why I like to do a couple of sessions a day.

This said, I've only ever studied seriously Latin and Germanic langages and, apart from a little Japanese, I don't know the challenges that other languages feature, so I can't comment on how good Anki is for that. :)
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Re: Extensive Reading in Italian - Is Passato Remoto a 'Problem'?

Postby smallwhite » Sat Apr 28, 2018 8:06 am

Uncle Roger wrote:
I've only ever studied seriously Latin and Germanic langages and, apart from a little Japanese, I don't know the challenges that other languages feature, so I can't comment on how good Anki is for that. :)

Excellent attitude! :ugeek:
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Re: Extensive Reading in Italian - Is Passato Remoto a 'Problem'?

Postby FyrsteSumarenINoreg » Sat Apr 28, 2018 8:28 am

Passato remoto is the most irregular tense in Italian so it is avoided in spoken Northern Italian.
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Re: Extensive Reading in Italian - Is Passato Remoto a 'Problem'?

Postby Uncle Roger » Sat Apr 28, 2018 9:44 am

I was born and raised in Milan, so theoretically passato remoto averse. However, after living abroad many years, I find that I use it more often, even when speaking. It's usually shorter than using the composite tenses. "Quando andai negli USA" > "Quando ero andato negli USA".

:mrgreen:
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Re: Extensive Reading in Italian - Is Passato Remoto a 'Problem'?

Postby Neurotip » Tue May 01, 2018 9:47 pm

reineke wrote:< Roberto Vecchioni - Samarcanda >

The first thing that came to mind when I saw this was the lines from Turandot:
Vi ricordate il principe
regal di Samarcanda?
Fece la sua domanda,
e lei con quale gioia
gli mandò il boia!

- which by coincidence... :D
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