Deinonysus wrote:Working on Italian seems almost anticlimactic after having spent month on Hebrew this year and Indonesian last year. Hebrew is a constant puzzle of new grammar and incomplete spelling, and even though Indonesian grammar is simple there was still a ton of new vocabulary to get used to, and the verb affixes and the tenseless aspect system are new and interesting to me. But Italian is just kind of... French but you pronounce all the letters and move your hands more. There are no puzzles and there isn't much thinking to do. I'm not learning it from scratch, I'm learning how it differs from French. And it's not a puzzle, it's just something to get through because I want to understand Italian. But, I'm not losing steam and it's not frustrating at all, it's just that I'm focusing on the destination rather than the journey.
mvillalba wrote:On a more serious note, I had a similar thing with Italian (though interestingly, not with French): it just felt too easy. It helps I'm a native Spanish speaker, but still, it's just so transparent and straightforward. I like reading in Italian, and listening to them speak; there is just something very pleasant and melodic about the language or I can't imagine I would have bothered learning it.
I've just recently started back up with Italian, and I can really relate to what you're both saying. You get such a leg up if you already speak a Romance language, and I wouldn't want to give up that advantage, but I do sometimes miss the feeling of puzzling over unfamiliar patterns and making discoveries. Sometimes I get a little impatient, like with so much that's familiar, I should already know this language.
On the other hand, what got me interested in Italian again was taking a crack at native material and discovering that I could already understand quite a bit, even if some of it escaped me. I'm still planning to use material for learners (Assimil, L'italiano secondo il metodo natura...), but it's exciting that native material can be part of the mix so early.
Also, I fully agree with mvillalba that there's "something very pleasant and melodic" about Italian, and it's motivating to feel like I'm not just learning this language because it's relatively easy to learn another Romance language, but because it has a particular appeal.
Deinonysus wrote:The easy time I'm having with Italian is also encouraging me to learn Spanish and Portuguese sooner rather than later; I'm expecting a similarly easy time. The main problem will be keeping all of these languages separate. I might want to try getting Assimil Spanish in both French and Italian; the audio should be the same if I make sure to get the same edition, so I won't need to get two super-packs; then maybe I could find some Portuguese learning resources in Spanish. But Hebrew is a higher priority. I want to start phasing it back in as I finish up with the Italian resources. That will give me some time to save up for all of those Assimil books.
I can relate to this too. Both wanting to continue learning Romance languages and the concern about keeping them separate. For me, the important thing is leaving a little space between them as you put them on the conveyor belt. Some months back, I was working on beginner Latin, Italian, and Catalan all at the same time, and that was just too much for me to keep straight. So for a while now I've just been focusing on Latin. I actually wasn't planning to add Italian back in so soon (since I'm still very much a beginner in Latin), but so far it feels like they may be sufficiently separate in my head to work on both at once. I think that's as many as I can handle though.
If you end up doing Assimil Spanish from both a French and an Italian base, I'd be interested to here how it goes.
By the way, which edition of L'italien sans peine are you doing? Do you like it so far compared to other Assimil courses you've done?
Also, in case you're looking for something to read, I'm always on the lookout for beginner reading material that's actually interesting, and I just read an A2–B1 supernatural mystery called Non puoi essere tu and found it to be an effective page-turner with a good amount of personality and specificity. Planning to read the other two books in the series.
(The Italian book for native speakers that I mentioned is super niche and probably not of interest, it's about the Ultima series of computer games in the 80s, but that's here. I find niche stuff about hobbies or the like works great for language learning, because I get to read or hear about something I enjoy, but I'm also not bothered if I don't understand something.)