italiano vivente

[DaveAgain]

I'd like to read a real book. I have a high tolerance for ambiguity and a kindle where I can instantly look up words.

I may go with Da Vinci Code since I recall it being quite an easy read in english, and it doesn't look too intimidating in the preview on Amazon.

I've also thought about this massive Stephen King tome since I've always wanted to read the original. But I'm thinking a book I know I can handle in english may be a better first bet.

Even if the one I select is too tough, I own it so I can always come back later.

I'm not set on buying a book yet, I'm just thinking about it since, in english, I read books way more than I read news. Replace what we do and enjoy in our target language, right? Hmm.

You mentioned your library has some dual readers, have you tried any of those?

[jeff_lindqvist]

I'd like to read a real book. I have a high tolerance for ambiguity and a kindle where I can instantly look up words.

I may go with Da Vinci Code since I recall it being quite an easy read in english, and it doesn't look too intimidating in the preview on Amazon.

Go for it! If you're already familiar with the story, great. I read it in French some years ago as part of a trilingual reading project (log post(s) here).

Bonne chance!

[Lysander]

Flipping through Essential French Grammar was a great idea. It has so much packed in with such clear examples. I quite like it! I will definitely give it another read-through in a few months. Heck, I may even make some flash cards with its example sentences...

You mentioned your library has some dual readers, have you tried any of those?

Good question, and good advice. No need to spend money just because, right? I checked out a Dover dual-reader that didn't seem too heavy on the archaic language. I noticed an immediate issue! This was my first time reading something that I did not have audio for. My accent seems alright when reading along with Assimil. However, it seems to go off track almost immediately when reading more "in the wild" haha. I want to address pronunciation before reading things I don't have audio for.

I'd like to read a real book. I have a high tolerance for ambiguity and a kindle where I can instantly look up words.

I may go with Da Vinci Code since I recall it being quite an easy read in english, and it doesn't look too intimidating in the preview on Amazon.

Go for it! If you're already familiar with the story, great. I read it in French some years ago as part of a trilingual reading project (log post(s) here).

Bonne chance!

Nice, I am glad my idea did not seem to far fetched. I will likely come back to this as my first purchased French book when I work my way through my library's limited selection.

In the meantime, I put in a request through inter-library loan for Pronounce it Perfectly in French . Once I work through that, I will give the dual reader another go to see how I feel about my pronunciation.

As for New French With Ease, I am still chugging along. I am done with the passive wave through lesson 32.

A few of the lessons in the late teens and 20s were rather boring, but I have found them to be improved lately, which has made it more pleasant to study. The fill-in-the-blank exercises for lesson 30 were all prepositions, and numbers 7 and 8 in the fill-in-the-blanks for lessons 30 and 31 were identical! I thought this was an error at first, but perhaps knowing right from left is just that important!

[Lysander]

Today was a bit of an emotional day.

A friend of mine had long had an interest in German, and started to indulge it quite seriously beginning in around 2005. She began to study it seriously, and even went on some long immersions in country. She'd always try to spend at least two weeks a year in Germany. A bit more than a decade ago, she randomly met a nice Swedish fellow on one of her vacations there. They hit if off and have had a transatlantic romance going on for the entire time since. Each would take lengthy leaves of absence to be together, and they are raising a child together. With their respective works being quite flexible, they'd usually have about 4 months together per year. Not bad for such a distance (we live on the east coast of the U.S.).

Today, she announced their time for living apart at all was done. She has given notice for her job, rented out her house here, and her and her son (the child fathered by the Swede) are headed to Sweden in time to finish quarantine by New Year's Day.

It is quite exciting, to have love still flourishing in the time of covid. The funny thing is, in spite of picking up quite a bit of Swedish in this time (and planning to increase it even moreso once she begins classes there), German is still her favorite language to engage in.

It made me feel so whimsical. Follow your language passions, people! My friend has had no real use for German in some time, not even in practical terms since her trips started being more and more to either explore other parts of Europe or exclusively to Sweden about 7 years ago, but it is what she still reads and listens and plays in regularly. As she put it, "had I not continually scratched my itch with this German bug, I'd have never met my partner. Sometimes your heart knows what is good for you, and you should indulge, indulge, indulge."

I just wanted to share because I am so sad she is moving, but so happy for her getting to be with her amazing partner. And it was her interest and pursuit of a language she had no need for either for professional advancement or anything else that set up the circumstances for their meeting. Who cares if Italian or Afrikaans or whatever else does not seem practical. If you want it, just do it

[Lysander]

Change of plans! I got through Lesson 47 of NFWE today, having not missed a day of study yet! Alas, it was not meant to be.

My girlfriend and I have hosted a number of foreigners over the year through Couch Surfing, and one of these wonderful people just announced her engagement! The wedding is tentatively planned for October of next year somewhere near Rome, pending covid vaccine outcomes.

We plan to attend (shoulder season in Italy seems like a good idea, regardless of nuptials), and our friend told us there will be about 200 guests, and the number of people attending who can converse at any level of English, other than her and her fiance (both Italians with solid English skills), beyond saying hello can be counted on one hand.

So what did my enterprising partner do? Some sleuthing on this very forum, it seems! She was acting a bit furtive all week and I could not help but notice the mail I usually bring in when I come home from work was already collected each day upon arrival in recent days.

Today I found out why. She was waiting for the Black Friday sale to purchase Fluenz Italian for me. The activation code for this was just presented to me, along with an Italian Linguaphone course, a dictionary, and an Italian verb book! The latter I cannot really make heads or tails of at this juncture, but it seems somewhat akin to a "501 X Verbs" book in a smaller form factor.



Long story short, I have been tasked to "learn Italian" prior to our trip to ensure smooth travels, haha. When I pointed out that I was a ways into learning French and asked if she might wish to take up the mantle of Italian, she made it clear that a) she has enough hobbies and interests in English that she has no desire to ever learn another language beyond a handful of polite phrases for a given vacation, and b) anyone who was studying French for no reason whatsoever could transition to learning Italian to take the lead on ensuring a lovely holiday bumming around Italy for a couple of weeks on what will be our first trip out of the area in a year and a half, haha. Can't fight that logic She even went through the trouble to print and laminate directions for Linguaphone for me! I am a lucky guy, people.

Anyway, for anyone thinking of doing New French With Ease, I can definitely recommend it! The lessons drag a bit in the late 20s, but really pick up again after that. I started to feel the "magic" around lesson 30 and was doing better every day parsing meaning out of news articles.

Allls well that ends well. This weekend I get to see if editing Linguaphone is any less arduous than Assimil! I look forward to providing a review and my thoughts on both Fluenz and Linguaphone down the road. Cheers!

[Cavesa]

Wow, this is one of the most original motivation stories I've seen on this forum! Congratulations, your gf sounds really cool! I am looking forward to your reviews.

[miket12]

In the meantime, I put in a request through inter-library loan for Pronounce it Perfectly in French

A related resource you might want to consider is "FSI Introduction to French Phonology Course". It is in the public domain and you can find places to download it online. I did this several years ago and found it helpful. Here is a site review: https://forum.language-learners.org/vie ... php?t=5103

[Lysander]

I have finished through lesson 23 of the first level of Fluenz. I aim to do two lessons a day on weekdays and as much as I can on the weekend.

I think Fluenz benefits from going fairly quickly through it to build off what you are learning and keep the forward momentum ging. It may be that the new material later in the course gets to be too much and I'll need to slow down to absorb it all.

It is a rather boring course, but well put together, and you will definitely learn from it. I have a ways left to go to finish the course, but I am not yet convinced the value is there for the money. I will see how this feeling changes as I progress!

I am mostly focusing on Fluenz for now, but am also going through Lesson 2 of Linguaphone this week. Nothing really to report there except I do have a preference for the Assimil layout due to the ease of one book versus 3 (or 4 if you have Linguaphone with the oral drills). I am looking forward to getting into some of the later, more interesting lessons.

[Lysander]

Big update time. Fluenz, to their credit, has a no questions asked 30 day return window for a full refund.

I opted to take advantage of it. Let me be clear, it is a well-structure course that will teach you quite a bit of Italian. I am just ultimately a person who wants value for money, even if it is not my money. I got almost 1/3 of the way through the whole course, and was struck my just how slow the incline is on learning.

It did not bug me that it was a bit boring and repetitive. The fun is in using the language anyway, and not every individual learning activity has to be titillating. I went to the last few lessons, however, and realized that it simply does not take you very far for hundreds of dollars. To compare it to Assimil, Fluenz seems to give you more drills/review of a given lesson, but you get substantially less vocabulary overall in exchange. Meanwhile, Fluenz can cost as much as 10x Assimil. As a value for money guy, I'd expect to learn 10x as much, or 10x more effectively or, etc...you get the idea.

Again, if money is no concern for you, and you think you'd respond well to its teaching style, laid out very thoroughly here by Speakeasy, you can still have a lot of success with Fluenz if it is the route you go. For me, I'd just rather put the few hundred dollars into the "travel money" budget knowing I can get what Fluenz gives me in a less slickly designed package (Assimil, Linguaphone, probably various Teach Yourselves or Hugo, etc...).

Some of the Fluenz courses (Spanish and French, and maybe others) have gotten a refresh over the years. I think it involved updated audio recordings, but it may have been deeper than that as Sonia Gil is positively low-def for vast stretches of the Italian lessons she teaches in the course. It is also worth noting that she is not a native English speaker and, a few times, I had to rewind and listen to her explanation of something again because she pronounced an English word in what I thought was an odd way and I didn't understand her. To be fair, though, her accent for the most part is very good. In English, anyway. I will leave to others to judge her accents in foreign languages. Though I believe PeterMollenburg also noted she did not have great French pronunciation.

All-in-all, I feel bad to dog on the program. It isn't dreck and you can learn a solid amount, but when there are so much more affordable alternatives, I see no compelling reason to go this route. I also wanted to return it once I made the choice rather than continue using it until my 30 days was up as that seems a bit dishonest if not planning to let the vendor keep their money.

Anyway, Linguaphone is going well. I am on Lesson 4. I definitely understand the criticism of the 30 lesson version being a bit clunky due to the sections of each one being of such varying length that you have to devote very different amounts of time to it depending on the day. But it all in all, it is very well put together and I am enjoying it. I feel like the different sized lessons will seem like less of an impediment as I focus more on this course and get into a rhythm with it.

Lastly, I did not want to forget to plug RAIPlay if you have a VPN you can set to Italy. A nice resource for watching and listening.