Why Italy
I want to learn Italian. Help please?
When I was eleven years old, I received a letter from a girl in Italy. Her school project involved having an American penpal. We've been best friends ever since. I'm now twenty, and getting married in a year and nine months. She hopes to come in for my wedding, so that we can finally meet. I always thought she spoke English as well as she writes it/reads it, but she does not speak English at all. I've wanted to learn Italian for a while now. Can anyone tell me the best way to go about it? I live in West Virginia. I don't believe anyone around here speaks anything other than English, German, Spanish, and French...I want a program that will especially focus on pronunciation. I hate books/programs that leave you with your idea of the pronunciation only to embarrass yourself later. Also nothing too expensive please.
Public Comments
- I'd suggest Rosetta Stone. Google it to find the best way to buy it. You may get a great deal on Ebay.
- search babel fish on google then select English to Italian
- Go to classes,get a tutor. Talk to Italian people through e-mail or IM or MSN. Use online courses like Rosetta Stone and askLingo.
- http://www.languageguide.org/ http://www.livemocha.com/ http://www.mylanguageexchange.com/ http://www.sharedtalk.com/index.aspx http://babylon.com mangolanguages.com i've heard good things about "living language" and the "tell me more" program seems really good, but it think it's expensive
- I think it's great that you want to learn Italian. I too plan to learn the language someday. Well, first, I would suggest a combination of self-help Italian books, a bilingual dictionary, and some type of audio program like Pimsleur. This way you would be able to not only learn how to read and write, but also speak the language correctly. Once you've mastered some basics in the language why not begin asking your penpal to start writing you in Italian. You can reply to her in Italian so that way you'd be putting all of your newly gained knowledge into affect. Since you really want to make sure you have a good grasp of the spoken language I'd suggest you spend a good amount of time on the audio portion. You can also likely find complementary material like Italian movies (with English subs), free online Italian radio programs, and Italian podcasts. Finally if you are truly serious about learning the language, I would suggest looking into colleges and universities in your area and inquire about non-credit Italian classes you could possibly take. Italian is a fairly common language, so a lot of schools have it. This way you will have a native speaker to answer any questions you may have and you'll be in an enviornment where the languages will be spoken regularly. If you do all of this I'd say you have a really good shot at having a pretty solid grasp of the language before you penpal comes here to the states. I took a similar approach to the one I gave you when I first began learning Portuguese. I started out learning on my own (with self-help books, dictionaries, audio CDs) and went over the material as often as I could. I also tried using the language as much as possible, reading Yahoo! news in the language, making a Brazilian penpal, watching some Brazilian programs on youtube. This upcoming semester I'll be taking my first ever Portuguese class at my university. Although I haven't even started the class yet after only about a year of learning the language on my own I'm almost able to hold full length conversations with with penpal over Messenger and can understand roughly 60% of what I hear from Portuguese/Brazilian t.v. programs. If you stay dedicated and are really seriously about learning Italian you can do it. Believe me, the resources are out there. You just have to find ways to keep yourself motivated (this is the hardest part for me) and MAKE time to learn the language. I wish you the best of luck and hope you have a great wedding too. Ciao!!!
- I think you should learn the language on books (grammar, vocabulary, etc), and then you can taste the pronunciation by watching Italian television ( rai1 for example) or listening to Italian radio on the web. (radio 105, radio Italia, Rds, etc) If you need more help, you can contact me! Good luck! Ciao!
