Best way to learn a language (Italian)
Discussion
I want to learn to speak Italian to a level where I can hold a basic conversation on holidays for example, and read to a basic level.
I’ve seen classes, online classes, apps, books, and videos, and wanted to find out the general consensus on which is the most effective method.
Cost is a consideration, but don’t mind paying for lessons if that would accelerate my learning sufficiently to warrant it.
I’ve seen classes, online classes, apps, books, and videos, and wanted to find out the general consensus on which is the most effective method.
Cost is a consideration, but don’t mind paying for lessons if that would accelerate my learning sufficiently to warrant it.
Couple of years back I did 3 months of Rosetta Stone Italian. It helps that Italian is one of the easier languages to learn, but it certainly worked for me. A former work colleague was half Italian and was able to spot check me from time to time. Of course having not used it much recently its sort of leaked out. But I can still count to 10, remember colours and basic phrases. And even "io ha una prenotazioni" 
"Prego"
Problem I had in my touristy destination, is that people would hear me speaking Italian, hear my English accent and immediately switch to English to be helpful. When I wanted to improve my italian.
I did the same RS course about a decade back for German, and I've used that much more over the years so that's stuck better.
The biggest problem with RS is that it doesn't really set you up with "holiday specific" sentences. So you can end up learning stuff that's not immediately useful
Earlier this year I tried RS Japanese (for a trip) And that was a complete waste of time. As it used Kanji on screen. When to learn it as someone used to our 26 character alphabet you need it changed.
i.e instead of the kanji
I need to see it in our alphabet as "arigato gozaimasu" to be able to learn it
As an aside it seems "su" on the end of words is really "ss" not "sue" so its "go-zai-mass"
And of course Japanese has 3 different alphabets and 2000 kanji!
In the end I took a Lonely Planet phrase book and whilst it wasn't easy. I muddled through with lots of smiling and pointing.
The thing is that at School I never really cared for languages. I got a "D" in GCSE French. but as I get older I find it way more interesting and I think that's the key if you REALLY want to learn one.
"Prego"
Problem I had in my touristy destination, is that people would hear me speaking Italian, hear my English accent and immediately switch to English to be helpful. When I wanted to improve my italian.
I did the same RS course about a decade back for German, and I've used that much more over the years so that's stuck better.
The biggest problem with RS is that it doesn't really set you up with "holiday specific" sentences. So you can end up learning stuff that's not immediately useful
Earlier this year I tried RS Japanese (for a trip) And that was a complete waste of time. As it used Kanji on screen. When to learn it as someone used to our 26 character alphabet you need it changed.
i.e instead of the kanji
I need to see it in our alphabet as "arigato gozaimasu" to be able to learn it
As an aside it seems "su" on the end of words is really "ss" not "sue" so its "go-zai-mass"
And of course Japanese has 3 different alphabets and 2000 kanji!
In the end I took a Lonely Planet phrase book and whilst it wasn't easy. I muddled through with lots of smiling and pointing.The thing is that at School I never really cared for languages. I got a "D" in GCSE French. but as I get older I find it way more interesting and I think that's the key if you REALLY want to learn one.
Edited by BunkMoreland on Tuesday 11th June 21:58
Duolingo is a great place to start. Use this alongside a reputable "Teach Yourself..." book. Start listening to radio/watching TV in your target language, and if possible find subtitled versions, but not subtitled in English, subtitled in the target language so you can read along with the dialogue. By all means pay for some private lessons too, or look to see if your local College has evening classes or even just conversation groups for adults.
The key thing is keeping at it. Continuity. Repetition. Same stuff over and over again until you're bored of it, but keep pushing. Slack off and it won't stick. Start trying to think in your target language once you have some basics.
Good luck.
The key thing is keeping at it. Continuity. Repetition. Same stuff over and over again until you're bored of it, but keep pushing. Slack off and it won't stick. Start trying to think in your target language once you have some basics.
Good luck.
Duolingo's ads annoy me, I don't have the patience for it but I can see why it would work for people with more patience than me.
I did pay the subscription one year to get rid of them but didn't use it enough to feel the cost was justified so I never renewed it.
I listen to language tapes when I go running and I've tried watching some foreign language shows with the subtitles on. I also do flashcards for vocabulary. They help but nothing beats speaking to someone in the language you're learning.
I did Japanese in school for a year. I never knew I'd have a need for it. Now I've Japanese family and had to relearn some of it. But flash cards helped me and my brother. I don't bother with Kanji other than a few obvious symbols like numbers, Hiragana and Katakana are as far as I'll go
.
I did pay the subscription one year to get rid of them but didn't use it enough to feel the cost was justified so I never renewed it.
I listen to language tapes when I go running and I've tried watching some foreign language shows with the subtitles on. I also do flashcards for vocabulary. They help but nothing beats speaking to someone in the language you're learning.
I did Japanese in school for a year. I never knew I'd have a need for it. Now I've Japanese family and had to relearn some of it. But flash cards helped me and my brother. I don't bother with Kanji other than a few obvious symbols like numbers, Hiragana and Katakana are as far as I'll go
.Turtle Shed said:
Another vote for Duolingo. I've done 520 days of learning German, with my target being 1,000 days to have the most basic conversational ability.
It's very repetitive, which of course is exactly how it is supposed to be.
Spot on. I'm trying to learn Scottish Gaelic on Duolingo at the moment (just for fun and to keep my ageing brain alert), blimey it's difficult! The spelling and pronunciation of the letters is an outrage. But, keep on repeating everything and it eventually starts to sink in.It's very repetitive, which of course is exactly how it is supposed to be.
CivicDuties said:
Spot on. I'm trying to learn Scottish Gaelic on Duolingo at the moment (just for fun and to keep my ageing brain alert), blimey it's difficult! The spelling and pronunciation of the letters is an outrage. But, keep on repeating everything and it eventually starts to sink in.
I could look this up but I'm lazy. Does it have speech recognition for Scottish Gaelic?I remember doing Irish on it for a bit and it was much inferior to the Spanish support due to not having speech recognition. It wasn't Duolingo's fault as it was delegating to the phone's speech recognition so Apple hadn't added Irish at that point.
For what it's worth. Once you get past all those irregular verbs it's not too bad as long as you don't mind not being perfectly grammatically correct. At least you're using the latin alphabet, one of my school Irish teachers wanted to use the Celtic one
.RustyMX5 said:
I've used the Michel Thomas cds in the past. They're quite good
Same - I found it good for a French ski trip a few years ago. I have his Spanish course as well, but I have been to Spain a lot and used to go a couple of times a year. I progressed the most when I took a night class locally between trips, as I tended to forget so much of what I learned on the 4-6 week trips I was doing. Being immersed in the country was helpful; I'd look up words in my dictionary (pre smart phones) so I could order half a kilo of tomatoes etc. It helped a few times - the most memorable when I was trying to get a room in a hostel in Dublin. The receptionist was Spanish, and told me they were full up. I asked her where she was from and she told me the town. I had been there, and said it was a pretty town and mentioned there were a lot of windmills there, all in Spanish. She suddenly found an empty bed (this isn't THAT kind of story, sadly) which was a blessing.I found I could understand a reasonable amount of what I was hearing but knowing the right words to reply was the tricky part.
cheesejunkie said:
CivicDuties said:
Spot on. I'm trying to learn Scottish Gaelic on Duolingo at the moment (just for fun and to keep my ageing brain alert), blimey it's difficult! The spelling and pronunciation of the letters is an outrage. But, keep on repeating everything and it eventually starts to sink in.
I could look this up but I'm lazy. Does it have speech recognition for Scottish Gaelic?I remember doing Irish on it for a bit and it was much inferior to the Spanish support due to not having speech recognition. It wasn't Duolingo's fault as it was delegating to the phone's speech recognition so Apple hadn't added Irish at that point.
For what it's worth. Once you get past all those irregular verbs it's not too bad as long as you don't mind not being perfectly grammatically correct. At least you're using the latin alphabet, one of my school Irish teachers wanted to use the Celtic one
.DuoLingo Italian didn't work for me at all, I found it boring and repetitive with useless phrases.
I spent about the first 2 weeks saying every possible variant of "the (person) eats the apple". Then the next 2 weeks was "the (person) reads the newspaper". Then the next 2 weeks was every variant of "the (person) writes the (something)"
I get what they're trying to do with learning the sentence structure, genders, tenses etc, but it's so repetitive. You are quite a long way in before you cover anything even vaguely useful.
I spent about the first 2 weeks saying every possible variant of "the (person) eats the apple". Then the next 2 weeks was "the (person) reads the newspaper". Then the next 2 weeks was every variant of "the (person) writes the (something)"
I get what they're trying to do with learning the sentence structure, genders, tenses etc, but it's so repetitive. You are quite a long way in before you cover anything even vaguely useful.
budgie smuggler said:
DuoLingo Italian didn't work for me at all, I found it boring and repetitive with useless phrases.
I spent about the first 2 weeks saying every possible variant of "the (person) eats the apple". Then the next 2 weeks was "the (person) reads the newspaper". Then the next 2 weeks was every variant of "the (person) writes the (something)"
I get what they're trying to do with learning the sentence structure, genders, tenses etc, but it's so repetitive. You are quite a long way in before you cover anything even vaguely useful.
I'm sorry budgie but that is the useful stuff. Learn the structures, then build vocabulary on top of it. It's time consuming and tedious work, there are no short cuts. But like riding a bike, once you realise you don't need the stabilisers any more, you start to fly.I spent about the first 2 weeks saying every possible variant of "the (person) eats the apple". Then the next 2 weeks was "the (person) reads the newspaper". Then the next 2 weeks was every variant of "the (person) writes the (something)"
I get what they're trying to do with learning the sentence structure, genders, tenses etc, but it's so repetitive. You are quite a long way in before you cover anything even vaguely useful.
CivicDuties said:
I'm an Android user. I've only used Duolingo for this specific language. I haven't come across speech recognition - are you saying that in some language courses you can speak answers to the app? Because if so, then no, Scottish Gaelic on Android at least does not have it. Using the Latin alphabet isn't much help - I'm finding the spelling absolutely ludicrous. I am finding it really difficult to transcribe words I hear into writing - there seems to be so many extraneous letters. This is coming from someone (native English speaker) with a university degree in a Slavic language, who speaks another Slavic language as well, alongside French and German. I've never come across anything so difficult to write down. Why Gaelic cna't take a leaf out of Welsh's book and simplify the spelling by using the full range of letters available in the Latin alphabet instead of the tortured -mh -bh -dh -gh etc, I'll never understand. And extra, seemingly extraneous, vowels in the spelling, everywhere, and consonants which aren't pronounced at all. I thought English was difficult to spell, but bloody hell. This appears deliberate.
I always thought Gaelic was first written down by stone masons who got paid by the letter.CivicDuties said:
I'm an Android user. I've only used Duolingo for this specific language. I haven't come across speech recognition - are you saying that in some language courses you can speak answers to the app? Because if so, then no, Scottish Gaelic on Android at least does not have it. Using the Latin alphabet isn't much help - I'm finding the spelling absolutely ludicrous. I am finding it really difficult to transcribe words I hear into writing - there seems to be so many extraneous letters. This is coming from someone (native English speaker) with a university degree in a Slavic language, who speaks another Slavic language as well, alongside French and German. I've never come across anything so difficult to write down. Why Gaelic cna't take a leaf out of Welsh's book and simplify the spelling by using the full range of letters available in the Latin alphabet instead of the tortured -mh -bh -dh -gh etc, I'll never understand. And extra, seemingly extraneous, vowels in the spelling, everywhere, and consonants which aren't pronounced at all. I thought English was difficult to spell, but bloody hell. This appears deliberate.
BCGFMP dots as we were taught in school. All the letters that can have a shevie (I've spelled that wrong) written as a H when using the latin alphabet. Of course if you want to get political you'll realise there are two different ways of saying "H" in NI (aitch or haitch) and apparently the latter is due to the Irish alphabet as opposed to the latin one.Yip, the iPhone duo lingo has speech to text recognition for some languages and will occasionally ask you to speak a phrase rather than type. I'm suprised the Android one doesn't but it could just be there isn't for Scottish Gaelic.
budgie smuggler said:
DuoLingo Italian didn't work for me at all, I found it boring and repetitive with useless phrases.
I spent about the first 2 weeks saying every possible variant of "the (person) eats the apple". Then the next 2 weeks was "the (person) reads the newspaper". Then the next 2 weeks was every variant of "the (person) writes the (something)"
I get what they're trying to do with learning the sentence structure, genders, tenses etc, but it's so repetitive. You are quite a long way in before you cover anything even vaguely useful.
It can be amusing. I've never felt the need to say the cat is not a tomato but duo lingo has taught me how to.I spent about the first 2 weeks saying every possible variant of "the (person) eats the apple". Then the next 2 weeks was "the (person) reads the newspaper". Then the next 2 weeks was every variant of "the (person) writes the (something)"
I get what they're trying to do with learning the sentence structure, genders, tenses etc, but it's so repetitive. You are quite a long way in before you cover anything even vaguely useful.
CivicDuties said:
I'm sorry budgie but that is the useful stuff. Learn the structures, then build vocabulary on top of it. It's time consuming and tedious work, there are no short cuts. But like riding a bike, once you realise you don't need the stabilisers any more, you start to fly.
Well not everybody learns the same way, like I said, I found it tedious. I preferred the Coffee Break Italian free podcast and the Rosetta Stone Italian lessons.
They still covered grammar, tenses, genders and all that good stuff, the difference is that almost straight away with those you could have a useful conversation in the way the language is actually used.
cheesejunkie said:
It can be amusing. I've never felt the need to say the cat is not a tomato but duo lingo has taught me how to.
yes there are some amusing bits in thereEdited by budgie smuggler on Wednesday 12th June 16:44
I am learning Italian.
I tried language tapes, Rosetta Stone maybe, but found them of limited value.
I wasted several years with Duolingo free version. In my opinion, it is a clever app for making you think you are learning something when, really, you aren't. Unless of course you intend only ever to discuss cats, milk, loaves of bread, birds, trees, that sort of thing. It avoids grammar (there is a lot, and it is tricky) and the speech recognition seems never to work. The only advantage is that it is FOC.
I would suggest that if you are considering Duolingo because it is free, you would do better to use Youtube video content from Italy Made Easy, Learnamo and a few others. Italy Made Easy is aimed at teaching Italian to English speakers and is run by a guy called Manu, who is a clever chap. They are all trying to sell you something, but in the process of doing so give a lot away FOC.
I realised finally last year, in Sanremo, just how little progress I was making and decided to up the pace. So what I do is:
Listen to Italian news all day, every day.
Listen to mainly Italian pop music. Pop music mainly uses basic language and it's helpful for reinforcing learned topics.
Go to Italy regularly and don't speak anything but Italian, unless someone's life depends upon me speaking English. This has frustrated one or two Italians, but in general it has not been TOO difficult. I first did it six weeks after starting to learn the language "properly".
I use Preply and have two Italian teachers, with whom I have three lessons per week between them. This costs about £60/week in total. In addition, I get homework from both.
I also do independent study and I converse daily by Whatsapp with friends I have made in Italy. This has been easier since I worked out how to add the Italian keyboard to my phone.
I selected the Preply teachers based upon their location. Italian has a lot of regional variations and quite a large percentage of actual Italians don't speak Italian, instead they speak a regional dialect, which can very strong. I chose teachers from Tuscany, because Tuscan Italian is widely considered to be the "purest" form of the language.
Something else that I did was filter on teachers who speak good English. Learning is much quicker if concepts can be explained in one's mother tongue and comparisons drawn between it and the target language. Italy Made Easy is good at this. If I were going to do an online course, this would be it.
One of my teachers speaks good English and the lessons are easier than those from the other teacher for that reason. The other prefers not to speak English but makes up for it by working hard on my behalf. Homework is always set and always marked before the next lesson.
My advice would be to ignore the "Italian is an easy language to learn" claim. It isn't, in my experience. It is supposed to require 600 classroom hours to gain basic competence. But to speak it well will take a lot more time - if you are interested in doing that. Even some Italian public figures don’t speak Italian properly.
Personally, after ten months of the new regime I can speak the language to a point where I can communicate in most situations and on most subjects. But fluency is several years away. This, despite being as close to total immersion as it is possible to be, without living there.
Buona fortuna!
I tried language tapes, Rosetta Stone maybe, but found them of limited value.
I wasted several years with Duolingo free version. In my opinion, it is a clever app for making you think you are learning something when, really, you aren't. Unless of course you intend only ever to discuss cats, milk, loaves of bread, birds, trees, that sort of thing. It avoids grammar (there is a lot, and it is tricky) and the speech recognition seems never to work. The only advantage is that it is FOC.
I would suggest that if you are considering Duolingo because it is free, you would do better to use Youtube video content from Italy Made Easy, Learnamo and a few others. Italy Made Easy is aimed at teaching Italian to English speakers and is run by a guy called Manu, who is a clever chap. They are all trying to sell you something, but in the process of doing so give a lot away FOC.
I realised finally last year, in Sanremo, just how little progress I was making and decided to up the pace. So what I do is:
Listen to Italian news all day, every day.
Listen to mainly Italian pop music. Pop music mainly uses basic language and it's helpful for reinforcing learned topics.
Go to Italy regularly and don't speak anything but Italian, unless someone's life depends upon me speaking English. This has frustrated one or two Italians, but in general it has not been TOO difficult. I first did it six weeks after starting to learn the language "properly".
I use Preply and have two Italian teachers, with whom I have three lessons per week between them. This costs about £60/week in total. In addition, I get homework from both.
I also do independent study and I converse daily by Whatsapp with friends I have made in Italy. This has been easier since I worked out how to add the Italian keyboard to my phone.
I selected the Preply teachers based upon their location. Italian has a lot of regional variations and quite a large percentage of actual Italians don't speak Italian, instead they speak a regional dialect, which can very strong. I chose teachers from Tuscany, because Tuscan Italian is widely considered to be the "purest" form of the language.
Something else that I did was filter on teachers who speak good English. Learning is much quicker if concepts can be explained in one's mother tongue and comparisons drawn between it and the target language. Italy Made Easy is good at this. If I were going to do an online course, this would be it.
One of my teachers speaks good English and the lessons are easier than those from the other teacher for that reason. The other prefers not to speak English but makes up for it by working hard on my behalf. Homework is always set and always marked before the next lesson.
My advice would be to ignore the "Italian is an easy language to learn" claim. It isn't, in my experience. It is supposed to require 600 classroom hours to gain basic competence. But to speak it well will take a lot more time - if you are interested in doing that. Even some Italian public figures don’t speak Italian properly.
Personally, after ten months of the new regime I can speak the language to a point where I can communicate in most situations and on most subjects. But fluency is several years away. This, despite being as close to total immersion as it is possible to be, without living there.
Buona fortuna!
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