Tag Archives: Italian

Thoughts on Learning a New Language (WARNING: LOTS OF -FEELINGS- AHEAD)

Trying to immerse yourself in a language is really difficult. Well, at least I’m finding it so. I’ve always been pretty good at languages in general, or I guess Romantic languages; Japanese didn’t exactly come as easily to me when I dabbled in it last year. But I always got good grades in Spanish during middle school and high school, and for the most part, I’ve been able to breeze through Italian in college.

This was because of the way it was taught. This is a vocab list, memorize it. These are the grammar rules, write some practice sentences with them. It’s easy to get into the routine of that teaching style; just go with the flow and get the grades and that’s it.

I’m not studying Italian for any particular reason. I don’t have a drop of Italian blood in me, and it isn’t exactly a very widespread language. In fact, the Italian that I learned in college and the Italian that I’m learning now isn’t even a “natural” language. It didn’t develop naturally, like English did. It was created in order to unite Italy. Everyone in Italy speaks a regional dialect; a person from the north can barely understand someone from the south, because they’re like two completely different languages. But at least they have “standard Italian” to fall back on. If they know it.

But anyway. One of the big reasons I decided to start studying Italian was just because it’s pretty. It sounds nice to the ear. It’s flowy, and it reminds me of windchimes and roses. It sounds even better when it’s the language of an aria, because it’s really like a song.

Language–particularly written language–is my only way to describe my emotions. Inside my head and heart, I don’t actually define things with words, but rather with feelings. Everything and everyone has its own feeling, particularly if there’s also a distinct smell, sound, touch, taste, or sight associated with it. Periods of time in my life and locations also have incredibly specific feelings attached to them. I won’t remember someone with words, but with feelings; I see the image of their face in my mind’s eye, and the image immediately sends an electrical message of emotion right to about where my diaphragm is. If you ask me to describe someone, I’ll have to feel the feeling about them, dip my hand into the soup of feelings, and pull out whatever words I manage to find. I wish I could just touch my hand to yours and transmit the feeling instead, that way you’d know exactly how I mean.

It’s rare that I’m able to pick out the perfect combination of words to precisely convey those emotions, and it feels so satisfying when I do. Actually, the “windchimes and roses” bit is a good example of this moment. It’s vague enough that it’s fuzzy around the edges and blurry enough to be ethereal, yet it still gives you the right idea. Just like emotions. It’s like mist. Words need to be like mist, and they need to be visible–a tangible mist, something that you can feel floating through your fingers but can’t quite grab onto. That’s what it’s like.

This is why I’m so much better at writing than I am speaking. When I speak I find it very difficult to find exactly what I want to say, and I’ll stumble over my words, and you’ll often hear me say, “Oh…oh…you know what I mean!” because I just don’t know how to word the feeling. Yet, I still talk very quickly and I prefer writing in a stream-of-consciousness style (which is what this is) because everything comes to me so fast and it just kind of all spills out and I want you to know exactly what I’m feeling at this very instant! But writing does give me the time to think about it, plus some things I write would sound weird in colloquial speech. And typing is better because it’s faster than writing by hand, and usually I end up saying more because writer’s cramp sucks. Plus, I can proofread. But I usually don’t end up changing too much, unless I can finally think of those perfect combinations of words, the kind that makes you smack your lips and tongue in satisfaction. “Crisp” is a fantastic word for the feeling.

It is this fight between words not being enough and words being everything that is making this language immersion experience difficult for me.

It’s not that I go into class and am completely lost. Well, okay, admittedly sometimes. It’s mostly a lack of vocabulary if that happens, or if I drift off into space, which happens way more than it should. But after trying to listen intently for the first week of being here and exhausting myself because of it (just speaking Italian for awhile makes my mouth feel funny, because I’m exercising muscles I don’t normally use), I fell into a “lazy” mode during the second week, and instead of trying really hard to understand what was going on, I sat back and wanted it to come to me. I didn’t try. I had realized how listening to English was so easy for me–that it required no effort and that I could just listen and understand. I guess that’s where I want to be with Italian, and since I’m really impatient, I wanted it ASAP. But it was like pulling two elastics from opposite ends and trying to tie them in the middle, but the elastics were too short. I was trying to force a connection I wasn’t prepared to make.

I think it’s also a bit of a shock because I’m used to my Italian professors at home not only speaking at a good pace but also mostly using vocabulary that they expect us to know. But the professors here just talk, and they have regional accents. If they use a word that they don’t think we’ll know, they’ll define it–but in Italian. I’m so used to just getting the equivalent in English!

That’s the biggest problem, I think; if I really want to understand a word, I have to look it up or translate it into English. I rely on my Oxford English-Italian dictionary a lot, or if I do listen to the Italian definition, I’ll just come up with the English equivalent. I especially needed to do that for words like “siccome” and “a patto che”–“since” and “provided that.” “Andro’ al cinema a patto che Laura anche venga.” “I’ll go to the cinema provided that Laura also comes.” (And “a patto che” requires the following verb to be subjunctive and that’s a whole other ballgame that seems very much reliant on intuition.) But in order to truly understand “a patto che,” I needed the translation.

But why?

It’s because I inherently understand what it means. This is where the whole rambling feelings bit comes in. Not only have foreign languages come rather easily to me, but also my native English language. I’ve always prided myself on being good at grammar. I did well on the Writing SAT not because I studied hard or memorized rules or came up with any particular strategy, but because I could just look at a sentence and know if it FEELS right or not. I tried to tutor my younger brother on the Writing SAT once and I found it hard to explain why something was right or wrong (not to mention that I still don’t get 100% of the questions right). “It’s…just…’cause it is!”

Obviously the brain works in a way during the critical language period that makes you innately understand your native language(s). But when you’re an adult language learner, it’s different. A lot of people in the class want very technical explanations for grammar rules, and sometimes those are useful for me, too, but I understand it much better when I can just translate it into English, because then I can just attach an intuitive feeling to it and hopefully remember the next time it comes around. For example, prepositions can seem really arbitrary in Italian, and in many cases you just have to memorize which preposition is used with which verb. But of course, it’s been a lot easier for me to memorize the more “feely” ones. An example that comes to mind is “inammorarsi di” (“to be in love with,” but the preposition “di” usually means “of”). English speakers often will use “con” (“with”) instead of “di,” for obvious reasons. But it’s something I’ve been able to remember because it’s such an emotion-filled word.

But for me, “to be in love with” still has a stronger meaning that “inammorarsi di,” even though they mean exactly the same thing. Yet I think the latter sounds nicer. Additionally, it is more concise, though Italian isn’t always concise. “Laura’s dog.” “Il cane di Laura.” Yeah.

Though actually, now that I’m thinking about it, “love” and its Italian equivalent “amore” have different meanings for me. “Love” is not as nice-sounding, yet it seems more serious, deep, and cutting, like carving words into wood, permanent yet breakable. “Amore” is like a music staff on an ocean wave–it is more carefree, happy, blissful, yet fleeting. Hmm.

A better example of what I’m trying to describe is a couple weeks ago when we read a poem in my general Italian language class. I was able to read it, not knowing a few of the words, and get the general idea of what it was about. I could tell that it was a good poem, but I couldn’t quite grasp its beauty or genius, and I wasn’t on the same wavelength as the writer. For funsies, I decided to translate it into English (I have a translation class anyway, so why not?). When I had finished, I read the poem over again in English, and that’s when I was like, “Oh, oh…this is a REALLY nice poem.” What’s more was understanding that some of the Italian words I didn’t know had double meanings, which contributed to the poem. The poem itself was about a woman being obsessed/insane over a man who never truly loved her. There’s a part that says:

“Non devi rinnegare quell’alone (You don’t have to renounce that halo)

per te creato, che tu solo emani.” (That I create for you, that you alone radiate.)

The word “alone” (pronounced “ah-LOH-neh”) can also mean “ring,” which is what I initially translated it to until I saw the word “emani” in the next line, so then I changed it to “halo.” But I thought it was interesting that it could also mean “ring,” which implies marriage. That’s just something you don’t get when you don’t know the language! And regardless, I was frustrated that I could get into the author’s feelings until I translated it back into English. Here is such a nice-sounding language and I just want to dive into it head-first, but I’m too impatient and I can’t…

I guess what I’m trying to say is that learning a language in this way is making me appreciate my relationship with the English language. It makes me more proud of it, more connected to it, my safe place. I feel like no matter how much vocabulary I learn or how fluent I get, I’ll never have the same relationship with Italian as I do English. Despite the beauty of Italian, right now the words kind of feel like cardboard. I need to fill them with something (someone?), inject them with some kind of meaning in order to really entangle myself in it.

At the same point, however, I feel like a lot of students in my classes are too technical with it. It’s easy to see a language like a machine, I suppose; just learn the different parts and buttons and then make it work, let it whir. I suppose one could learn a language like this, but it just seems so…mechanical and detached. Like you’re just skimming the surface when there’s so much deeper.

So that’s why I need to find that balance. I still don’t know how to get it. I’m too attached to English, but even when I’m fully immersed in Italian, I can’t push it away. I guess it’s a part of me I’ll never be able to push away, but why would I even want to? I don’t need to.

I guess…maybe I’m seeing this wrong. Italian has always been a joy for me as well as a source of pride because I’ve been relatively successful with a passion that came from within me, that I incited on my own, not because I had to learn it in school. It’s still a balance, though; if I want to learn, I have to try, but I can’t try so hard. Just let it be a joy: not a mandatory job, yet not something that’s easy to put aside.

Maybe I’ll just keep thinking about windchimes and roses.

Location: Perugia, Italy

Are these the same blocks Julius Caesar walked on?

Ciao!

It’s been a while since I last updated, but I had another crazy week in Roma. With every passing day, I come to love this amazing city more and more. It seems like everywhere I go I wind up basking in amazement at a beautiful statue or a detailed fountain.

Last week was what IES called “intensive Italian” week. This meant that we had Italian every day for 2.5 hours. On Monday we had 12 students in our class. By the end of the week we were down to 8. For me, the class was not too hard. We reviewed three of the “past tenses” in Italian for the majority of the week. Although I have studied them before, I welcomed the review. Each tense has very specific rules about when you can use it, so I needed the review.

Our class also watched a movie called “La Finestra di Fronte”. When our teacher asked if we wanted English subtitles, one of the students surprised her by asking for Italian subtitles instead. This was a great idea as it allowed us to better understand the film and the Italian language in general without depending on English. I know that I definitely expanded my vocabulary while watching that film!

We had an exam on Friday followed by a field study. Since the film we watched took place in the Jewish Ghetto of Rome, we were sent there to fill out a worksheet. I love how IES tries to get you out into the city as much as possible. I was very happy to have my first field study so early!

The whole week I was debating whether to go to Florence with some friends or stay in Rome and do “Rome as a tourist” with some other friends. I decided to stay in Rome. On Saturday, we decided to go to the Colosseum (or try to go to the Colosseum). We wound up getting there at 3:30 PM thinking we would have no problem getting in. We were wrong. It turns out that people are not allowed into the Colosseum after 3:30 PM and it closes at 4:30 PM.

While this was very disappointing we certainly made the best of it. We walked around the Colosseum, took pictures of the Forum, and basked in the glory of the Arc of Constantine. It was amazing. At one point, I turned to my friends and said “Are these the same blocks that Julius Caesar walked on?” It really put everything in perspective, for me at least. The blocks I was walking on, the statues I pass every day, the monuments I gaze upon with awe, and the fountains I stop and rest next to are all older than not only the United States of America, but were all there when Christopher Columbus discovered that the world was not flat. That is pretty amazing. I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

Tomorrow, my full schedule begins, I can’t wait to meet all my professors and find out exactly what we will be learning about. I want to continue to take advantage of all Rome has to offer.

Ciao,
Mike

Location: Roma, Italia

Intensive Italian Recap and Class Registration

For any student studying abroad through the IES: Milan program, the first 3 weeks of classes consist of what is known as the “Intensive Italian” program. Upon arriving in Milan, students are assigned to Italian classes of various levels, either 100 (for those who have little or no Italian experience), 150 (1-2 years experience), 200 (3-4 years experience), or 300/350 (advanced), based on a test completed as part of your application. Each Italian class counts as 6 credits. Although, if you have never taken Italian before, you are not required to take this test. Also, if you don’t agree with what level you were assigned to, you can speak to one of the academic counselors and change classes. Since I had never taken an Italian class in my life, I was assigned to Italian 100.

The first 2 weeks of the “Intensive Italian” program includes 2.5 hour classes 5 days a week, from 9 A.M. to 11:30 A.M. A quiz is also given on each Friday. The classes aren’t particularly bad since at 10:30, each class stops for a 15 minute break. In true Italian fashion, nearly every student goes across the street to a bar (a cafe in Italy) to get espresso, cappuccino, lattes, or brioches (basically flavored croissants). The last week consists of 3 hour classes every day and a final exam on Friday. While three hour classes seem dreadful when looking at them initially, it is not hard to make it through when it is your only class for the day and you are done at noon!

In summary, Italian class so far has been very manageable. Even though I am not a “language person,” I have done well on each homework assignment and quiz/test. I actually look forward to my Italian class each day since it allows me to better communicate on a daily basis with people throughout the city.

During the second week of classes, IES students register for the rest of their classes for the duration of the semester. Since I crafted my schedule at Penn State to allow me to fulfill my general education credits while studying in Italy, I scheduled 3 classes (3 credits each) in addition to my Italian class, for a total of 15 credits this semester. After having attended each of my classes this week, here is a synopsis of my courses and what requirements they fulfill at Penn State:

AH 340 Cracking the Code: Leonardo da Vinci and Renaissance Art in Milan, 1400-1500 (Counts as GA and GAU)

This class is an introduction to the history of Renaissance art, especially focusing on the city of Milan and its famous citizen, Leonardo da Vinci. Exploring his impact on the city and his accomplishments while he lived in Milan, this class explores the history of da Vinci and his artistic, social, and cultural impact. This is a more hands-on art class as it features numerous field trips through the city to visit some of his famous works like The Last Supper, his fresco ceiling at the Castello Sforzesco, and his Codice Atlanticus at the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana. We are also required to take an original da Vinci discovery or breakthrough and come up with a way that this idea could be enhanced in the modern age for our final project.

PO 342 The EU and the Process of European Integration (Counts as GS and GAU)

This course explores the process of European integration and its cultural, social, economic, and political causes and effects. Serving as an introductory political science class, this class gives an understanding of the institutional organization, advancement, and relationship of the EU with nations such as the United States, Russia, and China. Due to the current monetary concerns facing the EU with the Euro and the constantly shifting cultural landscape of Europe, I think this will be a fun class to get a better understanding of European politics and government.

FS 335 Filmmaking in Milan: Discovering the City through Italian Cinema (Counts as GA and GAU)

Designed to allow students to discover Italian culture, customs, and life through cinema and filmmaking, this class is a hands-on cinema class that allows students to write, produce, act in, and edit their own movies. This course allows students to learn about the production of movies and well as become technically competent in shooting and editing. Featuring interactions with native Italians throughout the city and screenings of historically an culturally significant Italian films, this class should be a fun way to creatively understand Milan and Italy.

Look next week for a recap of my upcoming weekend, featuring 2 days in Monaco and a 3 day ski-trip in the Alps!

Location: Milano, Italy

Finally in Roma!

Ciao Tutti (Hi All)!

It has been a week since I have arrived in Rome and I am finally getting around to updating my blog. I think that says a lot about how crazy my week has been!

I arrived in Rome last Friday (a few days before my program started) to do some sightseeing before I had to start my classes. I stayed at a hotel near the Vatican which was nice in that it was a bit quieter than staying in the city center of Rome, but it also meant that every time we wanted to get to the main part of the city we needed to either walk 25 minutes or take a taxi. I normally took a taxi, but it set me back about 10 Euro each time. In hindsight, I think it would have made more sense to stay a bit closer to the city center.

My first impressions of Rome are pure excitement and amazement. The weather is gorgeous (55+ every day I’ve been here) and it seems like there is a beautiful building, statue, or fountain around every street corner. I think it is impossible to see all the sites in Rome in a lifetime, yet alone in 4 months! Given this, I got started right away by going to see a bunch of sites the right after I got to my hotel. I took a taxi to my apartment’s address and started from there. As I mentioned in my last post, the Castel Sant’Angelo is literally a 2 minute walk from my apartment, so I saw that one first.

There is a pathway that connects Vatican City with the Castel Sant’Angelo. Whenever the Pope was in danger, he would leave Vatican City and take refuge in Castel Sant’Angelo. It was essentially his fort! is actually an old fortress. At the top of the Castel is Michael the Arc Angel. The statue was put there after a plague devastated Rome and the Pope led a procession around the city of Rome praying for God to intervene and end the plague. When the procession made it to the Castel Sant’Angelo everyone saw an image of Michael the Arc Angel holding a sword. Shortly after this, the plague ended.

After seeing this, I ventured into the winding cobblestone roads behind my apartment. My apartment is situated in what was the rich section of Rome during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, so chances are that I am walking on the same roads some of the great minds of Rome walked on. There are so many great looking restaurants close to me – I hope I can see them all! After about a 10 minute walk (and passing the famous “Steeler’s Bar” in Rome), I stumbled into the Piazza Navona which is considered to be one of the nicest Piazzas in Rome.

This is a fountain that is in Piazza Navona. Piazza Navona is a very touristy place, but that does not detract from its beauty. There are artists selling their gorgeous art, a lot of cafes along the sides of the piazzas, and musicians playing the “typical” Italian music. I could definitely see myself walking down to that Piazza to people watch while enjoying some gelato.

After seeing the Piazza Navona, I continued on to see the Forum and the “Wedding Cake” (a name that tourists gave to a monument commerating Victor Emmanuale – it actually looks like a wedding cake!).

Largo Argentina. It is actually below street level by at least 30 feet. The reason for the change in street level is because the Tiber River used to flood every year. This led to a higher street level. The Romans eventually built walls around the Tiber River to keep this from happening again.

This is the Wedding Cake AKA “Il Vittoriano”. Il Vittoriano is also home to Piazza Venezia, another well known Piazza in Rome.

I then walked down the Via del Corso which can be equated to New York’s 5th Avenue. It has a lot of very well known stores. Along here, I bought a cell phone with a company called Tre. This was very challenging because it was the first time I had to use upper level Italian, but I succeeded and got a phone. Very proud of myself, I continued on my way up the Via del Corso.

The Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps are both a block off of the Via del Corso.

The Trevi Fountian.

The Spanish Steps.

A fountain near the Spanish Steps.

I then walked to the Piazza del Popolo and went back to my hotel. I was amazed to see how many amazing and famous sites were within walking distance to my apartment. I even missed a site along the way – the Pantheon. The Pantheon is a 10 minute walk from my apartment. Rome is truly an amazing city.

The next day, I took a hop-on, hop-off tour and was able to see some other sites like the Colosseum, Circus Maximus, and the Baths of Caracalla.

Then, it was the day I’ve been waiting for since I knew I wanted to study abroad – move-in day. Our apartment is absolutely gorgeous and exceeded my expectations in every single way. It is less than a 2 minute walk from the IES Center where I will be taking all of my classes. It has a great view of the Castel Sant’Angelo from my window. There are two bedrooms, a huge living room, a kitchen with a dishwasher and a washing machine, and separate dining area. I was so happy that we have a washing machine because it would have been painful to bring my laundry to a laundromat every week!

This is my room. My bed is the one closest to the window.

This is the view from my window looking to the right. Not a bad view at all….

As I mentioned in my earlier post, I am in an “Italiano a Casa” apartment which means that all four people who live in my apartment can only speak Italian within the confines of my apartment. The hope is that by using Italian in an everyday conversational context I will be able to pick up Italian at a much faster rate than I would otherwise. It is definitely working – one of my roommates, Silvio, is an Italian student who attends the University of Roma Tre, another of my roommates, Jordan, is an Italian major and goes to Seton Hall, and the last roommate, Zach, is an Italian minor at Connecticut College. My Italian is definitely the worst out of the group, but I look at it with a sense of optimism in that I have the greatest chance to improve my Italian.

I can already see a difference in my Italian. When I first arrived in the apartment, I understood around 60% of what my roommates said. This was partly because I was not used to listening to Italians talk as fast as they do. Now, I have gotten used to the speed and have built up my vocabulary a bit. I would say I understand about 70% of what my roommates say – not a bad improvement for only 5 days!

Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were the orientation to IES Rome. We were introduced to the staff, listened to a police officer talk about the rules of Italy and how to stay safe, learned how to take the public transportation in Rome, and took our Italian placement exams. I placed into Italian 301. I’m very happy I got into this one because I did not do very well on the oral exam. The questions they asked you were hard to answer in English, yet alone Italian. The hardest one was “If you were the President of the United States, what would you do?”. I obviously did well enough to get into the 300 level class which will transfer to Penn State and satisfy the requirement for my minor.

We also had the chance to introduce ourselves to the other students. It definitely is true what they say about Penn State – we travel well. There are 16 other Penn Staters in the program (143 students in total), so Penn State was the most common school. I had the opportunity to meet people from many schools including Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Emory. Everyone at the program is so outgoing and so much fun to be around. I could easily see myself socializing with anyone over here.

On Friday, we took a tour of the historical section of the city. We saw many sites that I already saw like Piazza Navona, but I got to see the Jewish Ghetto which was very interesting. It has all been torn down, but all the Jewish people of Rome had to live in an area of four square blocks between the years of 1555 and Italian Unification in 1861. It is estimated that at one point, there were over 9,000 people living in those four square blocks. The Jews were also forced to go to Catholic mass on Sunday. The people who remained in the Jewish Ghetto after Italian Unification were also the first people to be sent to concentration camps in Italy during World War II.

On Saturday, IES hosted a scavenger hunt called the Amazing Roman Race. This was very exhausting as we had to walk to pretty much every major site in Rome in period of three hours.

That brings me to today. This morning, my roommate and I went to an open air market called Porta Portese which is the largest open air market in Rome. It is open on every Sunday and the vendors sell things from clothes to electronics to old books and postcards. I bought an alarm clock for 10 Euro, so I was satisfied. Tonight, we’re going to one of the “American Bars” in Rome to watch the Super Bowl. It starts at 12:30 AM, so it is going to be a long night.

I apologize for the length of this entry. I will try to update my blog more frequently once things calm down.