Free resource http://italian.about.com/

http://italian.about.com/

I signed up for their "Word of the Day" news letter. Let's see if it's useful.

Words of the Day

Fissato - A person with an obsession

Zampa - Animal's leg (SP: Pata)

Noi - We

Mio - My

Rotto - Broken

Cane - Dog

Criminale - Criminal

1. (Question: What is a group of female criminals called? criminale?)The group remains masculine CRIMINALE.

Ladro - Thief

Back

I lost track of the blog, I'm back on it now. I was a bit side tracked, but new developments came up while being away.

Immersion + Speech

I need to get used to hearing Italian in order to discern words during speech. Words blend together all the time during conversation, since Italian never seems to be spoken slowly.

In order to become immersed in the language I will look for movies and music in Italian.

Target: Learn + develop techniques for breaking up and understanding Italian speech.

Update 8/10/09: I lost emphasis on this and directed efforts towards the use of mnemonics and cognitive devices to acquire vocabulary. By hearing Italian speech repeatedly (heard the same podcasts over and over) I can now discern sounds better, but I'm still a long way off. More details later.

Movie: Mio fratello è figlio unico

Stop. Italian movie time!

I saw "Mio fratello è figlio unico" three days ago by streaming it through Netflix. So far I'm not impressed by Netflix's Italian online movie viewing experience, it lacks any sign of modern Italian cinema. And although I'm enticed to watch 1960's "Playgirls and the vampire", I may just start ordering the DVDs over the mail. I liked the movie, it is centered around a boy who falls in and out of love with fascim during an era of political turmoil in post fascist Italy. I particularly enjoyed the dynamics of the family, it gave me insight into the Italian personalities of family members. It also allowed me to see certain cultural parallels between Italians and Latinos.

Endings with "tà"

Words ending in "tà" are the equivalent of the "dad" ending in Spanish and the "dade" ending in Portuguese.

The word "age" in all three:

età (it)
edad (sp)
idade (pt)

Got a magazine

Got GQ italy, I'm trying to read the articles as if was trying to reverse engineer an encryption algorithm.

Desconstruction

Singular and plural observations:

Il ragazzo
I ragazzi

Lo specchio
Gli specchi

Le ragazze
La ragazza


Contractions seem to appear when an article is placed before a word beginning with a vowel.


L'idea = La idea
di storia d'America (di America)


di = de (sp)

I got a book

I purchased the book "Italian in 10 minutes a day" at Barnes & Nobles. It's pages are reminiscent of elementary school text books.

Entry

velocità = velocity

doppio = double (like doppio espresso, two shots of espresso)

esiste = exist

voce = voice (vox in latin)

troppo = demasiado (Spanish)

Dictionary (Free Resource)

http://it.wiktionary.org

Wiktionary is a wiki based free dictionary, it is available in many languages, Italian being one of them.

Italian Podcast (Free Learning Source)

http://www.learnitalianpod.com/

I came across this free podcast, it is available through iTunes. I'm currently downloading episodes directly through my iPhone. It seems like the episodes are free, but they sell learning tools and the transcripts of the episodes. I'm going to use these to get used to hearing Italian.

Italian Spiderman

Rispetti le donne!

Making connections

CIBO = FOOD
CIBO sounds like CHIVO (Spanish).
CHIVO = GOAT

Eat a goat. I check out at the supermarket and all the food in the cart is made of goat.

The hacking begins.

I've decided to learn Italian, this journey into a language will be unorthodox, mangled, and probably reliant on my own idiosyncrasy. I want it to be an experience in learning to learn, for the sake of learning. The approach is one of a tinkerer, a programmer hacking the language learning process, the kind taken by kids who used to take apart toys and make new ones.

Italian is the destination, this effort is the vessel.
SOS signals are being broadcasted.