learn italian

I found a good podcast for learning Italian. It’s over at http://www.learnitalianpod.com/

I downloaded a bunch of them to put on my iPod to listen to during my commute. They are good in the sense that they don’t just spit out vocabulary at you, but they tell you the grammatical rules and daily use, ie when you can drop the subject (io, noi) and just using the “to have” and “to be” conjunctions.

the green-grocers in the corner from my flat is run by these two old italian guys. they don’t speak any english. i go there for my veggies as much as the italian lessons :)

we have our little ritual: i ask for a certain amount of veggies, and they correct or confirm my selection. when i don’t know the name of something, they’d say the name for me and repeat it slowly.

it’s pretty cool! i am going to make a visual dictionary using the photos i took at their shop. :)

well, i am due to start my master’s degree at domus academy milano in the middle of january 2006. the course will be held in english for the first 2 months, then continued in italian.

so you can imagine that i am frantically trying to learn italian. we will have italian classes at domus as well, apparently. i’m learning from a rosetta stone CD right now. it’s ok for building up vocabulary. i wonder what kind of situation i will be in that would require me to say, “uno bambino sotto uno aerio.”

the good thing is, i can draw upon my knowledge of portuguese, spanish and french to learn italian. i kept spelling things wrong though, like delicioso instead of delizzioso. hmmm.

well, thursday nights are dedicated italian nights.

more progress in a week or so.