Archive for March, 2010
Mar
Mar
Updated goals for Italian
When I started this blog, I made a point that it is important it is to have clearly defined goals by which to measure success, and then I laid out some goals for this year. As it turns out, I think those goals were a bit too easy.
Mar
Mar
Stop trying to learn a foreign language
Stop trying to learn a foreign language. I’m not kidding. Stop trying. If all you’re willing to do is try, you’ll be happier and better off if you just stop now. There was a cute little muppet once, who famously said in his signature zen-like way, “Do, or do not. There is no try.” No one has ever said it better.
Mar
Mar
Find vocabulary inspiration at a restaurant
Here in the United States, clever marketing people have learned to attach foreign words to products in order to make them sound more appealing, to the point where we imagine grand meanings in each of these names. But in reality, these foreign words are often nothing more than boring kitchen terms.
Mar
Mar
To be or not to be, in Italian
One particular phenomenon I often encounter in foreign languages is their unusual treatments of the verb “to be”. We tend to generalize things in English. But Spanish, for instance, differentiates between temporary states (like emotion or location) and permanent states (like a career, or a physical trait). Most language prefer “I have hunger” over our “I am hungry”. And at least one language I know of (Russian) actually omits the verb “to be” completely from the sentence!
Mar
Mar
To be or not to be, in Russian!
Today, that means continuing the discussion of “to be” into Russian. This is a very exciting topic for me, because learning Russian meant learning a completely new way to think. You see, the English language uses the verb “to be” for almost everything, but the Russian language almost doesn’t use it at all. In fact, the present tense of the verb “to be” is so unused that it completely disappeared from the language over a century ago!
Mar
Mar
To be or not to be, in Spanish
Continuing along my “to be” theme, today I am going to discuss the difference in Spanish between ser and estar, both verbs with mean “to be”. After yesterday’s extended discussion of the Russian way, today will be a piece of cake! In fact, in Spanish, the difference is even easier to remember than in Italian!
Mar
Mar
I was just about to…
As we covered yesterday, there are a few special cases in Italian where we use the verb stare. Today I just want to talk briefly about one of those cases.
Mar
Mar
How much Italian can you learn in one month?
Okay, so what if you still don’t think it’s possible to be fluent in a new language in one year? Or, maybe you believe it’s possible, but just not possible for you. Or, maybe a year sounds fine, but you think anyone who claims to do it in two months is a pure genious… or just crazy. Right?
Mar
Mar
What are you doing?
In English, we use the continuous tense a lot to describe action in the present tense that is occurring right now. Today we’re going to continue exploring the Italian forms of “to be” by learning to form the continuous tense.
Mar
Mar
Italian diminutives
In English, we often add the endings -let, -ie, or -y, onto a word or name to “diminish” it — that is, to make it cuter, smaller, or more personal. For example, the words pig, eye, boot, and horse become piglet, eyelet, bootie, and horsey, and the names Kate and Mike become Katie and Mikey. Most languages have such mechanisms for diminutives, and in fact, most languages use them a lot more than we do in English.