Thanks!

scusami tanto, I should write in English too…lucky you to learn a language in just one year! However, I don't really think that it is possible to learn a language in just one year. If you really love a language and want to learn it well you need to study the grammar and prepositions etc., but you also need to get to know the people, the culture in order to understand their ways of expressing themselves and their idioms. It takes a lot of time to increase your vocabulary to speak fluently like a native, to understand film, read books, & follow blogs all in Italian. But I never say never, or that it is entirely impossible! I will follow you and I applaud you because I think Italian is the most beautiful language in the word! (just talk to me when you get to the tense passato remoto and let me know what you think!)

I thoroughly enjoyed the exercise of forming a response in Italian, but I will follow your lead and also give an English response:
I think you are talking about the difference between learning a language and mastering it. It takes years of study and use to have mastery, but that's why I don't stop learning after just one year! Thanks for for your comments. By the way, I will actually begin looking at the passato prossimo tomorrow – I know, it's not the passato remoto, but it's a start in that direction!

La cosa più importante riguarda imparare qualsiasi cosa è abbandonare le inibizioni. Per questa cosa e per incrociare la mura, io ho cominciato questo sito web! Spero che posso aiutare gente vincere queste mure.

Grazie! Leggerò il tuo blog. :-)

I am not so arrogant as to think of myself as a master of Italian after less than 2 months of study, but I think I was right and perhaps you didn't realize that I was referencing the comment to which I was replying.

I wrote “mura” in response to Melissa, who said “…pero' poi tante persone si sbattono contro una mura…”

Mura means wall, not fear, and I knew that in my translation. I will avidly admit that I used some dicionaries and translation tools to help me in forming that response, and I'm confident that I make mistakes. But I'm not yet convinced that this was one of them. :)

Grazie Barbara per la chiarificazione. Sbaglio sempre muro e mura. La tua spiegazione e' utile per ricordare bene la differenze tra le due parole nel futuro.

I have yet to study a European language (kind of looking forward to it) I don't actually think that Asian languages are harder (or languages that you have no prior exposure to) but I do think you have a boost learning a language that you have passive familiarity to, to the extent that the first couple of months of a completely strange language are about getting you to the same point you would be at in a language you have passive familiarity to.

For example (and I know this is sketchy) Your first paragraph. Buongiorno. Mi chiamo Randy. Lei come si chiama? Come sta? Io sto bene. Io sono un americano che sta studiando l’italiano e scrivendo un sito web. È questo sito, che sta leggendo adesso! Mi piace l’italiano. Lei, che lingua si piache? Come lo studi?
Hello I am called Randy, what is your name? How are you? I am good. I am an American studying Italian and writing a website. <sketchy>The site ???, I ???? Italian, language you ??? how do you study?</sketchy>

If I look up about three to four words (starting with piace) I could improve that a lot more. I had to guess come = how, via just know roughly form exposure what come sta means.

If you were studying Korean and wrote similar I would not have a single clue. Interestingly I bet if it was spoken clearly and steadily and I could re-run the recording a few times I could do the same in Italian, but nothing at all for Korean, and I would wager that I could read this out in a way that an Italian could understand (poorly but I have heard Italians speak, I can make a hacky first guess at the pronunciation).

If I have this massive start before I even (formally) begin, do you think that timing estimates should be heavily qualified by how much exposure you have had, how close the language is to yours and where the writing system is similar?

There is no doubt about the massive head start that an English-speaker has when learning a European language. In a way, that was kind of the point of this post, because it shows that with a little study (I used LiveMocha), you can quickly get up to a useful level in a month. Of course it's probably slightly skewed by the fact that I speak fluent Spanish and have at least a basic knowledge of French.

With regard to your question about timing estimates, I'm not really sure what you're asking. Do you mean the one month? Or the fluency in one year? Or both?

Don't forget, of course, that Italian still has its own spelling and pronunciation, and where that built-in advantage helps quite a lot for comprehension, it has a less dramatic aid to speaking and even less to writing, because of the spelling and grammar involved.

There are too many factors to consider. For example…

Spanish is (all things considered) quite similar to English. It's also the most accessible foreign language here in the US. Yet as it was my first foreign language, it took me a long time to become fluent.

Russian is, on the contrary, considered to be quite difficult and very little like English. It's also much harder to find Russian speakers locally, and very difficult to find materials for learning and practice. Yet after about 18 months (that's where I'm at so far) I'm speaking pretty fluently, writing even more fluently, and with good grammar and spelling, and receiving compliments about how I know Russian better than people who've studied for 6-7 years. In fact, I can have conversations in Russian about topics that are much more complicated than those I can have in Spanish.

What's the difference? I think the first difference is that I put an incredible amount of energy into studying Russian. I was very highly motivated (still am). I think if I'd have this level of desire to speak Spanish, I'd probably have mastered it in 3-6 months.

Second, I had no foreign language experience when I took on Spanish, so I was a product of whatever methods where preferred by my teachers, or by the authors of the programs I puchased, the books I read, etc. But by the time I'd gotten to Russian, I had already had experience with Spanish, German, French, Phillipino, and Portuguese, to varying degrees. And moreover, I had experience with differen teachers in different classrooms, many programs, many books, many CDs. When I wanted study materials for Russian, I knew what to look for. And when I studied or practiced, I know the most effective ways to use my time.

So now, with those two opposite extremes as reference, I can draw some interesting comparisons with my Italian studies this year. First, my language experience in general seems to give a tremendous advantage. And the similarities between Spanish and Italian are even more of an advantage. However, as much as I may enjoy it, I just can't get my interest level in Italian to anything close to what it is for Russian. (Who knows… maybe I just have Slavic blood?) I feel like I should be much farther along than I am right now.

I guess trying to quantify these things into numerical data for expected time periods is pretty difficult. Fortunately for me, the “one-year” time frame tends to overcome that, because it seems that familiar language hold my interest less, whereas strange languages keep me fascinated. If I was working on a 3-month or 6-month system, I think I'd easily get burned out.

A comprehensive reply that :).

Individuality trumps all it seems, I think I should only be thinking about trends in times as averages for groups of people, any individual can buck the trend due to special circumstances or interest for sure. Actually I think it was probably the exotic nature of Chinese that get me going for my first language so I can understand the attraction of Russian.