These threads make me want to unlearn English.

@colduphere lol!

Maybe some of these posts are just designed to toughen up the OP for the withering treatment he/she might receive in Paris? My experience was that the Parisians were civil, but never warm.

Re the Italian language: a lovely book on that subject is Dianne Hales' La Bella Lingua: My Love Affair with Italian, the World's Most Enchanting Language.

I speak passable (okay, let's say sketchy) Spanish and thought it would be "fun" to learn Italian. My progress has been glacial. The syntax is different although there are words here and there that remind you that there is the occasional handshake between the two languages.

I think an actual class or a tutor would be the way to go but since I'm not in one place long enough for the necessary continuity, I've been having fun with the DuoLingo app modules. Absolutely free, more interactive than Rosetta Stone and I've learned a smattering of Italian. Probably not for the serious student but did I mention that it is absolutely free?

Annhig, Spaniards often speak Spanish to Italians, and we understand them pretty well. My husband thought the same would work in reverse, and tried it in Spain, but no one ever understood what he meant. I studied Spanish quite a lot, but years of speaking Italian has ruined my Spanish. I begin a sentence in Spanish and midway I realize I've switched to Italian. >>

bvl - that's exactly what was happening to me in Cuba, particularly when I'd just been speaking to Italians. I had previously come across some Mexicans using the "spanish in Italy" trick to good effect so I wasn't surprised when Italian in Cuba worked as well. Perhaps it's because the Cubans are very used to Italian visitors - there were loads of them!

<<I speak passable (okay, let's say sketchy) Spanish and thought it would be "fun" to learn Italian. My progress has been glacial. The syntax is different although there are words here and there that remind you that there is the occasional handshake between the two languages.`>>

I'm really surprised to read this, whatkatydidnt. I found learning Spanish relatively easy because I'd already got a knowledge of Italian - whilst some parts of the grammar are different, the basic structure is more or less the same and the vocabulary is very similar [save for the odd amigo falso!] Perhaps Italian to Spanish is easier than vv? anyway, I'm going to recommend my old friend Michel Thomas again - not absolutely free unless you get it through the library but pretty good value.

bvlenci...you wrote:

<em> I begin a sentence in Spanish and midway I realize I've switched to Italian.</em>

I had a similar experience.

I took Spanish in HS (4 yrs) and was a pretty conscientious student. I took three semesters of Italian in college and cut class like crazy. As a result, the Spanish seems to have stuck better. (Both were over 50 years ago.)

Once at the ticket booth at the Forum, I realized that the man was speaking Spanish to me. Apparently, I had accidentally switched from my attempts at Italian to Spanish without noticing. Naturally as a ticket seller at such a well-visited sight, he could speak many languages, and must have took me for a Spanish tourist.

ssander

We do it all the time in Belgium : we start a discussion in Flemish and switch to French, then back etc.

Question of respect, mostly - we want to speak the language of the other one.

A few years ago we spent a few days in Llivia, a Spanish enclave in the French Pyrenees, where they swapped from French to Spanish to the local dialect and back again at the drop of a hat. It appeared that they weren't so much doing it to be polite [as everyone spoke all 3 fluently] but using the right phrase to express their exact thought.

For the visitor it was fascinating but confusing in equal measure.

We once spent a few days in Sankt Valentin, Austria, where Italy, Austria, and Switzerland all come together, and I was never so linguistically or logistically confused in all my life. I bought postcards in Italy, with Italian stamps on them, and put them in an Austrian mailbox. I tried to pay for a Swiss meal with Italian lire. And every sentence I uttered was a combination of German, Italian, and French. Fortunately, everyone seemed bemused but able to understand me as they spoke all three languages. My brain was addled for days.

I had to make a deliberate effort to put Spanish out of my mind in order to learn Italian, which was necessary when I came to live here.

I think the two languages are very much alike. Even when the words mean different things, there is a certain logic in the difference.

For example, Spanish <i>tener</i> means "to have" (in the sense of ownership), but the Italian <i>tenere</i> has more the meaning "to hold" or "to maintain". The two Spanish verbs, <i>ir</i> and <i>andar</i> are combined in the Italian <i>andare</i>, which has partly the conjugation of <i>ir</i> and partly the conjugation of </i>andar</i> (vado, vai, va, andiamo, andate, vanno). And a lot of Spanish words are the archaic version of Italian words. I've been told by a scholar of medieval Spanish that the reverse is also true.

I had to make a deliberate effort to put Spanish out of my mind in order to learn Italian, which was necessary when I came to live here. >>

bvl, I certainly tried to put Italian out of my mind in Cuba but I didn't always succeed. Perhaps if I had gone to live in a spanish-speaking country rather than just visiting for a few weeks it would be different but 3 weeks was nothing like long enough to replace the Italian which was already hard-wired into my brain.

It was generally the "false friends" that got me - andare/andar is a good example - meaning "to go" in Italian and [if I remember rightly] "to walk" in Spanish. The temptation to use "andar" to express "to go" was almost irresistible.

I was in Chester once and a woman accosted me in Spanish to ask me where the nearest public lavatory was. I answered her in Italian and she seemed to understand me.

I did Italian to degree level, but it was very literary. I could discuss Dante, but not ask the time of the next train to Milan.

My ambition has been to be fluent enough to chat with Italians, and I'm getting there.

<i>My ambition has been to be fluent enough to chat with Italians, and I'm getting there.</i>

That´s amazing. Do you plan on conjugating any verbs.

sarastro - It was not MissPrism who said that she did not want to bother with conjugating verbs, but the OP.

I don't think that you can get a degree in Italian without being able to conjugate verbs, or indeed anything else.

Yes, we certainly had to conjugate verbs. It was rather like learning Latin. The language was strictly for reading literature.

We had to listen to lectures in Italian and write essays in the language.

What we didn't do was contemporary Italan conversation. That's what I'm working on. I got my degree in 1961, so it's probably different now ;-)

The last time I was in Venice, I got chatted up by an elderly gentleman who started by telling me that I was too young to sit in the 70 and over seats on the boat. Bless Italian men. Flirting with the local lads is the best way to learn the language.

<<You'd be a bit upset, I imagine, if you worked at a store here in the US and a foreigner came in and said "Hey, babe, can you get me..." >>
Why on earth would anyone say such a thing in a foreign language OR in the US? No one in the US would likely do such a thing in their own country.

Just learn a few phrases by rote. Perhaps the OP has never studied a language as some people think it is very easy. I don't think you will be able to learn any language in a year to the extent that you will extemporaneously be able to speak, read it, ask questions, and feeling comfortable in the language.

You won't be able to speak it at all if you do not intend to learn how to conjugate a verb. Because then you aren't learning the language, you are memorizing some phrases. You would be able to say a few rudimentary phrases if you do learn to conjugate verbs, and recognize some signs, etc.

If you want to study one for a year, I'd choose whichever one naturally appeals to you and for which you intend some use in the future. This could be personal or family interest or where you want to travel a lot. French is used in many more places, of course, than Italian (I don't know any place where they speak Italian other than Italy, but maybe there are some). It could also be, if one is serious and intends to continue studies, which country's art and literature one is interested in. I don't think that is remotely the goal here if one doesn't intend to learn to conjugate verbs.

In my first months in Italy, I was much better at making myself understood than at understanding. Where I live, quite apart from the local dialect, which is still somewhat incomprehensible to me if spoken by an elderly person who didn't have much schooling, the Italian is not, shall we say, exactly the tongue of Dante and Boccaccio.

The dialect words for common, everyday things are those that persist the longest when the dialect is mostly dying out. When I was learning Italian, I used to ask our housekeeper what a ladle was called, or a clothes pin. She would tell me the name, and then say, "I don't know what it's called in Italian, though." Even my husband, who has an advanced degree, knows only the dialect names of certain plants and birds, and sometimes isn't sure if one of these names is Italian or dialect.

What we didn't do was contemporary Italan conversation. That's what I'm working on. I got my degree in 1961, so it's probably different now >>

it probably is, MissP but I'm pretty certain that they still have to learn the grammar - we had to for AS level and we still look at grammar topics [the dreaded conjunctivo for example] in our Italian conversation class.

Christina - I agree with you about the importance of learning verb structure, even from the beginning, in fact I think that many beginners give up because they are just rote learning phrases that mean virtually nothing to them, rather than engaging with the structure of a language from the start. We tried to learn some Polish via the BBC Polish course when we went to Krakow but it was hopeless because all you learnt was "please can I have 2 apples" without knowing WHY you were saying the words. Useless if you want two beers or 3 apples.

bvlenci...

I think I read somewhere that the reason a number of Spanish words are not analogous to the Italian & French versions -- <em>perro</em> (dog) vs. <em>cane</em> and <em>chien</em> (from Latin <em>canus</em>?) -- is because the Romans pulled out of most of Spain much earlier than they did from Italy and Gaul.

<em>Perro</em> may have evolved from an earlier Latin dialect for dog that had fallen out of use by the time Latin began morphing into Italian and French.

Anyone know about this?

ssander

Italiano--as indicated above, pronunciation is easier. I tried my hard-learned French in Paris last fall and people constantly corrected my pronunciation. You'll feel more rewarded in Italian.

But you can get by with just English in both Paris and Rome.

ssander - there are anomalies in every language - to follow up on your example, where does the english word "dog" come from? it doesn't derive from any of the "normal suspects". [french, latin, german and greek].

As for perro, the only possible suggestion that I've found on line is that it's Persian in origin deriving from "persus" meaning "hunting dog".

IMHO to me the biggest problem in French is not the attitude of any French store clerks or waiters - it is that they literally don't understand what many americans are saying - since the pronunciation is so different from the spelling, there are sounds in French that americans simply don't use, and many americans never actually pick up any sort of French accent, even with the limited words they do know.

So - people are usually not being difficult, they just don't understand. We (BF and I) met another american couple in Paris who were convinced that people were being rude and ignoring them. But the issue was that what they were saying was incomprehensible - even to me and I knew what they wanted to say. My french is very limited but my accent decent so I can be understood in simple things and BF had studied for a year in Paris and picked up a lot. We ended up telling them to speak English so at least some people would understand them.

Wow so much good information! I just want to clarify what I said about having no interest in congugating verbs. As I said in my post, when I was learning Spanish, that it was the hardest part for me. I obviously know it's a part of learning a language. Yes, it would be way easier to learn some phrases and be able to communicate what I want. But I would like to be able to put together some sentences on my own instead of just memorizing key phrases. I know that what someone would say to me probably wouldn't be amongst the things that I memorized and we would just stare at each other lol.

On a side note, thanks for those of you that kindly asked questions if certain parts of my post sounded weird. Im just a normal girl trying to figure out things. I've never traveled out of the country and have always wanted to. I just need some guidance, not judgement. I do want to learn the language. I'm not an expert on how to post about these things so I'm sorry if I don't say the right things.

Also I know that I'm not going to be perfect and fluent in any of these. My goal is to learn as much as I can. Also, if I can communicate with others and my husband and I can have fun speaking to each other then I'll be a happy girl. I feel like when I say that, I get put into the category of not wanting to learn the language and only wanting to learn "tourist phrases" which isn't what I want. I enjoy learning, but when it comes down to it, when the trip is over, I'll only be able to speak the languages I've learned when I go back because no one where I live speaks anything but English lol. Again, I guess that makes a phrase learning American tourist. ��

I'm not an expert on how to post about these things so I'm sorry if I don't say the right things.>>

Ashley - YOU have no need to apologise. There are some people here only too ready to get on the high horses [me included at times] without thinking too much about the perception of the person to whom their remarks are directed. OTOH many of us are passionate about language learning and there are some good tips here for you, once you have taken the first step of deciding how you are going to embark upon your task.

That is probably the most difficult part - once you've decided what you are going to do, and started to do it, you'll find that it gets easier.

Good luck!

You should sign up for real lessons, then. I don't think any of the online apps or software programs, except maybe Michael Thomas, is worth much. First of all, you have to be devoted to it, do the lessons, repeat them, do the exercises, follow through. A real-live class makes you do that.

Also, I find it curious you think you'll be chatting with your husband in either French or Italian. Perhas, for dun, but as a practical matter, unlikely to happen. My husband and I live in France, and though we both speak French, it took us months and months before we started, even occasionally, to speak French to each other. More often, I'd speak French to him to get him up to speed on it, and he'd respond in English. We do now talk in French a fair amount between ourselves, but mostly when we are around English speakers.

NYCTraveler makes a very good point, too. The French aren't impolite about not understanding - they just don't, because even some fairly fluent French speakers have such god-awful accents or can't make the appropriate distinctions between sounds. We were visiting friends the other day who were saying goodbye to a worker. They asked if he would please send them a bill, but instead of bill (facture), they asked if he would please send them the postman (facteur). He figured it out after a minute or two, but not after some confusion. A class really helps with pronunciation. Bonne chance et tanti auguri!

As a retired public school teacher for 35 years and have taught in a university for the last 13 years, my suggestion is to learn as much as you can. It's a good, positive activity, it could add more depth to your travel experience, and the locals will appreciate your efforts.

After traveling in Italy for the last 35 years, the locals might warm to your attempts at their language and be less apprehensive to a "straniero" - foreigner.

As mentioned above, many people in Roma or Paris will demonstrate some level of English proficiency, but speaking the language, or at least trying, could prove to make better connections...any it may give you some humorous moments laughing about some of the dumb things you will say. On my first trip to Italy in 1980 I certainly said some really dumb things as I stumbled through Italian with meeting my family in Calabria for the first time. We still chuckle about this...dolce ricordi-good memories...

Buon viaggio,

<i>What language are we better off speaking in Paris? </i>

Dutch

>>you have to be devoted to it, do the lessons, repeat them, do the exercises, follow through.<<

My sister has always had an ear for language. She's fluent in French, but she also worked in a French-speaking laboratory for 10 years. She understands Latin and Spanish also, and she claims that helps her when she's in Italy.

I struggle with language. I have the devotion and motivation, but my memory skills are lacking. I don't get enough practice. I've invested thousands of dollars in classes through the years, and I can barely put two sentences together in Italian. My French is abysmal. I know many nouns and verbs, so I can pick up things in conversations here and there, but I struggle with conjugation, verb tense, and pronunciation, and the masculine/feminine case drives my brain nuts.

I'll never forget the time I tried to order bread in Boulangeries Paul on Rue de Seine. The line was long. The young counter woman said to me, "NO English!" and she told me my French was terrible. No smile. I couldn't believe a woman so young would not have a little simple English under her belt. There was a minute when I felt she was lying to me. I've been to Paris many times. I'm very familiar with their manner. I don't let moments like these bother me because I love the city and its culture.

I'll never forget the time I tried to order bread in Boulangeries Paul on Rue de Seine. The line was long. The young counter woman said to me, "NO English!" and she told me my French was terrible. >>

wesley - had a sales assistant been so rude to me I'd have said au revoir and left the shop pronto. Paris is a tourist city and that sort of behaviour is unforgivable, especially as you were trying to speak her language.

I think that those of us who find learning languages relatively easy sometimes find it difficult to put ourselves in the shoes of those who don't. If you can learn nouns and verbs, it's not your memory but something else that's getting in the way. As the other techniques haven't worked for you, I think that I would forget about masculine and feminine [natives get those wrong too] and actually learn some phrases that you can feel comfortable with, and then learn some variations. Also forget about the "tu" form and just concentrate on "vous" - anything to make it easier because that's what you'll use most.

And [I'm sure you do this anyway] if in doubt, smile.

One thing that works for me is to stay in the country in a table-d'hote or similar. Normally you get only French of Italian speakers at the table and you have to speak what the locals do so as to eat.

Tough, but it gets you from courses to speaking

Good point, bilbo. we stayed in a B&B in Paimpol a few years ago where they had a communal breakfast table and none of the other guests or indeed the hosts spoke english. A steep learning curve and great practice.

'since the pronunciation is so different from the spelling'

Sooooo true. I was some months ago shaking hands with colleagues getting into their taxi.
My colleague (english) asked the driver to go to CDG.
he said 'Charles de Gaulle' as he thought was correct, which the driver didn't get.

Being superiorly intelligent (well at least more than an Englishman, for sure - yerk) I translated...

Charles de Gaulle in french would have to be pronounced something like
'Sharl deuh goal'

What the driver heard he would write it in French like
'Tcharwles di gowlle'

Good luck ...

Another example : it took me ages to pronounce 'clown' in english - we use that word but have modified the pronounciation into something you would pronounce 'cloon'.

Another example : it took me ages to pronounce 'clown' in english - we use that word but have modified the pronounciation into something you would pronounce 'cloon'.>>

well more fool you then, whathello.

That's funny, whathello. My husband has recently become fascinated with Clowns Sans Frontières (and I have too), but it took me a couple of weeks of coaching to get him to pronounce it the French way, and I have to agree with him that "cloon" sounds silly (in a clownish way) to our English-speaking ways. To us it sounds like some sort of migratory bird.

It is true that there are some people who simply don't have a mind that picks up other languages.

My best friend and her husband went to Egypt some years ago and at one point went off by himself to buy something - and was unable to get back to the hotel. He had no problem getting a cab but could not tell them where he wanted to go. Called his wife and she reminded him she had given him a card from the hotel - which he showed to the driver - and then got back to the hotel.

The kicker - they were staying at the Nile Hilton. Which apparently to drivers is known as the Nil HilTONE. The driver had asked the husband if that was where he wanted to go - and her husband had said no. Since to him it just was not the name.

More fool for me then : some english guy asked me where was the 'Ibis' hotel in Waterloo (we were in front of it).
I made him repeat 3 times before it hit me... and at the same time her wife saw the hotel.

I had to explain that we use the same word in french for (i supect) the same bird but we pronounce it 'eebiss'.

(not that I've ever used it in a conversation neither in french nor in english).

Words that come from childhood are for me more complicated that brand new ones that you 'just' learn.

I had to explain that we use the same word in french for (i supect) the same bird but we pronounce it 'eebiss'. >>

I've no doubt that I would have made the same mistake - we stayed at a hotel "Ibis" [which we pronounce EYE] about 30 years ago, and have always called it that.

"Eebis" indeed. only a cloon would call it that.

Further to the bird analogies, we have had many flights of migratory birds here in the Périgord over the past few months, with many people remarking on how early they flew south and how early they are flying north, which is kind of like the American hedgehog, marking an early spring (but probably more scientifically accurate). Among others, we've had grues, which the locals call "les oies sauvages," and herons. I had the hardest time understanding when the locals talked about "les hérons." I was envisioning something far more complicated, especially listening to it in an Occitan accent - "les aiérongs..." I kept trying to explain that these were large white birds with long legs who liked to stand in the middle of fields alone, not in groups, and everyone would say "Ce ne sont pas les grues, ce sont les aiérongs," which I took to be a reference to their airborne-ness. No, they're just hérons, just like herons in the USA.

Language is complicated. I read today that the Académie Française recognizes 78 separate dialects of French in France, and I know for a fact that in the Périgord you can go 10 miles down the road and find people who are hard to comprehend, even if you're used to Occitan.

We had an apéro this evening with neighbors who are mainly Occitan speakers, but who try to speak French with us, and we were looking at and discussing some downed telephone lines up on their plâteau. The monsieur said what I understood to be "C'était le vin." (It was the wine? OK, I could get that, around here, but something was off." )Then I realized he meant "C'était le vent." If he had meant it was the wine he would have said "C'était le vingggggg..."

So much to learn every day.

whathello, we have Ibis, too, but it's more like ee-bees arund here. So much of dialect has to do with the elongation, or not, of syllables, and the shortening, or cutting off, of vowels.

I love this stuff.

You learn something every day. I thought "ibis" was pronounced "eebis" also in English.

My daughter, who has severe allergies, once wanted to tell the hotel reception that there was too much dust (polvere) in her room. She actually told them there were too many poor people "poveri" in the room.

Italians have a very strange way of pronouncing English words with a "u" in them. It's sort of between an e as in hem and an ae as in (American pronunciation) ask. When they say "club", it sounds like "cleb". The thing that really amuses me is that Donald Trump usually comes out as Donald Tramp.

I love Italians speaking English...

Like our President? No, he doesn't speak English. Like our Premier? He tries. Mario Draghi?