2024-09-21
At the cafe I usually go to, and trying my best to read Italian. I have bought two books: Il nome della rosa, which I have not brought with me, and Il bar sotto il mare, di Stefano Benni. The former is "The Name of the Rose" in English, and my mum has told me it was extremely hard to follow; I've since given up on it. The latter, "The bar beneath the sea" appears easier, and I can, despite my limited (very limited) vocabulary, sort of make heads or tails of what is being said. That said, I have to be back-and-forth to my dictionary, and cannot really understand what is going on outside of that. I think to an extent, once I've gotten to the point where I understand all the basic words and the grammar, I can rely on just the notes underneath where the words are given German translations (at least, those that aren't that common). There are also parts where I don't understand the sentence grammatically: for instance, the clause "dove le case sambrano navi affondate" makes no sense to me. I assume it means "where the house seem like sinking ships", but I don't know why the form is "affondate" of "affondare". Maybe it is a participle of sorts, but I still don't really know.
That said, I can sort of read, and just regularly look up the words I don't know (of which there are many). As stated, once I get the common words down, I am going to just need to rely on the notes underneath which makes a much easier reading experience. I've managed a page and a bit today; perhaps I can manage more in time.
The point of me learning Italian is to be able to speak and understand a bit when I go to Italy in October, but of course I doubt now I will get to a proficient enough level before I have to go, especially in between everything else in life. Really, I think I can just make do with whatever I can get before I go in October, and then continue to learn and perhaps go in other years... I can even go via train (mit dem Zug... no! wrong language, uhh densha de... no wrong again, med togen... no... col treno) and thereby save on emission as well: the problem with the flight is the emissions, to me at least, and so I would like to really use the train if I can in future.
I think it would be good if I could, to try to write at least one wv in Italian at some point. It would be excessively slow at the moment and not worth it to try - I don't really have the time, and so can't really, but maybe at some point later.
If I could try to find a half hour each day, then that would serve me. It is split into quite small sections, so once I get proficient in the basics I can probably read one small section per session, and thereby just continue this one book. I think that would be good to do each day if I can; I think I will need to just get rid of the idea that I'm going to have time to do guitar and art, and try do some if I get the spare time and have the inclination, but for now the main thing to focus on would be for Italy, so practising the language, listening to podcasts, etc. to try to get as proficient as I can.
I think that would be a good plan; I need to try to get Italian as proficient as I can. In terms of living out there, which was an idea, maybe, once I get my German passport, I would definitely need to actually be proficient in the language, which seems entirely possible and not too hard actually, but it would require just practise generally. The thing that I did not expect is the variation in terms of abbreviation and contraction, that is far more than German or English. For instance, English never contracts "in the..." likely as there are not very many variations. German has "ins" for "in das" and "im" for "in dem", and potentially you could call the abbrevations of "ein", "eine" to "n", "ne" as variations as well. But Italian has a good few different articles (le, la, gli, ...) and they contract or sort of cliticise I guess onto the prepositions: negli, nelle, nella, nel, for instance are all variations of "in" with some article. It takes a little while to get used to that, or when "alla" (a + la) is contracted onto the noun itself. Just stuff like that. At least the gender system is not too difficult, verbs are ... I'm still not certain on them but they are not too bad it seems, and there are not excessive amounts of irregular conjugations, and nominal declension is basically just for number. So it's fine, but it just takes some getting used to. I can't really speed run a language it seems, and to be honest, I feel like I'm struggling with this a lot more than I was with Norwegian that is of a similar complexity. German was this difficult, but I was a teen and not well used to languages...
It'll come along, though, I just need to be a little more patient.
I'll head home now at twelve, because I want to be back before one - family is round today.
Have a good one.