My other obsession

I believe in a multi-pronged approach to language learning-- hence not only do I have a weekly Italian lesson, but I listen to Radio Italia ("solo musica italiana") and Italian talk radio in the car (having exhausted all of my language lesson CDs); watch subtitled movies, both Italian- and foreign-made/dubbed; visit LearnItalianpod.com; read "parallel text" short stories (with the original Italian on one page and English translation on the opposite page); and probably most important, try to make conversation with the dry cleaner, the waiter, the landlord, the kid who helps out at the gym, the other mothers at the bar*....  So I must be fluent by now, right?

To understand why my answer is "no", one need only glance at the photo:  my constant companion, the compact Webster's, has "over 30,000 entries," while that coffee table beast under it contains over 2800 PAGES!  Even taking into account that half of those entries and pages are English-to-Italian, mamma mia!  (Yes, Italians really do say that.)  What's that?  Aren't many English and Italian words virtually identical, with common Latin roots, you ask?  Excellent/eccellente question!  Aggression/aggressione, incredible/incredibile, irritable/irritabilita', persistent/persistente, etc./ecc.  However, many words are completely different, and some which seem similar (and may even have a common Latin root), are nevertheless completely different in meaning:  genitori does not mean genitals, but parents.  Not to mention the verbs...that Barron's is invaluable, with all 14 tenses of 1st, 2nd, & 3rd person singular and plural fully conjugated.  +Sigh+...I love that book.   

A few errors that my, uh, friend has actually made:

• Ordering spaghetti with dick (spaghetti con cazzo) instead of with mussels (con cozze)
• asking a saleslady in a shoe store if they have any whores (zoccole) instead of clogs (zoccoli)
• telling someone "See you in nine years (nove anni)" instead of in the new year (nuovo anno)
• ordering a cow (vacca) instead of a vodka (properly pronounced "vohdeka" with emphasis on the "oh")

*Conjures up visions of knocking back a shot or two after dropping the kids off in the morning, no?  While it's true that the bar is just up the street from the school, and does contain a few slot machines and perhaps a drunk (ubriaco, not ebraico) or two, for the moms it's just caffe' e chiacchiera (coffee & chitchat).

Comments

[Ingrid]

Does it give you any consolation that just a week ago, after living in Italy for 2,5 years and speaking fluent Italian, I told my father-in-law: "Mi piace il pane che fanno qui, perche' non ha i preservativi dentro"
He still gets a few laughs with me. And I usually realize my mistake a nanosecond later... ah well..

[Ina]

I have loved your posts, not only for your lovely patterns, but as a link to Italy. I am an Italophile who visits Italy once or twice a year (Le Grazie near Portovenere is my base), as my best friend is married to an Italian.

I love that you translate many of your posts into Italian as well. I have studied Italian for the last few years; but, alas, fluency eludes me, although I keep trying.

For those elecontronially inclined Garzanti is on-line: www.garzanti.it and there are full verb conjugators at wwww.verbix.com. Both sites offer desktop versions (Verbix; a download and Garzanti sells a CD version of its products (I think for Windows only).

Grazie mille. Continui il Suo buon lavoro.

Ina

[connie]

When I'm reading Italian novels, I have wordreference.com/it open in front of me. I'm too lazy to actually thumb through a dictionary. As far as embarrassing mistakes...I once referred to breakfast (colazione) as cazzone. My father in law got a kick out of that one...whoops!

[Vicki]

Don't despair you will get there. I lived in Italy for four years and when I left they couldn't tell I wasn't Italian. Not the case any longer. I used to walk around with my dictionary and a notepad and pencil so I could draw pictures. The biggest thing for me was I had a friend who corrected my mistakes. It was such a help. I also asked heaps of questions when I didn't know why they used a certain form of a verb. You'll get there.

[Cristiana]

E io? quante volte avrò confuso chicken-kitchen checkup-ketchup?
How funny!! I love this kind of mistakes!
Bravissima!