I intend to run an experiment on myself soon. I am going to teach myself Italian.
This experiment will happen right here on the blog. My goal: to speak and read Italian by Christmas. We’ll see.
I wanted to run this experiment on myself this summer. Other projects, Word Up, this blog, and making a living bogged me down. That’s okay. Delay of game. We parents are used to that.
So… why Italian? I am not even going to Italy. Would love to. Maybe someday.
This summer, I read The Loom of Language, by Frederick Bodmer. Good book. Dense at times, but, if you want to go deep into languages, it’s a good book.
In the book, on page 350, I discovered this:
Of the Romance dialects dealt with, English speaking people find Spanish easier than French. Italian is more easy than either.
Oh. That would have been nice to know before I attempted to learn Spanish and French.
Bodmer goes on:
This is so for several reasons:
First, the sounds of Spanish (or Italian) are so much more like those we ourselves use.
Second, the spellings and conventions of Spanish and Italian are much more consistent than those of French. (Tell me about it.)
Third, the Latin origin of the older – and therefore many of the more familiar – French words is hard to recognize, and they are therefore difficult to identify with English words of Latin origin,
Fourth, the entire apparatus of noun-adjective flexion is immensely more regular in Spanish and Italian than in French.
These discoveries inspired me to learn Italian. In fact, had I known Italian was the easiest of the three, I would have started there years ago.
Oh well. Better late than not at all… or something like that.
I am wrapping up some projects at the moment. Word Up is filmed and is now in the editors hands. The blog is up and scrolling. I am finishing up an ebook. It is a step by step approach to learning Latin. If it is ever finished, I will start Italian.
That will, hopefully, begin in September when I return to the classroom.
What I learn, I will share with you. If you know Latin, according to Frederick Bodmer, this shouldn’t be too difficult. Let’s find out.
Ciao!
