Benvenuti in Italia

With our trip to Italy coming up soon I have been trying to learn a bit of Italian. What I have realized is that I don't think I have the gift for learning languages. Italian and Spanish are pretty close so that has been helpful somewhat but they roll their r's as well and I can't seem to do that for the life of me.

I have been listening to my Italian CD's in the truck on my way to and from work but so far I wouldn't say there has been a whole lot of progress. Plus what I really want to know doesn't seem to be covered.

Personally if I was producing an learn to speak Italian CD I would start with things we really need to know when visiting a foreign country. I think asking where the bathroom is would be a great place to start. That would be a phrase you will be using on a regular basis. I would also cover ordering food, asking for the check, and of course shopping! But instead they cover the months of the year, days of the week, and then verb tenses. So right now I can go around saying what month of year it is and the day of the week. To me this isn't a huge priority because on vacation I don't really care much what day it is - isn't that really the point of vacation? I only need to know it is Monday if I have to show up for work.

I also think types of food should be covered as well - I want to know what chicken and beef are so I somehow don't end up with meat I don't recognize when it is meal time. Knowing which words to avoid would come in very handy when looking at a menu in Italian. At least I should recognize the word pasta and cappuccino so I will have a back up though when knowing what comes in my pasta could be a bit of a toss up.

Sam is much further ahead of me - he has been using the Rosetta stone and has been more diligent than I have on the studying part so far. It also might be the fact that he has been working on his Italian off and on for 2 years now.

Fortunately this trip he won't be working for much of it so he can be my translator. Usually I am in the one figuring it out while he is working so this time it can be his turn to try and communicate. I won't remind him that when I was in charge we were in countries like England, Germany, and Amsterdam where finding an English speaking person wasn't too terribly hard. I did somehow get us around in Japan though some of our dinners were in the don't study it too hard category and we were often surprised when the food showed up at our table.

Maybe miraculously in the next 2 1/2 weeks I will become more proficient but I guess at this point I will be happy to get through at least 1 more CD. Sam didn't seem very impressed when asking what CD I was on to find out I was just starting the second one, guess he thought I should be a bit further along by now.

But if anyone wants to know it is Thursday or how to say I like to travel I am your person. Just don't answer me back in Italian as that is when I will get very confused, and I don't even know how to ask someone to repeat their question or statement back yet! I think I may just work on finding my speaking Italian translation book and working on learning how to say where to find a shoe store, where is a great restaurant, how much is it, and where is the bathroom. That should really cover most situations I will be in. If I can eat well, buy great Italian shoes, and know how much I am paying it should all be good.

Plus there is iGoogle where I type in words in English and it will give it to me in Italian though I haven't found out where it will say it to the person for me yet since that is really what I need. Maybe all I really need to know is if they have wifi so I can use the Internet to look up the translation - that seems a bit easier to me.