In one week: learning Italian

the objective

We are traveling to the diverse destinations of Rome, Catania, Stromboli and Lipari for the summer. This means taking on the challenge of blending our backgrounds in Spanish and French in order to learn Italian in a week.

 

the process

We found that there are a lot more similarities between Spanish and Italian than French and Italian, like the pronunciation of words. After meeting up to practice conversing, we found that our pronunciation of terms were different. French pronunciation has the speaker not pronounce the last letter of a word, while Spanish pronunciation is similar to Italian in that the last letter is often emphasized. After listening to pronunciations online, we gained a better understanding of the words and their context in a casual conversation.

 

the challenges

With a background of basic French and Spanish, some words instantly felt familiar and were easier to grasp. This differed between us, however. “Parla,” the Italian verb for “to speak” is very similar to the French verb “parler.” While “per favore,” which is Italian for “please,” is almost identical to “por favor,” which is the Spanish translation. After listening to pronunciations online, we gained a better understanding of the words and their context in a casual conversation.

 

the result

After spending only a week learning Italian, we were able to blend our knowledge of English, French and Spanish to pronounce and memorize these new phrases properly. Although we couldn’t learn conjugations or transitional words, knowing the basics of Italian will help us tremendously as we venture across Italy this summer.