Speaking of Italiano, I've been-a learning-a the language-i of-fa Mario for a few months now... it's pretty much the only constructive thing I've done for myself this year. I started learning in late 2015 as a desperate attempt to forge closer ties with my half-Italian cousins who live in Sydney. As the prospect of starting a career and thus starting to settle in Sydney dawned on me, I guess I pictured a closer bond with my Sydney-based family.... plus the kids were entering this annoying stage of adolescence where they could see exactly how uncool their cousin Sasha was :p I told you... I was desperate. Anyway... things didn't pan out the way I had planned and the bonding didn't happen.. I moved back to KL instead.
BTW, Life, WHY IS IT that whenever I make a solid life plan, you always have to pull the rug out from under me and mess the whole thing up, huh? T_T"
AND THEN guess what. Cousin from the UK decides to get married... in ITALY! Woop! Destination Wedding! The one bright spot in an otherwise gloomy 2016. So, in preparation for the trip, I decided to pick up Italiano! Yay Italiano! What an experience it has been :) Glad I did it. Listing some of my thoughts relating to learning a new language and some funny things that happened along the way so I don't forget:-
1. Italian is really similar to English and French (which I'm also trying to achieve fluency in and I've made a liiiiitle bit of headway over the last couple of years so GO ME!) with a whiff of Malay language. Most of the time I just guess the words and tweak a little and they're correct, e.g. necessary is necessario; chocolate is cioccolato. Haha! The hardest parts so far have been trying to guess the gender of words and morphing the word to make it suitable to various pronouns. Let's take my favourite word: Mangia. It means Eat :D Mangiare is a verb meaning 'to eat' and the following shows how it's conjugated.Note that the English word eat only changes for the He/She eats example:
- I eat: io mangio
- You eat : tu mangi (informal) / voi mangiate (formal)
- We eat: noi mangiamo
- He/She eats: lui/lei mangia
- They eat: loro mangiano
Most of the time, the conjugations follow the same pattern for different verbs... but it's sometimes hard to gauge the context of a sentence when you've just started learning. Sometimes the pronoun itself is dropped! e.g. Mangio implies io mangio
2. Instead of bringing me closer to my cousins, learning Italian has connected me to my brother. We've been learning together using the Duolingo app and laughing at all of the funny sentences we have had to translate like "Entriamo nei frigoriferi" (We enter the refrigerators).. what? Haha!
3. There are a lot of funny sentences to translate.. some lost in translation. Some meaning one thing, but sounding really odd in English. Some funny because they lack context and can be taken to mean something else i.e. "Siamo uomini o avvocati?" (Are we men or lawyers?); or they're sad i.e. "Non ho nessun vero amico" (I do not have any real friends); or just downright morbid.. i.e. "Perche moriamo?" (Why do we die?) Duolingo has been FUN.
4. It's one thing to be able to say what you need to say in the new language. It's another thing altogether to understand what's been said in response. On our third day in Italy, our driver arrived earlier than expected so I figured it would be the perfect opportunity to test out my Italiano. With full confidence and perfect (*to my ears) intonation, I said "Buongiorno! La mia famiglia é... errr... mangia... uhm colazione. Aspetiamo cinque miniti, per favore. Grazie!" (Good day! My family it is... errr... she eats... uhm breakfast. We are waiting for five minutes, please. Thank you!) I must have said it very convincingly or so quickly he didn't hear each word, because he replied with a rapid string of words which left me stunned... all I got from his ramble was the word prego,..an all-rounder word which sort of combines 'you're welcome, please, my pleasure, no problem, not at all, and don't mention it' into one handy word. I still don't know how to say "Please slow down, I can't keep up with what you're saying" :p
5. The most recent viral video is some dumb Apple Pen Pineapple Pen song which a) isn't catchy and b) lacks any of humour of Gangnam Style, so I don't get why it's become so popular........ Anyway, references to it kept popping up on my social media so I checked it out on YouTube. The lyrics go:
I have a pen, I have a apple
Uhn! Apple-Pen!
I have a pen, I have pineapple
Uhn! Pineapple-Pen!
I scrolled down to the comments and burst out laughing....
I have a porco, I have a dio
Uhn! Porco dio!
Gotta thank Celina for teaching me porco dio! I'm gonna ride this Italian high for as long as I can :)
CIAO! Grazie per aver letto! And if I made any mistakes, let me know. I want to learn!
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