Learning Italian

In 1970, when I was in the Air Force, I was temporarily sent to Germany for 90 days to participate NATO exercise, Crested Cap II.  The actual exercise was meant to last only a couple of weeks and during the setup period we were free to travel through the NATO countries on our orders.  We traveled around the local areas near the base in our free time, and although most Germans spoke English a lot of them didn't.  I bought a Berlitz phrasebook and found that I was not able to pronounce German in an understandable manner.  I decided then that if I ever traveled to another foreign country, I would take a basic course if I had the time.

So far I've managed to keep this promise.  When I went to Japan in the 1990's I had already been studying Japanese for five years, and when I went to Russia in the late nineties, I had about a year of Russian.

When I signed up for the Italian tour I was studying Japanese again after a hiatus of 20 years, and studying Russian at the same time.  I decided to start Italian after finishing my present Japanese class and following my annual trip to Chicago for a collector's convention.  My Russian instructor, Larisa, already spoke fluent Italian, so I asked her to switch from Russian to Italian, and we started in May.  This would give me six months of practice.

I also went shopping for auxiliary materials.  My gold standard at the time were the Pimsleur tapes, but I found that they didn't seem to work for Italian, although they worked well for Russian and Japanese.  The tapes may have worked well for the latter two languages, since I had already been studying those languages when I tried the tapes.  I always thought that Rosetta Stone was not very good, but decided to try that again, and found that it didn't work well for Italian either.  I then tried Cortina, since it was cheap, but found that although it worked well for Russian, it was lacking in Italian, and was out of date.

I stumbled across Fluenz while researching online Italian courses, and I recommend it highly.  It was given top marks by most reviewers who rated it better than the other courses.  I only finished three-and-a-half of five levels, but using Fluenz and practicing with my instructor, I was able to go to Italy, read newspapers with good comprehension and communicate my needs as a traveler.  Make reservations, take taxis, shop, eat in restaurants, buy train tickets and so on.

It does take a lot of practice.  I put in 4-5 hours a day for months to reach my proficiency level.  For travelers I would suggest that Fluenz is better than taking a regular Italian course at a junior college, in that Fluenz focused on "Survival" Italian, while an regular Italian course concentrates on the big picture.  Larisa used a college textbook as the focus for our studies and that alone would not have worked.

I also took a six-week (three hours a week) conversational course at the local junior college, but it was a waste of time.  The instructor was good, but six weeks is not enough time.  Twelve weeks would have worked a lot better.  I would recommend taking the regular Italian course instead, though it wouldn't be as useful as a "Travelers" or "Survival" Italian course.

I supplemented formal study with two, iPad apps.  Italian crossword puzzles by Jourist Verlag, English-to-Italian, and Italian-to-English, and Duolingo.  Both good for building vocabulary, the latter was also useful for reading.  I would recommend neither for communications.