Italian Language Learning Log 20.01.2020
By: Melanzane Emoji
Tags: Italiano, Anki, Language Learning

Like many, I have been flooded with free time, due to the inflating pandemic and shrinking economy, so I’ve decided to spend a great deal of it working on my L2, Italian. Nearing the end of my first ‘adult’ novel in my L2, I thought it might be useful to keep account of what I am reading / watching / listening to, so I can start tallying hours and pages, and in some way this should help me track my progress or at least keep me motivated. My aim is to read 10,000 pages by the end of the year, but the sooner the better, and I will come up with a system for television / movies (thought I definitely won’t be counting all passive background listening activities, so this won’t be an accurate reflection unlike with reading). In terms of output, my main activity will be translating these posts. I imagine my writing is going to be awkward and heavily leaning on ReversoContext at the beginning, but with luck it will improve and that’s something else to watch out for.

Approach

My approach is inspired by the Mass Immersion Approach (MIA) which is big in the Japanese learning community. I immerse myself in as much content as possible and when I encounter a word I don’t know (this happens loads, naturally, so I don’t mean every single unknown word — the selection process can become quite arbitrary, but that’s another story). I then ‘mine’ the sentence that contains the new word and turn it into a flashcard in Anki. I have been doing this for 35 days and have made 766 cards in total (440 different words/phrases) and according to Anki I’ve learnt 222 of them and have at least seen another 463. So far so good, I say, hesitatingly. I can feel a steady improvement in my listening and reading comprehension and can follow the gist of most TV shows and books. 24 hour audio only news is still a long reach away, but I would consider that a long term goal.

Italian TV

While writing, I’ve got Rai 3 playing into my earphones, a cultural channel that airs easygoing documentaries and chat shows about almost anything. I am not sure how much good it does me just having it running on in the background but every now and then I concentrate and pick out a few phrases. Someone just said something about drinking shots (‘cicchetti’) in Venice, for example.

When studying a language one of the first things you learn is how contingent context is for comprehension, and just like hearing two native speakers walk past you on the street, jumping into something halfway through without a synopsis and without looking at the images is tough going. I get the words but the meaning eludes me. Thankfully, Italian is naturally rhythmic and pleasant to listen to; I often find myself lulled into a kind of hypnotic state and can cope with listening to the language for hours in the background.

It may just be the novelty of it, or I may even be lying to myself, but I seem to find Italian TV really enjoyable to watch. They are big on dubbing, and every time I switch on the TV I can find some half decent action or sci-fi to watch. On their talk shows nobody ever seems to be allowed to sit down or stay still and they make good use of big interactive screens and wacky cartoon backgrounds. Combined with that trademark gesticulation it all makes for engaging spectatorship. One complaint, though, is that compared to British TV, the hosts and guests are really inclined to interrupt each other, and you’ll see two presenters on the topic of something like clams in Genoa shouting over each other like they’re on Question Time.

TV entry numero uno

One of the shows I can recall watching dubbed in Italian over the last month is the first two seasons of ‘La Casa de Papel’ (‘La Casa di Carta’ in Italian), a Spanish heist thriller. The concept is exciting. A group of outcast criminals uniting under the leadership of the ‘Professore’ a kind of softly-spoken anarchist maverick who has planned in intricate detail the most audacious heist in world history. They storm the Spanish National Mint, kidnap a dozen workers and high school students and start printing out a shit load of money. On the face of it, it sounds fantastic, but as with many Netflix shows it just does not hold up. Instead of flamenco or something Spanish, they opt for a modern English-language pop soundtrack, the characters are unconvincing, and there are no great charismas, apart from maybe the actors of ‘Berlino’ and ‘Nairobi’.

For me, the spell was broken as soon as it became apparent that the producers were steering clear of any violence. My tolerance of and expectation for violence has clearly been warped by the likes of Game of Thrones and Tarantino, but any other bank robbery scenes I can think of are considerably more gritty.

There are a few too many instances of the kidnappers firing menacingly into the air instead of actually shooting someone, and generally being really personable and decent, to the extent that the crippling fear of the hostages just looks out of place. Even worse, perhaps, than shooting in the air or floor, is characters getting knocked unconscious just before they are about to pull the trigger.

And the sheer indefatigability of ‘Arturo’, the Spartacus figure, and his plans to revolt or escape with the rest of the hostages, is irksome. After throwing various spanners into the works, causing 30 minutes of episode time in clean-up, he’ll get a little slap on the back of the hand and go back to formulating another way to slow the show down. The idea that the robbers are supposed to be ‘hardened criminals’ falls completely flat, and if this guy isn’t getting capped then how are we supposed to expect that anyone will. So all the gun waving and face-on-face-noses-almost-touching shouting has the effect of making the characters look like drama students rehearsing for a play.

The lack of consequences might work when you consider that the Professore is set up as (a) anti-violent, and (b) trying to make a grand political, anti-finance, statement that requires popular support. But, just like his crew, the Professore comes pretty close to murdering first a sweet old lady and second a man in a coma, so in trying to keep the age-rating down the the show just ends up incoherent. All in all, too much bark, not enough bite.

But despite all this, there are some compelling scenes and if you step back and enjoy it for what it is — a bit of a romp that’s longer than it needs to be — it’s not too bad. But I don’t think I’ll be watching the next two seasons.

Log it

In total, that is about 16 hours of content, and I tended to maintain concentration throughout, so I like to think that ‘La Casa di Carta’ has had some effect on the language acquisition supposedly occurring in a hidden corner of my subconscious. I have a few pages of words I scribbled down while watching, a fraction of which were added to Anki. However, because I started watching this at the beginning of my Anki endeavour, and as I didn’t know exactly know what I was doing, many of the words won’t be part of an authentic sentence and as such those cards aren’t very useful, apparently. AToW, I can recall coming across for the first time impronte (finger prints) and in cinta (pregnant), and I am aware how weak that looks for 16 hours of listening.

Italian translation will follow shortly.