Hi! I'm an Italian student of languages at tha Catholic University in Milan.
I need information for my graduation thesis about the motives that drive AMERICANS citizens (children, adolescents, adults and seniors) to study Italian language and Culture (e.g. I'm studying Italian because it's the most beautiful language in the world; to get more job opportunities; not to relying on other people, for instance translators, or on pocket dictionaries when I visit Italy; to order spaghetti, pizza and vine in an authentic Italian restaurant speaking Italian; to converse with my Italian-born relatives or friends in their language; to avoid poor figures while going shopping at Armani, Versace, Prada or D&G boutiques; etc.).
If you're fond of Italian language and Culture or you're attending Italian lessons and have something interesting to say related to this topic, write a comment please.
Answer me because I'm curious to know what do YOU think about learning my mother tongue! :-)
I inform you that all the comments you'll leave in this topic, they'll be mentioned in my thesis.

Ciao Lucia,

I am currently enrolled in an Italian Grammar Level One class in San Francisco.

I will be making my third trip to Italy this May. My grandfather was born in a small town called Appiano Gentile, close to Como. He passed away before I was born but I had always been curious about him and the country he immigrated from.

On my first trip to Italy, I longed to speak to some of the Italian people I met in the smaller towns, Appiano Gentile included. It is easy enough to find people in Italy who speak English but I still had to desire to communicate in Italian, especially to the older people who spoke very little English. They were all so good to me and tried their best to communicate. We did manage a little with my limited Italian and their limited English along with gestures and even hugs. What wonderful people.

I am having a diffucult time learning possibly because I am in my 50's and it is more difficult to learn when one is older. But I am going to continue. My class is only one day a week for two hours. I need to study at least 1 to 2 hours each day.

Good luck with your thesis.

Susan

I'll be taking a 10 week conversational Italian class. While I know this will only give me a teensy bit of the language, I'm hoping to learn enough so that I don't come across as a totally obnoxious American when I visit your country in September. When I've traveled in France, I've never encountered the stereotype of the "rude French" that many Americans like to complain about. I like to think it's because I make an attempt to speak French (mangled French I know, but hey, at least I try).
Anyways...I think knowing a little bit of a language goes a long ways towards making my experience in another country more comfortable, and more enjoyable.
Good luck!
Jill

Ciao Lucia,

Welcome to Slow Travel/Slow Talk.

I grew up in an Italian-American family. My mom and her sisters all spoke in their dialect every Sunday when we all got together when I was a child. My father (the "American") didn't understand a word. I wanted to know what was going on, and learned to understand most of what was said by the other adults. I never learned to speak (except a few inappropriate words).

As an adult in my 50's I have fallen in love with travelling to Italy, and have taken a one semester "Conversational" class to try to bridge the gap between my comprehension and my ability to communicate. My husband and I also had a few private lessons to increase vocabulary, master some basic grammatical "rules", and to practice the kinds of conversations we might experience during our annual travels to Italy.

I get a little better each trip. I need lots more study, but I can have simple conversations in the present tense with an occasional English word thrown in, and usually make myself understood, or ask simple questions. I love hearing this beautiful language, and would love to take a much more intensive course...IN ITALY! I am learning to speak less "dialect", and more regular Italian.

Good luck with your thesis.

I worked for the federal government in Italy during the mid 80's. I came to the conclusion that those individuals who picked up some Italian seemed to better enjoy this experience. That served as a motivation for me to "masticare la lingua" a bit.

I had my first experience with learning Italian many years ago right after I was married. We were way too poor then to even think of traveling to Europe, but I was working for an art museum and could take courses very cheaply at the nearby university. I decided to take Italian because it is so much the language of art — and I suppose somewhere I had a dream of traveling to Italy.

I was so fortunate that after the one-semester class was over, our instructor, a lovely signora who truly enjoyed helping people to learn her beautiful language, invited anyone who was interested to come to her home once a week for lessons and conversation. All free of charge, and occasionally she would prepare wonderful Italian meals for us. That was my introduction to the generosity of Italians and the real Italian cuisine — or I guess I should say cucina — and the beginning of my attraction to Italy.

It was about 30 years later (after paying off two college educations for our children!) that we finally were able to make our first trip to Italy. Then my husband and I realized that we wanted to keep coming back as often as we could, and to improve our knowledge of Italian. There is no doubt that knowing at least something of the language makes traveling much more meaningful and gives you so much more depth of experience.

I still have a lot of trouble with more than very superficial conversation, but even being able to read the newspaper in Italian I feel so much more in touch with what is happening around me. Even though more and more Italians do speak English now, I think it is a measure of respect for another culture to make some attempt to communicate in their language. And now I want to keep learning and hope to be able to communicate better because we find that the human interactions we have when traveling are the ones that create the most memorable moments and have the most meaning for us.

- Roz

My daughter and I decided in 2002 that we wanted to make a Slow Travel type trip to Italy. She said we should both sign up for language classes at our local college. I did, but then she said that she was too busy and why didn't I learn it and then teach her. We made our trip to Italy together in November 2004. I taught her to say, "vino della casa bianco per favore" and her husband's job was to say, "il conto per favore". It worked for us!

Two years later I told her that I had decided to go to Firenze and attend an immersion class and she decided to some with me. She then signed up for Italian at her local college. I studied it for 3 years. We had a wonderful visit that was made even more so because we tried to speak Italian to everybody we could and we got such wonderful responses! At the pashmina stall in the market, I said I wanted "questo, questo, and quello". The shopkeeper told me I wanted to say, "questo, codesto, quello". Had we been non-language-studying tourists, we would never have had the delightful conversation that we had with him. He wrote it down on a paper bag for me. I still have it.

Then there was Zio Giovanni at the local bar. We stopped there quite often and he helped us a lot with our Italian. It was a wonderful experience.

I live near Middle Tennessee State University, and there classes are free for anyone over the age of 60. Had I known that I would have started taking classes much sooner!

One of the things that I find so fascinating about Italian is how close it is to Latin and how I can now see where so many of our words, especially slang, came from. Like, for instance, "jock". I often wondered why an athlete was called a "jock". Well, I learned from studying Italian that the word for an athlete is "giocatore". So now I see where "jock" came from! "Vello" is fleece, and our word for a fleecy type of material is "velour".

I could go on and on, but I don't want to bore you to tears! Slightly off subject, but one of the reasons I love GTGs (Get Togethers) is that we can all say our Italian words and know that we are not boring our listeners. We are kindred spirits.

Best of luck on your thesis.

Ciao!

My first trip to Italy was in the spring of 2001 and although I had traveled previously to other countries (Germany, Finland,Austria, Brazil, France, Netherlands), I had always been with natives of those countries.

In Italy, I was on my own and had never looked at Italian before getting on the flight from the USA.

We made the mistake of planning to be in Firenze at Easter (without realizing that it was Easter) with no reservations. We were calling ahead a couple of days and making reservations as we traveled. I called every hotel in our three different guide books looking for a room, using a Langenscheidt phrase book and always making sure my questions in Italian could be answered with a "yes" or "no". We did find a rather unpleasant place as a result of my calls, but it was better than nothing.

That was the start of my study of Italian. I had 5 trips to Italy in 2003 and had opportuity to try Italian and to be taught by friendly Italians with whom I was working. On my last three trips in 2004, 2005 and 2006, I have felt confident enough to travel on our own and even book rooms where no English is spoken.

So... I started learning Italian out of necessity and am continuing because I like it.

Bill

I picked Italian because it's a) beautiful, b) not Spanish (growing up in California leads most to study Spanish, I wanted to do something different).

I'm British/Australian, but I might make a footnote.

• Sharing a villa in Tuscany with friends and relations who could converse a little in Italian.
• Wanting to better understand Italian life.
• Living in a Sydney suburb containing Sydney's Little Italy and loving hearing the Italians talk.
• Watching the World Cup (calcio) at Bar Sport in Norton St, Leichhardt

I study Italian to converse with my family in Italy and some friends I have made there as well on my trips.
I also used it in my business as one of our clients is FiatAvio and also Impregilio (related to Fiat).

I went to Italy for my first time in September of 2006. I wanted to go with the assumption that very few people in Italy that speak English, instead of assuming everyone should speak English as a number of Americans assume.

I was assured that most people in Italy speak at least a little English. I was very happy that I at least made an attempt to learn the language because we toured far from the regular tourist areas and a lot of people we meet spoke very little to no English at all.

People seemed to take a true delight in helping me even though my Italian is absolutely horrible.

My reasons for studying Italian are exactly the same as Palma's. Right now, I'm in a level 4 conversational class and love it.

Maybe my opinion is not significant as I am Italian, but I have observed that a considerable number of classical music students - obviously, opera singers are the most important category - learn Italian in order to understand the important Italian music repertory (and I am not talking about Ramazzotti and Antonacci). I have known even several opera lovers - not involved in performing - that took the pain of studying a bit of Italian.

I would even guess that a significant percentage of people studying Italian in Far East countries like Japan or South Korea got involved in Italian through music.

Itarchivarius is right. Both Italian and German are extremely important languages for musicians. When I was a music student a thousand years ago I resolved to learn both languages so that I could read composers' letters in the original. Now I can just about ask for directions in German but buying a small place in Italy has meant that I've had to get much better in Italian. I would also imagine that Italian is an important language for art historians.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by One Moment For Lucia:
Hi! I'm an Italian student of languages at tha Catholic University in Milan.
I need information for my graduation thesis ....

I'm Irish, but like most english speaking visitors to continental European countries thought initially that all you had to do to be understood was to shout a little louder in English! To my great surprise I found that this was not well received by the natives and did little to foster international relations, so I thought it would be a good idea to try to learn one European language. Italian seemed the obvious one to try as I had learnt Latin in my far off schooldays.
My visits to Italy became more and more enjoyable as my ability to communicate in Italian improved. I do believe that it is a politeness to our Italian hosts, when we visit their country, to at least try to adress them in their native tongue.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by One Moment For Lucia:

I need information for my graduation thesis about the motives that drive AMERICANS citizens (children, adolescents, adults and seniors) to study Italian language and Culture (e.g. I'm studying Italian because:
I wish to show the people with whom I will be dealing that I have respect for their culture and wish to learn more about them and it - and be able to do simple things such as go to grocery, find a bathroom, ask a simple question and be able to say thank you for any help they give me. My language skills are small but I think effort is appreciated by most people.

I am an Italian-American who does not speak Italian.

My grandparents came from Italy. My oldest aunt was born in Italy.

My family's heritage is Italy.

I keep going to Italy, again and again and again. It's all I think about for vacations.

So, why do I not speak the language? Good questions, and the answer to YOUR question about why I am now taking Italian lessons. (Individual lessons, face-to-face, once a week).

I feel this need to "communicate" with Italians when I go on my next trip. Yes, I will be a tourist, but I want to be a tourist who respects the place I am visiting -- who respects the place so much that he would be willing to learn a bit of the language.

I always have tried (badly) to speak Italian when I went. My incompetent tries were always greeted with kindness and ... mercy! Maybe that's why I think it's about time that I took some initiative myself to do a better job of communicating.

I don't just want to "order pizza." My lessons are based weekly on "conversations' I hope to have in Italy aboout the things about which I am passionate. My instructor and I have a list of items about which I write conversations or subject histories (for example, truffles, pasta, balsamic, bread, culatello, regional foods, family traditions in cooking, regional wine specialties, etc.). Then when we meet, I read, he corrects both pronunciation and grammar, and then we just talk -- him well, me badly.

Anything else. I'm just rambling away here.

By the way, nice idea for a thesis!

Cheers

hi,

it's so rewarding to speak the native language when you're in another country. otherwise i feel like an awkward american who assumes the rest of the world should speak english. i took my first italian class in college, right before leaving for a semester in italy (it was required.) i got an A in the class and thought i would be able to speak and understand everything. wrong!! i understood nothing when i arrived. but as the weeks went on i learned more and more by looking up everything i'd been unable to say that day. it was like a great puzzle for me to crack, and the more i learned, the more i loved being able to converse with people. that was 30 years ago, but when i go to italy today, i can still have conversations with italian people, and i love it. i didn't set out to speak italian particularly, but it has been one of the most fulfilling things i've ever done.

My first experience in Italy was during my sophomore year of college. A friend planned to backpack Europe and invited me along. Rome and Naples were two of the destinations. Not only was I enamored another American staying at the same hostel, but the land filled me with such a passion for life. Everything from the ruins mixed in with daily living, Naples crowded streets, the hustle and bustle, food, and conversation -- these things deeply effected me, begging me to remember that I was frolicking around my roots. My great grandfather had migrated from Sicily. I felt a connection, like I was rediscovering a family secret.

The next fall, I began studying the language at university. I studied in Milan during the spring, attracted by the fashion and idea of modeling. This also gave me the freedom to travel and explore throughout Italy. I fell in love (with an Italian, this time), and met a prominent chef during a stay in Amalfi. I am still learning Italian. Why? In two weeks I'm going to visit this Italian lover, and his English is worse than my Italian (or so I now hope). So, I've racked my brains out trying to learn this language for a few days of romance before I go and work on a cookbook with this chef. Uffa...

Just be aware that One Moment For Lucia has not posted again since his/her first post in Feb 07

quote:

Originally posted by JohnFromAus:
Just be aware that One Moment For Lucia has not posted again since his/her first post in Feb 07

Yeah, I think most people may see that, I know I did. But, I still find it an open-ended and interesting topic as far as sociology goes; and I still find myself reading the new entries. After all, I know I did not take up the Italian language until the ripe-old age of 47, so I like reading about the various reasons of why someone else would choose Italian as a second language at different stages of their lives as well.