Believe me when I say that there is no better way to learn a language
then by immersion. Before a few days ago, I thought I could get by in an
Italian conversation. I thought that when I spoke to my grandparents, we were
speaking Italian. I thought that when I spoke with train station attendants,
waiters, and other passers by in Italy that I was speaking Italian. I have
since realized that the Italian that I was speaking was actually akin to pig’s
latin, and I was like a child playing at a language game.
On the train into Italy from Nice to Florence by way of Milan, my partner and I were in a compartment with 2 other young female students, an old man who lives in Monaco, and a churchman who is from Africa but lives in Milan. Between us, more than 15 different languages were represented. We carried on a conversation for 3 hours switching between French, English, and Italian. I knew enough words of what they were saying, and when I spoke Italian, I did not have too much of an accent, however my grammar was horrible. Past tense was entirely beyond me at conversational speed.
At restaurants, train stations, and buying tickets for museums and galleries, I always tried to speak Italian because of my displeasure for waltzing into a country and expecting them to be able to accommodate me. On a few occasions, my Italian was complemented (“considering you’re American”). On more occasions, because my Italian was so atrocious, people could tell that I was not Italian and responded in English. I really liked it when people responded in Italian because I like to think that I actually did a good job in convincing people that I was Italian.
My main frustration with speaking Italian is that so many words are readily available to describe precisely what I am thinking in English, but in Italian, I always end up saying, “that is nice” or “very beautiful”, which just seems so lame and flat to me, thus making me feel like I am being insincere. I thought hard about how my vocabulary exploded when I was learning English, and it came to me: I read voraciously. With this idea in mind, I bought Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – in Italian—for a few reasons: 1) the level of reading is suitable for a younger audience, which I figure is roughly the level that my Italian is at; 2) I have read it way too many times, so I could use context/logic to figure out the meanings of words that I don’t know (elementary school reading buddies comes to mind) ; 3) the cover art is so cooool!
For our last few days in Italy, I had the ultimate test. The full on language immersion experience. We stayed with my Italian aunt in Rutigliano, the small city where my grandparents are from. It. Was. So. Hard. I did okay during our first big family supper, because the stuff we were talking about was all stuff I had said before. Luckily, I have a few cousins my age who speak English incredibly well, so between English and Italian they managed to teach me some new things. By the first evening though, I had learnt so many new words and expressions. I even learnt how to use the past tense! Go me! My head was spinning so fast, and I felt that I was more exhausted than I would be after running 10 k. Learning a new language at immersion speed takes a massive amount of cognitive effort. However, I cannot deny the results. By the end of my stay in Italy, I was thinking in Italian first. I still occasionally accidentally respond to my boyfriend in Italian because some responses became automatic.
As a Cognitive Linguistics and English student, I am so thankful for this experience, because it has solidified for me concepts that I have been learning about for the past 4 years. For one, I felt the impact of critical/sensitive periods for language learning. One of my aunts told me that I should go to one of my older cousins to practise my Italian with, and why couldn’t I speak as well as her. I thought about it, and her parents were born and raised in Italy, and when they moved to Canada and had her, Italian was most likely her first language. The same goes for my father and his sister, where Italian was their first language, so many of the words and the verb conjugations are automatic. The second thing that I am really interested in is the mindframes that certain languages produce. It is really hard for me to think of inanimate objects in terms of masculinity or femininity, so I often end up using the wrong article that accompanies a word. But for any native speaker of a language, knowing the gender of a word is automatic. In many cases, there is no rhyme or reason why a word would be assigned the gender that it is, but yet, its there. I wonder what impact this has on people’s worldviews that they are born into labeling things into genders. And this concept extends beyond gender. How does the language that we speak impact our worldview? We do not have words in English for some things that are not prevalent in our culture, but does that impair our way of thinking about things outside of our everyday life?
On the train into Italy from Nice to Florence by way of Milan, my partner and I were in a compartment with 2 other young female students, an old man who lives in Monaco, and a churchman who is from Africa but lives in Milan. Between us, more than 15 different languages were represented. We carried on a conversation for 3 hours switching between French, English, and Italian. I knew enough words of what they were saying, and when I spoke Italian, I did not have too much of an accent, however my grammar was horrible. Past tense was entirely beyond me at conversational speed.
At restaurants, train stations, and buying tickets for museums and galleries, I always tried to speak Italian because of my displeasure for waltzing into a country and expecting them to be able to accommodate me. On a few occasions, my Italian was complemented (“considering you’re American”). On more occasions, because my Italian was so atrocious, people could tell that I was not Italian and responded in English. I really liked it when people responded in Italian because I like to think that I actually did a good job in convincing people that I was Italian.
My main frustration with speaking Italian is that so many words are readily available to describe precisely what I am thinking in English, but in Italian, I always end up saying, “that is nice” or “very beautiful”, which just seems so lame and flat to me, thus making me feel like I am being insincere. I thought hard about how my vocabulary exploded when I was learning English, and it came to me: I read voraciously. With this idea in mind, I bought Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – in Italian—for a few reasons: 1) the level of reading is suitable for a younger audience, which I figure is roughly the level that my Italian is at; 2) I have read it way too many times, so I could use context/logic to figure out the meanings of words that I don’t know (elementary school reading buddies comes to mind) ; 3) the cover art is so cooool!
For our last few days in Italy, I had the ultimate test. The full on language immersion experience. We stayed with my Italian aunt in Rutigliano, the small city where my grandparents are from. It. Was. So. Hard. I did okay during our first big family supper, because the stuff we were talking about was all stuff I had said before. Luckily, I have a few cousins my age who speak English incredibly well, so between English and Italian they managed to teach me some new things. By the first evening though, I had learnt so many new words and expressions. I even learnt how to use the past tense! Go me! My head was spinning so fast, and I felt that I was more exhausted than I would be after running 10 k. Learning a new language at immersion speed takes a massive amount of cognitive effort. However, I cannot deny the results. By the end of my stay in Italy, I was thinking in Italian first. I still occasionally accidentally respond to my boyfriend in Italian because some responses became automatic.
As a Cognitive Linguistics and English student, I am so thankful for this experience, because it has solidified for me concepts that I have been learning about for the past 4 years. For one, I felt the impact of critical/sensitive periods for language learning. One of my aunts told me that I should go to one of my older cousins to practise my Italian with, and why couldn’t I speak as well as her. I thought about it, and her parents were born and raised in Italy, and when they moved to Canada and had her, Italian was most likely her first language. The same goes for my father and his sister, where Italian was their first language, so many of the words and the verb conjugations are automatic. The second thing that I am really interested in is the mindframes that certain languages produce. It is really hard for me to think of inanimate objects in terms of masculinity or femininity, so I often end up using the wrong article that accompanies a word. But for any native speaker of a language, knowing the gender of a word is automatic. In many cases, there is no rhyme or reason why a word would be assigned the gender that it is, but yet, its there. I wonder what impact this has on people’s worldviews that they are born into labeling things into genders. And this concept extends beyond gender. How does the language that we speak impact our worldview? We do not have words in English for some things that are not prevalent in our culture, but does that impair our way of thinking about things outside of our everyday life?
Very interesting observations on language. Perhaps the subject matter for a thesis in the making? Just sayin.
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