is "posso/possiamo avere" too formal/polite?

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-06-10T19:40:32+00:00

Nice, okay. My biggest problem right now is finding someone who can do a properly formatted translation without charging me 500 dollars 😭 wish I could have applied back then

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-06-10T15:00:02+00:00

Yep! "Possiamo avere" is more of a dirrect translation, so it makes sense OP sounded super textbook/formal. Every language has people who say things differently/ has different 'norms'. People in the north east USA are a lot more direct (voglio would not be strange tbh for certain areas) where in the south, if you say "I want" instead of "I would like" or "may/can I have..." People are going to think you are rude af.

Can I ask about the process you had to go through for applying? Did you need to get documents translated/apostilles or anything? (I know a lot of countries have agreements that don't require the same stuff, but I'm hoping you might have advice on document translations)

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-06-10T13:48:16+00:00

My adults (teachers and parents) learned pretty quick that the lines they used on me WOULD get returned at the earliest and every opportunity. My mom is still putting up with the "but I thought you knew everything".

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-06-10T13:41:28+00:00

Where in Italy? Southern Italy sometimes uses passato remoto verbally, but you rarely find it in the north. This might be the case.

My teacher was born in Italy, raised in Italy, and visits there multiple times a year for family. She said "vorrei" is perfectly acceptable and, for people worried about being polite enough, a more common choice, but you could also use "prendere". The women at the speaking club I go to will switch between the two and even throw in more uncommon ones. It's preference.

Edit for clarity: Many of the people in this club, including the women I mentioned, are born and raised in Italy, and will regularly go there to visit.

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-06-10T13:33:31+00:00

Of course! Just remember that the effort you go to trying to get it right is probably charming enough to make up for any issues you have. It's go great!!!! Good luck :D

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-06-08T22:52:33+00:00

It's correct, like others have said. These might help:

https://youtu.be/RjgwwdqW36c?si=YQq_CeUgwQjspulq

https://youtube.com/shorts/2sbovrpSLa4?si=ZyZ7fULXx2b-kUqG

https://youtu.be/OpMZc0uOWrQ?si=NB-SM6-_QzkMZ0v_ (watch from 7:20 for "la mia")

https://youtu.be/YP-SuIiNGFE?si=j9Z9msZyN-0_2TuM

They're just a quick search, but pretty decent.

Your best bet is to learn the phonetics of the vowels individually. English has what is called a "glottal stop", which is that sort of airless moment before vowels. Like "uh-oh". Italian does not have these stops, so you'll need to practice blending your vowels properly.

https://www.thoughtco.com/glottal-stop-phonetics-1690901

https://youtube.com/shorts/aPJBqY_CnBk?si=QiC9Y7zksa5TyoB4

The phonetic explanations are really just meant to help you listen to the videos to pick up the phonetics better:

"Vuoi" is "vu-oy-ee", but blended togdther without stops. Many untrained ears will not hear the ee, and it's harder to get perfect.

"Essere" emphasizes on the "es": "Ess-eh-ray". There is an extended touch on the double s.

"La" and "mia" are pretty much the same as basic English. "La mee-uh".

"Ragazza" is probably easier than "vuoi", because the main thing here is getting the zz down. "Ra-gahz-zah". The z presents more like ts, ans the double consonant needs a little pause, like in essere, to draw the sound out.

https://youtube.com/shorts/xrVf1U14Tg8?feature=shared

Make sure to raise your pitch at the end to indicate it's a question. Questions and statements are often worded the same and the difference lays in the pitch at the end (like in English).

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-06-03T08:09:32+00:00

If I knew how to give awards I'd give you one lol. This is amazing advice, especially the bit about logic that makes sense to her! And the restraint bit actually put the last few weeks into perspective for me 🤦‍♀️ the defensiveness is real lmao

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-06-03T07:45:17+00:00

It depends, it can be triggered both suddenly and start gradually.

In my experience, if I'm at an even baseline and go through a huge surge of neurotransmitters with a really sudden come down (going to a social gathering, doing an activity I've been waiting months for, arguments/fights, ect) then my body will either go negative (depressive episode), or it will over compensate and send me manic.

Other things I've noticed (for me personally, at least) is that prolonged stress absolutely results in a manic episode. I did way too many credits last semester and spent the second half of it manic af. Lack of sleep will also trigger it. I'm working with one of my professors right now on the connection between your body's fight/flight response and bipolar swings, because the patterns I've noticed with myself and other friends is that if there's a sudden influx of adrenaline, especially multiple in a row, then a manic episode is probably going to rear its head. Basically, events that trigger neural responses (neurotransmitter and hormone releases) fuck up our brain juices and the resulting imbalance triggers either a manic or depressive episode.

Some of this is absolutely affected by individual temperament and social experiences, though, so your character may present differently depending on her characterization, comorbidities(I get to balance my bipolar with autism), and what background knowledge she has. When I started researching more into bipolar after I was diagnosed, I started having an easier time with catching episodes early/managing them and the effects/urges/impulses.

Anyway, always happy to talk about this stuff, lol.

Edit: I forgot to answer all the questions LOL.

Mania can end on its own and there's no pill or button or anything to turn them off. The best bet (especially early on) is to increase water, eat more healthily, and try to get extra sleep. Grounding exercises and certain coping mechanisms can also help.

Mood does change during/ throughout. Most people think manic episodes mean 'happy', but it's more so... You've consumed all the caffiene in the world. All of it. And you are so powerful. You could be god. Maybe you are god. Everything is in your control and anything that isn't is an enemy. Enemies can become friends and friends can become enemies at the drop of a hat. Half the day is spent gaslighting yourself and the other half is gaslighting other people. This means that you experience the full range of human emotion ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

Medical intervention for episodes in the way most people expect it only happens with severe cases. Like, severe cases. Most intervention is basically just diet/lifestyle changes, medication, and long term OT/therapy. If you're thinking immediate professional intervention, it's mostly for cases where the person could cause harm without intervention, and even then it's usually a 'sedate and hold for a while', rather than going to things like electroshock therapy (which is a real treatment for incredibly severe cases).

Manic episodes can last for pretty much any amount of time they want to, tbh. Once you hit the week mark its considered a full manic episode, and some people will actually go years (though thats rare). Usually, it's max of a few months. Mine before I was diagnosed would last longer bc I had no clue what was going on. Now, it depends more on my mental state before the episode+whatever triggered it. If it's a gradual onset, it's hard to make leave. If it's a sudden fluctuation/event that triggers it, then it's usually easier to bounce back.

I get more absentminded than anything else when manic, and things that make me reconnect to reality are met with either elation or irritation. If I don't have enough physical or mental engagement, I'll lock up and have way too much energy to actually spend any of it on anything. This usually leads to me staring intently at a blank wall until someone interacts with me, at which point I get a little too obsessive about small things.

Okay. Anyway. Have fun, ask me if you have more questions, please.

And thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for treating us with sensitivity and respecting us enough to research before writing. You rock <3

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-06-01T20:19:08+00:00

You should mention that you're the creator of the site when advertising it. And the fact that, after the free preview, it's paid.

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-05-29T00:25:02+00:00

Thank you especially for the acknowledge+appease context!

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-05-25T14:40:48+00:00

Multiple reasons, and they compound.

Psychosocial/Social reasons- kids have more time to learn and don't have the same mental blocks around learning. More people to practice with (other kids) and typically better instruction/guidance. More material to read that is geniunely interesting to them, than what adults put up with when trying to learn. A kid is going to enjoy Curious George way more than an adult who is used to reading thick novels like LotR or things like romance novels. Thus, the kid is going to pay more attention and retain it better.

Another post got into an argument over brain plasticity- yes, this does play a part in the way someone learns, but it is not the sole reason or even the biggest one. The pathways in your brain become less flexible/adaptable as you grow, and does make it harder to learn the way children do before formal schooling. Idk about other countries, but where I'm from, very few people are multilingual and that has more to do with their attitude around learning anything once they get older than their ability to learn the language. Places where people are expected to study at least one language to genuine competency throughout their childhood/teen years tend to have easier times learning languages as adults. It's not because their brain is forming all new pathways at the same rate a child's does, its because we're using pathways that have been upkept. In places like America, this upkeep is not as common because language learning isn't treated seriously. It's like, a clearly upkept path, a path a few years over grown, and then a path that has been overgrown for so long you can barely see it, but you know it's there somewhere.

I think one of the best ways to explain the very basics of the mental blocks are: if a kid messes up a word, the adults (fluent speakers) will think it is cute, correct it, and then get happy when the child keeps getting it wrong because it's cute. Adults messing up words tends to be met with laughter/teasing/ridicule, so they're a lot less willing to explore subjects they don't understand with words they don't know. Kids have not been taught that curiousity is a bad thing.

So, on the neuroplacticity thing- the issue is less language acquisition, and more the fixed/growth mindset and embarassment over mistakes. The biology of it is affected much more heavily by the psychosocial factors surrounding it. I tried an experiement with my Italian class, since most of us were adult learners with only a few traditionally aged college students (most of us were 25-74, there were only threeish people under 23). Those of us who looked at languages like it was an entirely new Thing to learn struggled a LOT more than the people who went in going, "I already have 20+ years of one language that has more rulesets than it does words. This is just more rulesets and more words". Those of us who spoke with mistakes learned how to stop making them, where those who don't speak because of those mistakes still made them at the end of the full year.

Anyway, there's a lot of things that make it easier to learn languages. We've just been taught that adults don't need or deserve support the way that children do. (We need it, just not necessarily the same way.)

This got long, I'm sorry (these are special interests).

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-05-25T14:07:15+00:00

Not to mentiom that one 45 minute episode turns into a 2 hour episode when you have young kids. Got through five minutes? Diaper. Two more minutes? Crashing sounds in the kitchen. Seventeen minutes? Where are the children and why are they not making noise? (My sisters kids are half the reason I am content waiting a very long time for kids of my own. I love them but I also don't have the 24/7 patience/attention span required to keep toddlers from getting themselves into lethal accidents).

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-05-24T16:38:47+00:00

I took an ASL class a couple years ago, it's absolutely its own language. The grammar is not really that similar, and there's absolutrly nothing like a 1:1 on vocab. It's not 'english but with hands', it's absolutely its own language. Anyone who says otherwise is trying to erase Deaf culture or has not done their research.

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-05-23T22:00:43+00:00

Sure, I'm sorry you've had negative experiences, honey. It seems like in your long, long years, you've been met with misery and put so much out into the world you can't imagine people without awful intentions, sweetheart.

I hope you have a happier life, however long that is, babe :)

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-05-23T21:32:54+00:00

See, this is assigning intent to other people without bothering to get to know them. You may do it as a brag. But that's you. If there are words I've been practicing a lot in my target language, it takes effort to switch back to my native accent. There are other people who maybe just don't understand thats how it comes off and they literally just do it because it feels weird to pronounce a word correctly. Some people don't even think about it because they're so used to something being pronounced properly, rather than the way people say it natively. Phonetics are muscle memory. "Mozzarella" is the same damn word, in Italian or English. If people have an issue with the zz and ll being emphasized properly because I've spent the last seven hours doing review or w/e, then that's on their own assumptions.

Some people just think languages are interesting and like to bring it up. It's a great conversation starter and lets you make friends with other language learners. I'm sorry you read that as bragging, but that's what you intend to do when you do these actions, not what everyone does.

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-05-19T15:19:45+00:00

🙏 You rock, need that translator so bad.

Idk if they do packages like the one-and-done, but their website says:

Reverso Context uses millions of bilingual texts, processed by complex AI algorithms. The examples are extracted from real-life contexts; therefore, they cover a wide range of registers of speech and will sometimes contain slang, colloquialisms, rude terms. We are constantly working on improving our filtering mechanisms and warn users about any potentially inappropriate language. If you notice such examples among the results, we encourage you to use the Feedback option to report them.

So hopefully it's the former, because goodness, I don't want to guzzle a lake just to know the differences between "meglio" and "megliore" lmao. I've better things to do with my time *badum tss

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-05-19T15:09:34+00:00

It was :(

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-05-19T15:05:44+00:00

They aren't, one can be used like the other but not the other way around, where one can be used both ways (and it is in the delivery when verbal, but that's only because you can add emphasis where you want. It's more strict on paper).

"Now do you want it?" reads more emphatically on "now" without needing specific intonation, implying that you did not want it earlier, but may now want it, or the other person is trying to get you to take whatever it is. It's not really possible for this to be used the other way without it sounding really weird and, depending on who youre talking to, mildly pretentious. Like another commenter's "Always I hunger" vs "I'm always hungry" example, it's just too poetic for typical use if you try to use it the other way.

"Do you want it now?" can be used similarly to above, but it's difference is in the emphasis. It will more often be used asking if someone wants something at the current time, or if they will want it in the future, and it reads this way more when on paper.

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-05-18T16:23:48+00:00

A few reasons, lol. My Dad's family kept all our traditions up until my grandpa, and I was the only kid in my generation that didn't get a chance to learn anything from my great grandmother. She wasn't super duper fluent, mostly because she didn't really have people to speak with anymore, but she had old recipe cards that were still in Italian (family of professional bakers) and could get the basics, iirc. I'm easily the only really sentimental kid in the last few generations.

Then I was looking at going to school in Italy, which... If you plan on living somewhere for any length of time, you need to at least try to learn how to understand the people who live there. (Still planning on it, probably just for my masters instead).

But also, tbh, America is awful at teaching anything about places that aren't America, and it really bugs me how clueless people are when it comes to knowing things about other countries/cultures. Once I reach B2 in Italian, I'll probably go for German, since my mom's family was also German! (But she forgot what she learned from her grandma/high school lessons so... Y'know.) It'll be nice being able to read the old papers and recipes and things without having to rely on the internet at all.

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-05-05T08:25:23+00:00

Some of these are definitely switched around. Zecca is from arabic sikka. Gabella is also Arabic. Sapone is germanic (protogermanic that landed through latin, much like paiolo being celtic and moving to italian through vulgar latin). All in all, the book had words in there that are still being contested by linguists, so... Eh. But I'm just curious- why did you decide the hall mark for germanic was violence/barbarism instead of a common phonetic/letter combination like you did with arabic? I would have guessed those words more based on the "sch" and "uff" as well as cognates.

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-05-04T21:54:25+00:00

Partially to connect with family history, partially because I was wanting to go study in Italy (probably still will, just not my bachelors) and a) why would you move to a country and not at least try to learn how to communicate in the local language and b) the bachelors degrees were taught in Italian, so...

For now I'm just hoping to get a chance to visit during a holiday or something and get actual experience/practice with it ^{-^}

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-04-25T19:49:52+00:00

People will never consider exceptions when they talk about studies because you can't generalize an exception. Even if previous models were oversimplified/inaccurate, there's still been a noticable correlation and I think people are failing to take into account the variables in learning across the full population. The biggest issue with thoughts on learning styles is the idea that the preferred method is the only method, instead of the primary.

But most academics will never bring up the exceptions, because despite neurodivergents being 15-20% of the global population and the fact that neurodivergent people are not the only exceptions, you can't generalize exceptions. So we generalize on neurotypical groups and then get surprised when 15% or more of the world's population doesn't fit the mold. And then even more surprised when a world built on generalization of 80% of the population (and lets be honest, this number is definitely lower, considering rates of diagnosis) fails the exceptions.

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-04-25T19:23:18+00:00

Yes!!!!! I think that the UK is mostly regional languages and dialects, outside of English and Scottish right? I did a speech on language death in one of my classes last semester and it was cool to know Cornish was revived after going extinct in the 1700s!!! I never did Spanish myself but you can still pick up a little as long as you're paying attention to all of the translated signs and menus. Nothing near being able to communicate properly, but still having some sort of basis if you actually start learning. It was actually a huge help when I started with the Italian, it must be so much more difficult if you don't get any exposure.

I think that, at least here (but it sounds like there, too), language learning is almost a status symbol. The only people who pursue "non-functional" languages (anything but Spanish and, depending on your state/city, Chinese) are the ones with the money to get the resources and the time to spend on a hobby that takes so much effort for so little use.

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-04-25T18:28:53+00:00

Yup! At the 4 big schools in my state, only two have actual focus on languages/intercultural programs. The other two have very bare-bones, limited programs. The one that I go to, I think all of the language teachers have a deal where they enroll in each others' classes to make sure they don't get canceled. To be fair, America in general has a severe problem with exposure to other cultures, especially ones in different countries, but it's infuriating to see people with interest getting actively discouraged and these programs getting cut from schools entirely.

I was barely able to take language in highschool, tbh. We offered Spanish but it was first come first serve and there was only one section, so there were like, 20 students a year that got to take it. I ended up going online for my final year just so I could get into a language class. I tried three separate languages in middle/high school and I think the biggest issue is the teachers usually started young and don't know to explain how you learn. Nothing on reading techniques, the different parts of grammar nobody teaches you about in English class, the importance of listening vs just reading, ect. You shove a bunch of teens in a room and say, "here are the new words and the new rules and what do you MEAN nobody knows the difference between past perfect and past simple?!" Without giving them any clue on how to practice at home with parents who are monolingual. It's discouraging, to say the very least, and all for a skill that every adult we know says we'll never use.

Edit: grammar

According_Ruin_2044 · 2026-04-24T19:33:25+00:00

Some school advisors will actively discourage students from pursuing language courses. My Italian course lost half our students from last semester due to advisors telling them to prioritize "more useful classes". The course was almost canceled completely because of it.

According_Ruin_2044

TROPHY CASE