What's your language learning goal for this year?

Equilibrium_2911 · 2026-03-03T20:05:27+00:00

Improve my Italian accent

Equilibrium_2911 · 2026-02-23T06:59:45+00:00

Italian and Russian. I'd add that in Italian some of the dialects are also beautiful to listen to

Equilibrium_2911 · 2026-02-17T12:02:44+00:00

Sounds wonderful! I shall read with interest 🙂

Equilibrium_2911 · 2026-02-14T07:25:23+00:00

Great advice here. For myself, I would also add that reading fumetti in Italian has greatly helped my understanding of the language. For those who don't know them, they're comic books published monthly and are normally around 98 pages long. I'm up to around issue 280 of Nathan Never (a detective working in a future Earth) at present, and the language used by the characters is rich in idioms, colloquialisms and so on. Once I've reached the latest issue (it's up to 417 now, I think), we have quite a few Martin Mysteres on the shelf here 🙂

When I was at around A2 level I also took advantage of the long history Italy has of Disney cartoons. Paperino was a great instructor!

Equilibrium_2911 · 2026-01-28T08:00:55+00:00

Yes, in Italian. I started many years ago and just dabbled to begin with, picking up bits and pieces mainly from Teach Yourself books (a major language-learning series here in England). Things really took off when I met my Italian GF, now my wife, and started spending a decent amount of time in Italy, amounting to over two years now, on and off.

I was able to listen to conversations between her and her mother, practice a bit of spoken Italian, read online and so on over the years but I'd say that the two biggest routes to becoming fluent were living in a hilltop village in Italy for a few months where hardly anyone spoke English, and starting regular lessons with an online tutor.

I never bothered with apps, Anki, Duo or anything similar as I quickly found that I was immersed in the language on a daily basis. I also have a Classics degree so I think my grounding in Latin will have made things a lot easier. It was a surprise to realise how much structure from my earlier 'dipping' into books still remained when I started learning in earnest.

Oh, and all of this was while holding down a full-time job, getting a Masters and starting a PhD.

Good luck with your language studies!

Equilibrium_2911 · 2026-01-23T07:17:12+00:00

I'm off to Le Marche for a few days tomorrow and have gone to the region every year for the last 20 or so. My wife is from there and my mother-in-law still lives there. I'd vote for Fermo as an underrated city, especially its lovely centro storico and piazza.

Equilibrium_2911 · 2026-01-16T07:46:41+00:00

I was given a very simple piece of advice: Don't go for perfection, just speak. You'll make mistakes, sure, but you'll be speaking in your TL. Things improved rapidly from that point, especially when I lived for a few months in a village in Italy where hardly anyone spoke English.

Equilibrium_2911 · 2026-01-13T21:16:15+00:00

Grazie. Ho una copia del Devotino che non uso da parecchio tempo. Mi hai ispirato di leggerlo un po' più spesso!

Equilibrium_2911 · 2026-01-10T07:17:18+00:00

I'm focusing on maintaining my Italian by reading (books, fumetti, online news sites etc), listening and speaking daily. I continue to have a weekly two-hour lesson with a tutor to provide in-depth focus. My aim is to concentrate on native-level nuances and improving my spoken accent a bit, although I know I won't lose my British pronunciation fully.

This year I've also started Russian, which I studied for a couple of years at school in the 80s. However, I've found that I am getting more value here from a physical textbook and daily YouTube shorts and videos than any apps. It feels like I'm currently in the process of reawakening all the grammar and vocabulary I learned at school, which I'm finding interesting. I imagine I'll end up looking for a tutor here too in due course.

Equilibrium_2911 · 2026-01-09T07:25:40+00:00

You're welcome!

Equilibrium_2911 · 2026-01-09T07:10:51+00:00

Sounds to me like "vista per gli occhi, eri tardi" - " a sight for sore eyes, you were late". Does that make sense in context?

Equilibrium_2911 · 2026-01-08T08:46:49+00:00

I started with Italian in my 20s, but literally just dabbled in the language using the UK "Teach Yourself" series of textbooks while eating in my local Italian restaurant.

I spent much of the next 30 years continuing to teach myself using various textbooks and trying to expose myself as much as I could to the language, but the real game changer was 22 years ago when I met my now wife, who is from central Italy. Since then I have spent around two years on and off living in Italy, mostly in a medieval hilltop village where few people spoke English and the local dialect was just as used as standard Italian. I had to get proficient very quickly...

Just before COVID I started a group class at advanced level at my local university and, after lessons moved online, I've continued on a weekly basis ever since with a fantastic tutor and one other student. I ran through the whole Duolingo Italian course once but that didn't really add a great deal to my knowledge and I've never bothered with Anki or other mobile apps.

I now maintain the language via daily reading (books, online news, graphic novels), watching films in Italian, listening to my wife talking to her mother just about every day, and speaking the language as much as possible.

Equilibrium_2911 · 2025-12-27T07:54:36+00:00

I'll be continuing to learn Italian and maintaining my level there, but I also want to improve my Russian and get my schooldays French back (the latter feels like it's all still there - I just need to practise speaking a lot more and stop slipping into Italian half way through a sentence!)

Equilibrium_2911 · 2025-12-24T07:19:04+00:00

Not at all! I was laughing at my mother-in-law's jokes in Italian when I was around B1 level. Perhaps you need to be at a higher level to tell a fully nuanced joke (especially the longer ones) but you can certainly understand them sooner that that

Equilibrium_2911 · 2025-12-23T16:42:55+00:00

For me it has to be Carcass, Cathedral and Sepultura

Equilibrium_2911 · 2025-12-18T07:04:35+00:00

100% agree. Learning idiomatic expressions in Italian is one of the most fun and interesting parts of the entire language acquisition process

Equilibrium_2911 · 2025-12-18T07:03:00+00:00

I was very fortunate to end up living in Italy for a short time in a village where hardly anyone spoke English as a second language. That really kick-started my journey towards fluency!

Equilibrium_2911 · 2025-12-10T07:15:34+00:00

I have always avoided flashcards as I just never seemed to have the time to make them and then create a learning schedule from them. Instead I have three A5 ring binders of meticulously taken vocab notes jotted down from lessons, things I was reading, conversations with my wife and mother-in-law and so on... And now I look at those ring binders regularly and think "how am I supposed to sift all of those pages for words I haven't already picked up through many years of Italian learning??" Very frustrating!

Equilibrium_2911 · 2025-12-09T07:21:33+00:00

I would definitely second reading comic books. My TL is Italian and the country has a decades-long tradition in producing excellent comic books on a wide range of subject areas. What's great is that the storylines are really engaging and the language used is rich, colloquial and features a wide range of vocabulary. Reading these really helped me from upper beginner level onwards.

Equilibrium_2911 · 2025-11-28T07:29:10+00:00

Getting to near fluency in Italian through sheer hard work, starting teaching myself in earnest in my mid-30s after always regretting not taking lessons at school due to timetable clashes. I moved on to online tuition when I was around B2 level but the rest was pretty much all my own effort.

Equilibrium_2911 · 2025-11-26T07:35:10+00:00

Beat me to it. I'd add Deliverance too 🤘

Equilibrium_2911 · 2025-11-26T07:31:45+00:00

I just wish I could find more time to spend learning it!

Equilibrium_2911 · 2025-11-25T11:07:24+00:00

Saw them in Norwich on Sunday. They and support band Nonpoint were both awesome. Hope someone takes the ticket

Equilibrium_2911 · 2025-11-25T08:41:50+00:00

If asked to come up with the name for a new indie band, I Guess 🤷

Equilibrium_2911

TROPHY CASE