Today marks day 503 of my German journey and, perhaps foolishly, day 1 of my Italian. The decision to learn two languages simultaneously came after hearing the announcements for next year: the Polyglot Gathering will be in Brno, Czech Republic, and the Polyglot Conference will be in Bologna, Italy. Although the thought of another language with declensions is overwhelming at the moment, I feel I can probably pick up a bit of Italian before next November, even while acknowledging that life circumstances might prevent me from going.
Throughout the later half of November, I borrowed Italian books and watched YouTube videos about how people go about learning Italian, but mostly procrastinated. Nevertheless, I started my Italian learning this morning, December 1st. What better day to begin a language than the first day of a month? Waiting until January 1st seemed too clichéd.
There are all these amazing ways of learning languages backed up by personal stories, but in the end, I chose the path of least resistance: opening one of the simplest lessons in LingQ, a platform I already have access to.
The LingQ lessons were fine, but they quickly led to grammar questions. I ended up spending at least 30 minutes with my AI tool, which I treated as a patient tutor, seeking explanations for basic conjugation and gender agreements. My AI tutor then offered comprehension checks, and none of my answers were 100% correct. If I got the conjugation right, I would miss the gender ending; if I remembered the gender agreement, I’d forget the proper preposition. It was a definite struggle, not nearly as fun as some language game apps, but one learns from struggle.
When my brain was completely saturated, I asked my AI tool to give me the basic conjugation for essere and avere in spreadsheet format. I’ll try to memorize this throughout the day.
I’m not sure if I’ll get as far in Italian as I have in German. This is only day one, and I suspect I’ll need more conscious motivation than I did with German. Still, the journey begins with “to be” (essere) and “to have” (avere).