[Travel] Learning a foreign language in the comfort of your own home.

[Binney on acid]

Can anyone on NSC recommend an online course that will help me to learn very basic Italian ?
My girlfriend and I are going on holiday to Sicily next June, and I want to be able to master the basics.
Me attempting to communicate in Italian will probably be a humiliating experience, but I’m up for it.

 

[Bakero]

Simple tap-in there for somebody...

It's Monday so perhaps I'm not so on the ball but that's gone over my head

 

[Marty McFly]

Pimsleur is great, its based on listening and repeating - you kind of brainwash yourself into remembering what you've learnt (in a goodway!).

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I second this! With Pimsleur I was able to learn (and retain) reasonable amounts of both Portuguese and Japanese in relatively short time periods. I’m set to also start on French using Pimsleur (sadly they don’t yet offer Canadian French and I will
still need supplementary sources).

 

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

It's Monday so perhaps I'm not so on the ball but that's gone over my head

'One more top tip from me: No word is an island'

Majorca

 

[maltaseagull]

I found with Duolingo (Greek) that by the time you'd got to about level 7 of 60 you were being asked to translate things like 'Does the gorilla with the blue hat belong to the man?' And I only slightly exaggerate. Duolingo (Greek) seemed strangely obsessed with gorillas

My wife is using duolingo for Spanish and they seem to like talking about horses going shopping

 

[Jim in the West]

One more top tip from me: No word is an island.

By that I mean words don't exist in isolation. When you learn a word, think about how you'd use it in context. Don't just make a note of a word and its translation. Write an example sentence or 2. Make your sentence relevant and, preferably, personal to you; something about your job/life/family/interests. Not a Duolingo-style "It's a nice lion but I can't buy it". At first coming up with your own examples may be difficult so try to adapt the dictionary examples or use AI to help you come up with sentences.

Also, think about collocation (words that commonly go together) eg. in English, collocations with take include: take your time/a photo/a chance/a break. Learning collocations and chunks will boost your fluency and make you seem more natural. It's also important to focus on collocations as they'll often be different to English so you can't just translate word by word. Here are some Italian collocations to exemplify this https://www.italiantranslation-teaching.com/learn-italian/lets-learn-ten-italian-collocations/


This may all seem a bit advanced but it's something you can put into practice from day one. For example, don't just learn the word for table. Learn how to say "I want to book a table for 2 at 8pm" etc

Great advice

 

[Official Old Man]

Whilst living in Spain my wife and I needed to learn Spanish, mainly because our young children spoke it from school and would tease us by only speaking Spanish to each other. Anyway, Paul Daniels Magic Language Method was a set of cassettes and the basics being rather than learn a word it taught word association. For instance- Imagine a cow vacuuming a field. Word for cow is VACA. 30 years ago it worked well and we learnt enough to get by. Sadly now it's all gone.

Pardon our interruption...

 

[Bakero]

Whilst living in Spain my wife and I needed to learn Spanish, mainly because our young children spoke it from school and would tease us by only speaking Spanish to each other. Anyway, Paul Daniels Magic Language Method was a set of cassettes and the basics being rather than learn a word it taught word association. For instance- Imagine a cow vacuuming a field. Word for cow is VACA. 30 years ago it worked well and we learnt enough to get by. Sadly now it's all gone.

Pardon our interruption...

I've used this method for certain words. Many years ago I did it with the word charco (puddle) in Spanish by imagining a shark swimming in a puddle. That image comes to mind whenever I think of the word now.

 

[Jaxie]

When I began learning Spanish I found that listening to songs, particularly children’s songs is a big help. Watch them on YouTube as they often have subtitles. Songs are usually repetitive, relatively simple and catchy so get stuck in your head! It won’t necessarily teach the exact phrases that you want but certainly helps.

 

[Sid and the Sharknados]

I've used this method for certain words. Many years ago I did it with the word charco (puddle) in Spanish by imagining a shark swimming in a puddle. That image comes to mind whenever I think of the word now.

Funny that you mention sharks.
My main specific issue with Italian so far, apart from just all of it, is confusing scuola (school) with squalo (shark).

Leads to some very surreal sentences. And it means all the genders are wrong.

 

[Gabbiano]

Having learned Italian, Spanish and Portuguese to at least conversational level as an adult.

Duolingo will just throw sentences at you without properly teaching you the grammar or structure of the language. I don't recommend it, this method doesn't help you retain it.

I much preferred Babbel as a language learning app. Lessons are much more structured and it explains what you're learning properly and how to use it. But you have to pay, I can't remember how much but it's not extortionate.

I also got a lot of value out of using textbooks. I think this is the book that I used for Italian, although it seems to be a newer edition. - Amazon product ASIN 8861827365

 

[peterward]

Can anyone on NSC recommend an online course that will help me to learn very basic Italian ?
My girlfriend and I are going on holiday to Sicily next June, and I want to be able to master the basics.
Me attempting to communicate in Italian will probably be a humiliating experience, but I’m up for it.

I've used Duolingo, Mondly, Memrise and have a lifetime copy of an app called Speakly (all spoken versus online gamification).

Whatever online thing you go for, I'd recommend having a look at "The Michel Thomas method" I've done Russian and Spanish and found it one of best for basic holiday level stuff quickly. It has quite a lot of celebrity endorsements and I read before it's been used by Holywood actors to try and crash course basics?

It's nothing more than a language tutor and 2 brand new students with no skills that start from zero (same as you and youre the 3rd student) and it keeps building, by listening and repetition repeating. I used to do it in car.

Can get copies cheap on ebay or various places, this is first hour of foundational Italian (which comes after the basic Italian starter, just to give an idea)

 

[Is it PotG?]

If it were German, I'd recommend this bloke

 

[Binney on acid]

Thank you all for some fantastic constructive contributions. I knew NSC wouldn't let me down. The winter evenings can be long and tedious. Hopefully I can pick up some of the basics over the next few months, and blitz it then. I spend a lot of time on the 700 between Shoreham and Brighton, and will need a basic resource on my phone.

 

[Seagull58]

I use Memrise. I downloaded the app and got the basic course for free. Once the special subscription offers started rolling in I bought a lifetime license for €130. I do 15 to 60 minutes most days (Portuguese).

 

[peterward]

Thank you all for some fantastic constructive contributions. I knew NSC wouldn't let me down. The winter evenings can be long and tedious. Hopefully I can pick up some of the basics over the next few months, and blitz it then. I spend a lot of time on the 700 between Shoreham and Brighton, and will need a basic resource on my phone.

Get down Donatellos and try and order 2 bottles of the house red.......... as homework!

 

[Seagull58]

Did about six months of Duolingo (Greek) and thought I was doing ok. Then I stopped doing it and found that I'd retained zilch other than the words I'd picked up organically on previously holidays before I started trying to study the language 'properly'. I'd suggest sticking with Google Translate for the basics and learn the words for hello, goodbye, please, thank you and 'the bill please'. Then just build on how people respond back. They'll appreciate you trying

I would recommend DeepL in preference to Google translate.

 

[Seagull58]

Another partial downvote for Duolingo from me. I was trying to encourage my school age kids to stick with Duolingo so signed up to learn Portugese six months ahead of a holiday there so we could egg each other on with trying to keep our streaks going.

Portugese is a tricky language, but I found (a) what I was learning might have been useful foundations for learning the whole language, but it was not so great at learning holiday basics and pleasantries and (b) every bugger spoke English back to me when I spoke to them in Portugese, even when I knew I had got it right.

I have since moved onto French to try and dust off my 'skills'. It's been quite good at that, and has exposed just how much I have forgotten since I was last learning French at uni. Streak is at 420 days or so at the minute, hanging in there just to keep my daughter company.

The gamification is great and does keep you going, I'm just not convinced it's the best way of learning the basics for a holiday.

Duolingo Portuguese is, unfortunately, Brazilian Portuguese, which has many differences to European Portuguese. I use Memrise, which has European Portuguese (it also has Braziluan Portuguese as a separate language).

 

[Seagull58]

Duallingo is quite good however I was learning German for a year went there on holiday where it was of no use and here lies Dualingos problem you cannot speak to anyone who knows the language, Dualingo does have a speak option but for it to understand what I was saying I needed to shout and rave like Hitler before it understood me and I thought this is not a good look and I should probably not repeat that while in Germany hence no one understood a word

If you want to translate and speak on the fly then use DeepL You can type or speak to it to get the translation and you can use the mic to broadcast the translation as audio as well as displaying it on the screen. It's way better than Google translate.
I use DeepL when communicating in municipal offices here because they are more or less mandated to communicate only in Portuguese, although some of them will throw in some English "off the record" to aid my understanding.

 

[Seagull58]

Exactly. Just went back to my Portugese course on Duolingo. First line for me to translate - 'The cow likes the farm'. Strangely enough that didn't come up too often when I was out there on holiday.

Memrise is vastly better than that. I'm now on the third course and there's been a lot of focus on greetings, shops, restaurants, clothing, body parts, buildings, food, colours, professions, wellness and sickness, travel, rooms, furniture etc. Basically, all the stuff that I'm likely to need when living day to day or on a holiday.

Edit: As I mentioned above, I also use DeepL for on the fly translation where I need to communicate something specific. DeepL also has a function to photograph and translate text on labels and documents. Can be useful when shopping.

 

[peterward]

Duolingo Portuguese is, unfortunately, Brazilian Portuguese, which has many differences to European Portuguese. I use Memrise, which has European Portuguese (it also has Braziluan Portuguese as a separate language).

love Memrise