Advice for Learning Italian
Weilà raga! Hey there guys! If you are new to the Txxytu/Weilà Tom Family I'd like to take a moment to personally welcome you! By way of introduction, I'm Tom and I run the YouTube channel Weilà Tom - a channel where you can find videos of me teaching Italian for English speakers and English for Italian speakers.
I say "weilà" at the beginning of all of my videos. Simply put, "weilà" means something a long the lines of "Hey There," its just a way of greeting someone in Italian slang.
Learning a new language is like starting a new diet, that's how I like to look at it. Just as with any diet, learning a language takes commitment and dedication.
I also feel learning a language is like running a marathon. To learn more about this and for even more advice on learning Italian, check out a blog post I wrote for FlashSticks, the link will be at the end of this post! :)
So here are some tips I'd like to share with you all about how you can learn and improve your Italian, or any new language you'd like to learn really:
The first thing is you've got to learn the basics of the language. That means you need to start with learning the days of the week, numbers, colors, vocabulary words, verbs, verb tenses, pronouns, all that good stuff. Then once you've got yourself a nice solid foundation, then you can incorporate some of the fun stuff.
Some of the fun stuff include listening to music and trying to translate the lyrics, reading news/magazine articles and books in Italian - try reading the Italian language translation of your favorite book, that way seeing as you're probably already familiar with the storyline, you won't find yourself getting lost as much; read Italian websites of your liking, write in Italian to improve your skills - whether it be by improving your vocabulary, spelling, and/or speed at writing and thinking on your feet in Italian; learn how to express yourself and your feelings through speech and writing, watch television programs or YouTube videos in Italian, and anything else that you fancy and enjoy doing to further help yourself to learn and improve your Italian.
For me, it was important to learn how to joke in Italian, so I learned some funny words and phrases, and because I liked them, they were easy to remember. I also always tried to find out how to say what I always say in English, just in Italian. And I don't mean I just did literal translations of things I'd say, because literal translations a lot of the time don't always work out the way you'd like. I mean finding out how to say what I wanted to say the Italian way, the way Italians say what I'm trying to express and get across to someone else. That way I could still talk like me, just in another language.
And I look at other languages just as I would a slang word in English. With any slang, you need to learn how to put words, sounds, and emotions together so that you're keeping everything consistent and so that you're making sense when you speak - its the same with learning a new language. Sometimes when you look at a language as being "a foreign language" it makes it far more daunting than it actually is. So just be like me, look at Italian as being a set of new words of a slang, and just with slang words, its all about learning what they mean and knowing how to use them properly.
Among all of the things I listed above, I'd also like to tell you guys that its important to try different methods and ways of learning Italian and go with the ones that work best, the ones that enable you to retain information in the best ways possible. That way you never look at learning Italian as an annoying, boring, or even extremely difficult thing, but rather something fun and exciting.
So best of luck to you all! Should you ever have any particular questions on Italian, feel free to write to me on my Facebook Page and definitely check out my YouTube Channel where I've got plenty of videos in both Italian and English, and I always upload new ones! Even though the majority of my videos are in Italian teaching English, a lot of my English speaking viewers tell me all the time that they watch my videos in Italian to learn Italian and that they're very helpful. Hopefully you'll feel the same!
All of my videos are grouped into 2 playlists: those to learn Italian and those to learn English. The videos are placed in chronological order and titled with episode numbers. That way you can follow along and begin with the most basic of concepts and eventually move onto the more advanced ones.
Click here to go to my Learn Italian video playlist.
Click here to go to my Imparare l'Inglese (Learn English) video playlist.
Click here to read the FlashSticks blog post where I talk about how learning Italian is also like running a marathon
Click here to read the Italian version of this post
Always remember to SPREAD THE LOVE! Have a great day! Cheers! :)
Tom