A Language Learning Tale

Podcast on Spotify: Link to Spotify Podcast on YouTube: Link to YouTube Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Croeso and Welcome Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on my language learning journey and discover my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the A Language Learning Tale Podcast. Today I’m talking about… Well, That’s More Like It Or Why Italian Can Be Easy for English Speakers Last week I spoke about the difficulties of learning Italian. Today, on a brighter note, what makes it easier? Well, I think it comes down to the real basics, which makes starting off easier, but what does that mean? For a start, the Italian alphabet is pretty similar to the English alphabet. The only difference is that it only has 21 letters. There’s no J, or K, or W or X or Y. Hmm, now that’s not strictly true, but it’s not the fault of the Italian language. You will see these letters, but they’re usually in imported words and, sometimes, names. However, the combinations of letters you’ll find and how they’re use...

Podcast on Spotify: Link to Spotify Podcast on YouTube: Link to YouTube   Benvenuti, Bienvenue, Croeso and Welcome Hi, I’m Juliet. Join me on my language learning journey and discover my thoughts on different aspects of language learning with the A Language Learning Tale Podcast. Today I’m talking about… I Don’t Understand or Why Italian is Difficult for English Speakers Oh, so many reasons. Let’s talk about a few today and next week we can talk about why it can also be easy in some ways. The mere fact that Italian has genders for nouns is a big stumbling block for many native English-speakers, especially if they haven’t learnt a romance language before. And even if you have learnt a romance language before, you’ll find the rules aren’t the same. Yes, an ‘O’ ending is masculine and an ‘A’ ending is female, usually, but there’s the thorny issue of ‘I’ endings and ‘E’ endings. Not only are these the plural endings for masculine and feminine nouns, ‘E’ can also be a singular ending fo...