Wednesday, April 29, 2015

Polyglot Problems #5

After listening to the advanced interpreters do their thing today I think I've come to the conclusion that I don't love Italian the way I love French.

Maybe it's because I haven't reached that point in Italian where it all makes sense. That culminating point where everything's solidified, I know enough words to get my point across, conjugating verbs is second nature,  forming sentences that are grammatically correct isn't so impossible and, lastly, confidence. 

Maybe it's because I haven't been to Italy. 

France is such a massive part of French to me, Paris, the Eiffel Tower, Versailles, croissants, all of these things that I love about French. And while I was still nervous about speaking in France, despite my host family being wonderfully patient, when I came home I felt 100 times better and more confident. 

French is just something I sort of...fell into (and don't all the best things happen that way? By accident?). I wanted to learn Italian and French was the next best thing. And I loved it. I was good at it, it was challenging in all its foreigness yet also simple - memorise everything. 
French sucked me in and Madame is the most amazing teacher I've ever had. I worked hard for it too and my hard work paid off. 

On the other hand Italian was always just something I wanted to understand because I've been surrounded by it all my life. Half-Italian, half-English conversations, half understood requests and "secret" conversations. 
I think that I wanted it so long that I've just kept on wanting it and forgotten why. 

Maybe it's just this interpreting thing has got me burnt out. 

I need a holiday. 



 

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