Each Wednesday morning, our family has our Italian lesson. We think our tutor, Paola, is the greatest! She has a great sense of humor with Bob's impertinent questions ("Are you sure you're pronouncing that right?") and she teaches the language with the subtlety of a native speaker. Most of which subtlety, of course, is lost on us.
Why Paola, who teaches Western Civilization at Columbia and is writing a book in English on Russian literature, would want to teach us, is a mystery. Teaching us Italian is like having breakfast with toddlers, only we're not nearly as cute! And not only does she speak with us patiently and give us worksheets that are much more interesting than the ones in textbooks, she even encourages us to e-mail her during the week. There's just one catch: Our e-mails have to be in Italian, she corrects them, and we have to send them back with proper grammar. As a result, I'm about three e-mails deep in corrections right now. Seems I can't resist trying to talk like an eight-year-old instead of a three-year-old, and I mess up a lot!
Earlier this week, I finished up an e-mail with:
"Ora devo comprare del cibo per la cena," which I thought meant, "Now I should go buy some food for supper."
But Paola responded, "Da mangiare--Per favore, dimentica la parola "cibo," si usa quasi esclusivamente per i cani, gatti, ecc.!" ("Say 'something to eat'--Please, forget the word 'cibo;' It's used almost exclusively for dogs and cats, etc.!")
Thank you Paola, for teaching us not to buy cat food for dinner! Ms. Stone*, as we affectionately call our old tutor, left us in the dark on that one.
And speaking of three-year-olds and cats, the clip below is sweet in a way that TV rarely is nowadays. I love the way the little girl smiles when she sings "gattini." (Kittens) And the boy and girl in the background are pretty entertaining, too:
*Someone at Bob's office heard him talking about the Rosetta Stone program and thought he was referring to a woman!
3 comments:
Are ya'll planning a trip to Italy? I love the language. So beautiful and melodious. Good luck..I mean providence.
This made me laugh! I can just picture your family and all of this going on... I love that you're *all* doing Italian now. Have fun!
Susan
Debbie, we didn't start out planning a trip to Italy, but the fact that we *had* been there may have played a part. And I suppose it was inevitable that once we started learning the language purposefully, we'd find an opportunity to return. So, as it happens, now we *are* planning to attend a music festival in Tuscany this summer, and Bob will partly justify his extended absence from work by meeting with some clients in Milan. Have you studied Italian?
And Susan, I think we've all studied Italian at one point or another, though CZ claims to be less than 100% enthusiastic. Still, it makes sense to concentrate our efforts on one language for now, since we can share an excellent tutor, and we told her that if she studies Italian with us in high school, then she's welcome to branch off into Finnish or whatever in college. I think she'll be glad in the long run.
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