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One of the most scary things when you move to another country is certainly the language barrier. I'm not gonna lie. Even if you did a language course before or learnt the language at school for some years or think you are good at learning languages in general, it's gonna be tough but you are gonna figure it out! This is for all of you trying to learn Italian!
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Before moving to Italy I had done two Italian courses and I had visited several times before actually moving here. I didn't think learning the language was gonna be easy but manageable. After all I had always gotten what I wanted at the bar and the restaurant and also a full on conversation about the weather with my boyfriend's mum wasn't a problem. Maybe it was because I was a little bit too self-confident and just assumed I'm gonna learn it pretty fast. But once here I felt really thrown in at the deep end! My boyfriend started working after a few weeks and I actually had to sort out stuff on my own. Going to the „comune“ to get my Italian ID card or the „agenzia delle entrate“ for my tax number... I often felt lost but was suprised how fast I could manage those things. Let's not talk about grammatical correctness, but they always got the point what I wanted from them.
Actually it was much harder for me starting to communicate with friends (at that stage mainly my boyfriend's...). For one there were always many of them. How are you supposed to understand a word if 10 Italians are talking at the same time? And then I met them usually at a bar...Nope that background noise didn't help! But all that didn't even matter, because until I had assembled a sentence in my head to contribute to the conversation it was time to go home!!
It was super frustrating! I'm usually rather talkative and had many things to say but instead I was standing there nodding like the nodding dog sipping silently on my wine. I know it's pathetic but I cried quite often out of frustration. I thought everybody would think I'm just not the ot the brightest bulb in the box....
Actually it was much harder for me starting to communicate with friends (at that stage mainly my boyfriend's...). For one there were always many of them. How are you supposed to understand a word if 10 Italians are talking at the same time? And then I met them usually at a bar...Nope that background noise didn't help! But all that didn't even matter, because until I had assembled a sentence in my head to contribute to the conversation it was time to go home!!
It was super frustrating! I'm usually rather talkative and had many things to say but instead I was standing there nodding like the nodding dog sipping silently on my wine. I know it's pathetic but I cried quite often out of frustration. I thought everybody would think I'm just not the ot the brightest bulb in the box....
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So how to you get over it? Just hide from them and study hard by yourself or in a group of other non-native speakers until you've finally learned the language perfectly? That might be an option but fortunately I didn't have to lock myself in a room with my books. In the end it suddenly clicked! Not that I miraculously spoke the language suddenly but: I DIDN'T CARE anymore! At all. I decided to speak, no matter if what comes out makes much sense grammatically or if I know all the words. And from that point on it got better! I'm still far far away from a perfect Italian but hey, I can have conversations with anyone about almost anything! And I can make jokes and people actually find them funny! :-)
So if you are trying to learn Italian and you get frusted trust me, the „I don't give damn“-moment is gonna come and it's gonna get easier and once you've got the hack of the grammar, treat yourself to an episode of Masterchef Italia and watch Joe Bastianich fail the grammar exam ;-) We are in good company!
So if you are trying to learn Italian and you get frusted trust me, the „I don't give damn“-moment is gonna come and it's gonna get easier and once you've got the hack of the grammar, treat yourself to an episode of Masterchef Italia and watch Joe Bastianich fail the grammar exam ;-) We are in good company!