cose che io voglio sapere in Italiano

So we are finally about to start with real Italian classes! As our first assignment we have to choose a few words and sentences we would like to learn in Italian. This is what I chose:

2 verbs:
to wait
to remember

10 nouns:
picture, street, tree, window, door, table, book, pen, pencil, light

5 phrases:
What is your name?
Where are you from?
I don't speak Italian very well.
Do you speak English by any chance?
I'm lost.

I think those would be quite useful once we are in Venice.

alcuno progresso

I've been trying to study Italian at least a couple times a week, and I do feel that I'm making some progress. I think that from now on I'll start trying to post in Italian, because even though it requires a lot more time and a bunch of dictionary looking up I believe it will help me.
I installed the Rosetta Stone software, which is also being helpful, although I really don't think you can learn a language that way. It teaches you a bunch of vocabulary, sometimes really unnecessary vocabulary, instead of showing you more of grammar and sentence structuring, which is the most important in my opinion.
I've also been following one of the tutors' advice and using the RAI website to watch some video clips in Italian. They have some interesting TV shows, and even though it may be hard to understand everything they say, I understand what's going on.
I've watched the two first episodes of Le Ragazze di San Frediano which takes place at the end of the second World War and tells the story of this guy who becomes a hero by accident.

musica

I haven't really written anything here in a while. I guess the complete lack of comments is not very motivating lol. So, I'll look at this as a personal diary and write stuff for myself...

From my experience in learning another language, I know that music can be a great way of getting more in touch with a language. It's closer to the way native speakers actually speak (especially when compared to language books and newspaper articles) and songs are easier to memorize, increasing one's vocabulary considerably.
I must confess I don't know many names of modern Italian musicians. But I found it really funny that when I went to an Italian music website, one of the only Italian modern singers I knew - Laura Pausini - was actually the top seller of the week!

I decided to post here the lyrics to La Solitudine, which is a song I've always liked, especially because a really famous Brazilian singer who was of Italian descendancy, Renato Manfredini Junior, of whom I am huge fan, used to sing it amazingly well.
Maybe on a next post I'll try to translate it.

La Solitudine
Testo e Canzione: Laura Pausini

Marco se n'è andato e non ritorna più
Il treno delle 7:30 senza lui
È un cuore di metallo senza l'anima
Nel freddo del matino grigio di città

A scuola il banco è vuoto, Marco è dentro me
È dolce il suo respiro fra i pensieri miei
Distanze enormi sembrno dividerci
Ma il cuore batte forte dentro me

Chissà se tu mi penserai
Se con i tuoi non parli mai
Se ti nascondi come me
Sfuggi gli sguardi e te ne stai

Rinchiuso in camera e non vuoi mangiare
Stringi forte al te il cuscino
Piangi non lo sai
Quanto altro male ti farà la solitudine

Marco nel mio diario ho una fotografia
Hai gli occhi di bambino un poco timido
La stringo forte al cuore e sento che ci sei
Fra i compiti d'inglese e mathematica

Tuo padre e suoi consigli che monotonia
Lui con i suoi lavoro ti ha portato via
Di certo il tuo parere non l'ha chiesto mai
Ha detto un giorno tu mi capirai

Chissà se tu mi penserai
Se con gli amici parlerai
Per non soffrire più per me
Ma non è facile lo sai

A scuola non ne posso più
E i pommeriggi seza te
Studiare è inutile tutte le idee
Si affolano su te

Non è possibile dividere
La vita di noi due
Ti prego aspettami amore mio
Ma illuderti non so

La solitudine fra noi
Questo silenzio dentro me
È l'inquetudine di vivere
La vita senza te

Ti prego aspettami perché
Non posso stare senza te
Non è possibile dividere
La storia di noi due

vacanza

Sophomore year is finally over. Now I'll probably have a lot more time to learn some Italian. I went through a few of the sections in the Ultimate Italian book and it doesn't seem to be hard. The only problem is that it's kind of easy to mix it up with Spanish...
But I just love how the book has some Note Culturali hehe. One of them is about greetings, and how they are more involved in Italy than in the US, and it explains that it is quite common for people to kiss each other on both cheeks as they meet. I couldn't help picturing Don Corleone (although I think he had Fabio Carrera's face instead) kissing everyone in his mafia family :D

I just love stereotypes hh. That's why I changed my profile picture to something more suitable. A few years ago, there was a very famous soap opera in Brasil called Terra Nostra, which told about the lives of Italian immigrants that came to Brasil looking for lands to grow coffee, and they all wore berets like the one I got. So I'm definitely more prepared to go to Venice and blend in.
Now I just need a Giuliana as pretty as Mateo's (from the picture) and I'm all set.

Calcio e Coppa del Mondo

I just came back from a soccer match and I kind of realized that it may be important, when going to Venice, to know a little about football italiano.
Well, first of all, let's pay tribute to one of the greatest Italian soccer players of all times: Roberto Baggio! Without his great efforts (he missed the final penalty kick), Brasil would have never won the 1994 World Cup, and we would probably not be the nation with the most World Cup titles: five.
By the way, Italy is the second on the list, with four world championships: 1934 and 1938 (which shouldn't count, because not even my grandparents remember these), 1982 and 2006, which make them tetracampioni del mondo.
Italy also hosted the 1990 World Cup, won by Germany, which is one of the first memories of my early life. I clearly remember their mascot, named Ciao, juggling the ball, which happened to be his head too, which I personally see as a metaphor of the italian stereotypical temperament: always losing their heads.

inizio

Hi there.
So this is my blog, which I decided to call 'mangia che te fa bene' because this is one of the only full sentences I can think of in Italian, and I think it works great with the famous hand-movement, essential to any Italian speaker.
I learned this sentence from an old McDonald's commercial, back when I lived in Brasil, when they were advertising a new desert called Caldo & Freddo, which consisted of cold Vanilla Ice-cream with a hot strawberry topping, which was amazingly good, by the way. But for some reason they stopped making it, and I never saw it again. But I never forgot the commercial, nor its deliciousness.
ciao