The Babbel app on my phone sends me notifications every day. Sliding onto the top of my lock screen with a quiet nudge to “Improve your Italian,” it’s “Now or never.” I’ve been swiping them clear of my screen until recently – because it’s time to actually go to Italy. After trying other apps (sorry, DuoLinguo, I do love your owl) – I find that Babbel has been the right format, style, and speed for my language learning.
Months ago I decided to download the app and try my hand at a new Romance language. My second language is Spanish, and I studied it for a very long time before going to Spain – twice – deepening my language abilities and my life-long appreciation for the culture and its people.
When I came home after my semester abroad in college, I chose to audit an Intro to French class in my senior year. What a leap. After thinking, speaking, writing, dreaming in Spanish for six months, French was hard. My professor kindly noted the French answers when I wrote Spanish ones in weekly vocabulary quizzes. Hat? Sombrero. Meant to say chapeau. In Italian? Cappello.
Years later, my dip into Italian was much faster, smoother, and more enjoyable. Babbel prompted me to practice all aspects of language acquisition – reading, writing, speaking, listening.
- Speaking Italian is wonderful – it trips off the tongue with life, and marks syllables with intention. Sometimes I hear myself speaking Italian words in Spanish, and need to adjust my accent and try again.
- Reading Italian gives me time and space to think critically about the words and syntax. I can spot conjugations, words in their plural form, and words that look like their Spanish counterparts. I can dissect a paragraph and figure it out for myself.
- Listening to Italian takes concentration, but I get the gist. I follow the conversation in cafes, I mentally note linking words that I don’t know yet (anche (also), ma (but)) and draw conclusions to prove to myself later.
- Writing Italian is what slows me down. Even with context clues, if I don’t know the word I can’t pull it out of thin air. This is frustrating, and I’m eager to build a vocabulary so I can converse.
Arriving in Milan via London, I’m already hearing the melody of Italian. I’ve been using short phrases in my emails to the group we’re leading to help them recognize common phrases. I’ve been playing the Babbel podcast “Voice of Bell’Italia” and focusing on the cities we are visiting: Milan, Florence, Rome.
I am so ready for the click of heels on cobblestone streets, setting my sights on the soaring spires of the Duomo, breathing in the smell of roasting chestnuts, and filling my ears with Italian. Oh, and gelato. Buongiorno, gelato.
Travel days can be a lot, and I know already my cognitive abilities are on low after this long day. My taxi driver is ready to chat. I am not.
I happen to love chatting up taxi drivers, Uber drivers, bus drivers, you name it. You live here and you’re driving me around? Tell me everything. Ask me anything.
Just, not at this moment.
It’s bucketing rain, my inbound flight was delayed and I would like to go lie down. I can actually feel my brain short circuiting, as my responses slide around in my brain and I can’t vocalize them out loud. Milan whizzes by and the rain slides down the windows, and I manage a grazie, ciao as I draw up to my hotel.
But dinner .. that’s hard. Am I chickening out or just being realistic? Tired and hungry – too high a hurdle in this moment. I map a nearby restaurant with delivery service and my first meal in Italy requires no speech, limited interaction, and I eat quietly in my room. Tomorrow is another day!
a moment in the sun 