The Blogs

10/29/19

#1

Dei Francoboli

For my first blog, I'm sharing about Rosetta Stone, an online software company that is the main conduit for my learning for my Journey Project. I bought the software a year ago this past July, when I came back from Italy. I hadn't been to Italy since before Gianluca was born; over 17 years ago! I was eager and ready to learn the language. So, I've been training on it for almost a year and a half now!

The site contains dozens of lessons centered around themes. Presently, I am in the unit titled Past & Present, which involves many verb conjugations! Italian is notorious - like the other Romance languages - for its many verb tenses! Within each unit, there are the main lesson formats: introduction/vocabulary, speaking, reading and writing. You get a score on each lesson within the unit. If your score is too low, it will recommend you retake the lesson.

In the video embedded here, I'm practicing speaking! As you can see, I am not accustomed to filming myself and hence the funny tech tactics. I love when there are cognates - words that sound similar in different languages. For example, in Italian, email is "un e-mail" and dictionary is "un dizionario."