Was It Something I Said?

The Spanish-speaking students have an advantage when it comes to Italian comprehension. Interestingly enough, this is starting to work the other way for me, even though my Italian vocabulary is still tiny. When someone is speaking Spanish slowly enough, I find that many words jump out at me because they are similar to Italian words with the same meaning. Although I still can’t follow a normal conversation (can’t do that in Italian yet, either) I can understand many short phrases, or get the overall idea of what is being said.

Italian on the Go: Although there are some phrases about travel, hotels, and restaurants, much time is wasted on things that are not helpful to the beginner, and especially not to the tourist. Siblings arguing over borrowing money from their grandparents? People gossiping about their friends and describing their living room furniture? Whose idea was this? In any case, there is no systematic approach nor any serious attempt to help a beginning student learn the basics of vocabulary and sentence building.

I sent for my old college transcripts with the goal of applying as many of my pre-existing credits as possible to earning a degree at my current school. School #1 was where I pursued my major, and that’s where nearly all my units are. It’s a nice, long transcript with a lot of things that should be helpful. I also took a couple of classes at school #2, so I decided to get that transcript as well. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that I had taken a third class there that I absolutely do not remember. It was a political science class, and I got an A, three units that are potentially very valuable in satisfying graduation requirements.