How to learn Italian

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Margherita: Ciao a tutte e a tutti, benvenuti in questo nuovo video! Sono Margherita e su questo canale vi aiuterò a imparare l’italiano. Hey guys! So, welcome to this video! I’m Margherita and on this channel I'll help you learn Italian. And today I'm here with Shaun.

Shaun: Ciao!

M: And Shaun's gonna give you a couple of tips, a couple of pieces of advice about learning Italian.

S: Ciao, I'm Shaun and I want to help you learn Italian because I'm learning it now myself and I do find it quite difficult and give you the tips that I do now to help myself. And now I hope they can help you!

M: Can you tell us a little bit more about your background?

S: So, I’ve grown up in Perth, Australia, all my life. Throughout school with had different languages that we could learn, but unfortunately they didn't really extend on that. I wish I did learn a language when I was younger just because it’s a bit easier to learn when you’re younger.

M: So, English is your first language, right?

S: English is my first language. Like I said, I've had the opportunity to learn other languages but I wasn't really pushed to learn.

M: So, basically it's like your first time properly studying a language, like in depth.

S: yeah, yeah, I've never seriously started a language before. The commitments is very hard if you don’t have someone there to push you or if you don’t actually have a reason to.

S: So, what's your first tip?

S: My first tip is practice practice practice. It will take time and just with everything, the more you do it and more often you do it, the easier it does get.

M: So, your first tip is just practice a lot.

S: Practice a lot. It doesn’t need to be hours and hours on end a day. Even if you only have time to do five minutes a day, that's better than nothing. Try and aim about 30 minutes if you can. But just also don't make it a chore as well. If it becomes a chore, you’ll stop doing it. So, have fun with it. If you haven't done it in two weeks and you’re in a low spot, just do it for five minutes this one day and the next day you might find the motivation to do it again.

M: It's better to do it 15 minutes or even 5 minutes every day rather than do it like for hours every month.

S: yeah, that’s it.

M: So, yeah, like practice a lot and be consistent. Try to find your routine.

S: and have fun with it!

M: yeah. Sure, and have fun. I don’t know what are your next tips, so I don’t want to say too much, because I don’t want to spoil it. So, yeah, have fun. Maybe we’ll get back to this later.

S: Yes, fantastic.

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M: So, the first tip is practice, practice, practice and the second is…?

S: Learn from someone who can give the correct material and who can correct you on your pronunciation and grammar. A lot of websites they do teach you Italian but they might not teach you the correct way to say things. And just a reminder with that: English and Italian have different pronunciations and grammatical rules. So everything you say in English it doesn't have a exact translation to Italian and vice versa.

M: Maybe sometimes it has, it does have, but sometimes not. And about what you said before about learning from someone, I always tell my students to yes study a lot by themselves, to do lots of self-study, but also to have lessons with someone, with a teacher, because sometimes websites or apps they just teach you just a couple of sentences, pre-made sentences, but they don't teach you why or how to build the sentence by your own, by yourself. There are lots of teachers, lots of very good teachers on the internet and also everywhere, in lots of different schools around the world. So, just pick the one you like the most.

S: But, with that, if you don't have the means to access a teacher, just doing online is better than nothing. There's a lot of valuable information online that you can learn. So if you can't access a teacher to do one-on-one talks or group talks, just do online and you'll still learn a lot.

M: But there are also lots of free apps like -  now I don’t remember the names (HiNative, Tandem, HelloTalki), but like lots of free apps where you can talk with native speakers. You can do like a language exchange and they are for free so you can join one of those apps, one of those websites. So you can talk with someone that’s a native speaker and just exchange you language. So yeah, there are lots of ways to do this. Super! So first tip is practice, practice, practice; the second one is find a reliable source; and what's the third tip?

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S: and the third tip, I kinda have already talked about this in the first one, but it's very important and it should be its own tip. So just have fun with it. It's very hard to stick with something if you see it as a chore.

M: So, yeah, basically the key is to be consistent, to find reliable sources and to have a lot of fun, because if you have fun, you are motivated and if you are motivated you will keep going, you will keep studying. So yeah, just find…if you find the traditional way of studying boring, it's completely fine. There are so many different ways to learn something, to learn language: you can attend a course…I don’t know, if you want to learn Spanish, you can attend a dancing class, like a salsa class, something like this, where you can, where you have the opportunity to maybe talk in…speak in Spanish with someone, with the teacher. There are so many different ways to learn a language. So just be consistent and have fun. These are the two main things to do whenever you want to learn something and specifically with languages, with any language, actually, not Shaun decide to share with us. And thank you very much Shaun for sharing this, because I think is…I think it's very nice to hear the point of view not only of the teacher, but also of another student that's doing this journey, this learning journey. So, yeah, thank you very much!

S: That's all good and I’d love to hear any of your tips that have kept you studying and learning a new language.

M: Yeah, exactly, yeah, guys you are more than welcome to share any thoughts, doubts or experience here, down in the comment section. So yeah, I think that's it for this video. Thank you again, Shaun. Grazie mille! Ci vediamo nel prossimo video. Ciao <3