How to avoid those three common mistakes in Italian

Wednesday, 28 February 2018

3128 Hits

Learning Italian (or any other language for that matter) is a journey that requires patience and good habits. As an iIalian coach, there's a fine line that we need to walk with our students: We want to correct mistakes efficiently and fast without making the student lose interest in learning the language. This means that sometimes we have to compromise a few details to keep the passion of a young Italian speaker build up and active even when they are making mistakes that make us want to throw up!

So why do we cringe so much when we hear those? It's a matter of the refinement of the language. We know that learning a second language can take years. However, we care about the student being able to sound as Italian as possible and this is why we sometimes sound a bit perfectionist.

1 - Articles

Utilizing the correct articles is important because it shows that you have understood how gender and number works. Honestly it is very pleasing to hear students utilizing the correct elisions because it has an impact on the fluidity of the language. If you have trouble with using articles correctly, we would like to encourage you to spend a whole week working on them. The listener will think you are a refined speaker because this is a simple detail that can make a big difference.

2 - Auxiliary Verbs

The problem is that Italian is a language that has some expressions that make no sense to an english speaker. For example: "Ho Freddo" (which literally translate to I have cold). The easy solution is to memorize those strange expressions. There are no more than 50 and if you use them incorrectly, that could become a barrier in the communication. So the problem can really be fixed in only two days y finding our which verb to use by memory,

3 - Double Consonants

Italian is a language that takes pride in the use of double consonants. I remember my teachers when I was 7 years old elongating doubles on purpose to make a point. 90% of the time, it is not absolutely necessary to make this extraordinary emphasis. However, a good number of words can mean something completely different if you forget to add the necessary stress on the vowel before it. A great example: "Anno". I promise you that you don't want to pronounce the single consonant version of that word in front of your Italian boss!