Weekly Discussion: 17 July 2023 (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by andocas@lemmy.world to c/fire@lemmy.ml

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[-] FancyPantsFIRE@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago

Do you have EU citizenship already and speak the language?

[-] sevan@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

No to both at the moment. I'm helping my wife and kids get their Italian citizenship by descent. That will take a few years, but after that we should be able to move there whenever we are ready. I would like to get citizenship by marriage as well once my wife has her citizenship worked out.

I have started learning the language, but there are no classes available locally, so I have to do it all self-paced with digital courses, which is challenging. I'd like to become fluent by the time we are ready to go, but even if I can get some basic skills, I can work on immersion learning once we are there. Our current plan is to avoid putting ourselves in an expat community where we can get away with never learning the language properly.

[-] ambitiousslab@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 year ago

Going a little off-topic here, but do you mind if I ask which resources you're using to learn? I'm in a very similar boat, so far I've been using the Language Transfer and Michel Thomas courses, but I'm always on the lookout for more.

[-] sevan@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

I started with a program called Italy Made Easy. It seems okay, but my only other experience learning a language is my high school Spanish classes, so I don't have much to compare to. I would much prefer to take live, in person classes, but there isn't much available near me.

What are your thoughts on the courses you mentioned?

[-] ambitiousslab@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

started with a program called Italy Made Easy

Thanks for the suggestion! That's another one for me to look into :)

What are your thoughts on the courses you mentioned?

I've found them both excellent for learning speaking, especially for sentence structure and constructing more elaborate sentences. Just from using these courses I was able to express myself and have basic conversations while I was in Italy.

They haven't really helped with listening comprehension though, so that's one thing I'll want to focus on when I finish these. When trying to have conversations, even if we were on a topic I could talk about, by the time I'd understood the previous sentence the moment to speak would've passed. I think this is normal, but definitely something I want to practice.