Italian comparatives and superlatives

Comparisons happen in different ways in different languages. In English, for example, we just add -er and -est endings onto the end of and adjective to form comparatives and superlatives.

In Italian, they are also easy to form, though it is not done with endings. Instead, it is done with the comparison words più and meno.

More or less
Using comparison words instead of endings is just as easy, but there is one catch: you have to decide in advance if your comparison is, obviously, more, or... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Lithuanian, first impressions

I have long had intentions of learning about Lithuania, its culture, and its language, since that is an important part of my own heritage. This fall, I finally have plans to travel to Lithuania and start to connect with the culture that has been passed down from my immigrant great-grandparents to my to father, and down to me.

In preparation for that trip, I want to learn some basic Lithuanian. I don't expect to become fluent, but I do expect to learn the 10 most important things to survive in... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Thanks for the votes

A few weeks ago, this blog was nominated for Babla's Top 100 Language Blogs. While I certainly appreciated that, I didn't feel like I deserved it, and I even made a special request for you to vote for Benny instead of me.

I am honored to humbly report that even in spite of my request for you not to vote for me, I have still somehow managed to get into the top 10 for language learning blogs, and to be ranked #24 overall for all language blogs.

Thank you all for your support. I didn't feel... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Language is music

Last week, it was my great honor to receive a copy of Language is Music, a captivating book written by Susanna Zaraysky, about learning languages that seemed to steal the thoughts from my head and the feelings from my heart and pour them all out far more succinctly than I ever could.

About the book
Unlike my insistence that I do not have any special talents for language learning, Susanna found that she did, in fact, happen to have a special advantage. There was something about her that did... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Frequency lists help you learn what's important

In general, I hate the idea of lists or any form of measure or statistic when it comes to fluency. I believe that being fluent means being able to communicate on common subjects without a translator or dictionary, not some numerical measure of how many words you know or how many lessons you've completed. Remember, it's not a contest.

Nevertheless, there are a few lists available that will be extremely beneficial to you regardless of where you are in the learning process. Of course I'm referring... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Nobody's judging you

I often see people who are studying a language pass up opportunities to practice. Maybe they're trying to learn Spanish, but they never say anything in Spanish to their friends from Argentina. Maybe they're learning Polish, but they never use any Polish words with their coworker from Warsaw. Or maybe they're in the same German class as their best friend, but the two never say anything to each other in German.

One very big reason for why many people never seem to make much progress in their language... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

The pleasures and pitfalls of traveling with an iPad

This weekend I was away traveling, and I made the choice to attempt survival as a daily blogger using only my iPad. I wrote about that from the road on Saturday morning, but now that I'm home I have some additional thoughts.

The world is still not WiFi friendly
The first thing I found was that Wi-Fi can still be somewhat of a luxury. I stayed in a different hotel each night of my trip: Friday just north of Seattle, Saturday in downtown Vancouver, and Sunday in downtown Seattle.

I wasn't... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Let your method of learning reflect your goals with the language

A recent debate between two language bloggers got me thinking about the methods we all use to learn, and what works best for each of us, and I made a surprising realization!

A recent debate
I had to do housework while I listened to Vince and Steve debating the usefulness of grammar study, because I find "debates" to be insufferable and distracting. I could have just ignored it, but I also find Vince's blog rather insightful, and I wanted to see his take on the "debate."

I'm glad I did, because... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Listen to the news in a new language

When learning a new language, it is important to consume as much of that language as possible, in order to help your ears and brain adjust to hearing that language spoken. Outside of actual conversations, one of the best ways to do this is by listening to the news.

Easy to find
First, obviously, when it comes to materials in your target language, nothing is easier to find. Even if you don't live in a country that speaks the language there is often a good chance that television channels are... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

How I'm using my iPad to learn languages

There has been a lot of talk about the iPad since it's announcement, but it's been a lot of reaction and uninformed opinion, and very little helpful advice for using the iPad to learn languages. 

I'm out of town for three days, and I left my laptop at home and brought only the iPad. Instead of writing posts in advance and scheduling them, I'm writing this post on my iPad. I'm putting this device to the test.

Ok, so that's how I'm using the iPad to write about learning, but...

How am I... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Formal subject pronouns in Italian

Not long ago, I talked about the t-v distinction, which is the most common form of formal address in most languages. Italian, however, does things a little differently.

What does She want?
Instead of pluralizing the second person, or adding a title (like sir), Italians abstract into the third person. In the singular, this means that they call each other "she".

For example, when asking how someone is doing, if you are talking to someone with whom you are familiar you might say Tu, come stai?... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Overcoming fear of the unknown - knowledge is power!

Human nature is to fear the things we don't know or don't understand. When people act in a strange way, or talk in a strange language, it is easy to become fearful or distrustful of them. But once you start to learn, the fear is erased, and often replaced with curiosity and even a thirst for more.

Fearing the things you don't know
I recently told this story in my post about the Greek alphabet, but it's applicable here so it's worth repeating:
Growing up in the United States, I was surrounded... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Texting abbreviations in Italian

The 160-character limit on SMS messages has had a worldwide impact on the use of language, leading to many creative ways of saying more in less space. But even without an imposed limit, people still use shortcuts in chat and in other places too. I recently found a list of SMS abbreviations for Italian, and I'd like to share them.

Some common abbreviations
Here are some common abbreviations and their fully spelled out meanings.

ankeanche
c sentci sentiamo
cmqcomunque
dmdomani
dpdopo
drdire
dv... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

New host, new name

FluentEveryYear.com is now www.yearlyglot.com. All the old links will still work, and you don't have to update anything.

Leaving GoDaddy
Until yesterday, I hosted this web site, along with almost a dozen others, on GoDaddy, but last night I moved away from GoDaddy to a new hosting provider.

In the last two weeks, GoDaddy's web servers have been hacked at least three times, and each time thousands of web sites were compromised — including this one. That's just too much. Once is forgivable.... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Parts of speech: Italian prepositions

Prepositions are those short words which express conditions, directions, specifications, places and times, such as of, over, to, from, etc. They are parts of speech which native speakers seem to instinctively understerstand, but for which rules are often hard to find.

The most commonly used prepositions in Italian are: di, a, da, in, con, su, per, tra, fra, sotto, and sopra.

I preposizioni semplici
When they are not followed by (and bound to) articles, they are called preposizioni semplici... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Differentiating the Russian prepositions в and на

One of the many (seemingly neverending) details about Russian that can be confusing to a native English speaker is understanding the choice of prepositions in Russian. But once again, you'll find that the concept is actually quite easy once you learn to think like a Russian!

Unlike English, where we have several prepositions to make distinctions about locations, Russian primarily uses only two. And it's often confusing, and seemingly arbitrary, when you have to choose between в and на.

Sure,... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Let's learn the Greek alphabet!

Alphabets are scary things — when you understand an alphabet, you are sufficiently equipped to intuit many things about the text written in it, even if you don't actually know a word of that language. However, when you don't understand the alphabet, you find yourself saying, "It's all Greek to me!"

Knowledge is power, so erase the mystery
Growing up in the United States, I was surrounded with anti-Russian propaganda. Movies and pictures in Russia were scary, filled with strange writing... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Language bloggers debate head-to-head, no holds barred! Woohoo!

Do you want to see what happens when one language blogger tells another language blogger his opinion? Get ready, because it's going to be no holds barred, non-stop, uncensored language-learning debate action!

Except for one thing: there won't be any of that on my web site. Not here.

Enough of the nonsense
Lately I there have been a lot of language learning debates going on. One person's method pitted against another. One person's opinion defended against another.

So much disagreement!... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

What do you think of this blog?

Benny Lewis is one of the nicest, and most inspirational people it has been my pleasure to interact with, and thanks to his charitable nature, I've gotten more attention on this blog than I deserve. But in an incredible act of selflessness, he nominated my two blogs (not his own) at the top of the list on Babla for the Top 100 Language Blogs voting.



So while I appreciate any votes that come my way, I'm actually going to ask you, my readers, to vote for Benny's blog, Fluent In 3 Months. Certainly... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Do it now, with Italian imperatives!

The verb form used when giving instructions, issuing commands, or otherwise telling someone to do something is called the imperative mood. Today we will look at how to form the imperative mood with Italian verbs.

The imperative
Strictly speaking, the imperative mood is only used in the 2nd person. So instead of learning six more conjugated forms, you really only need two. With the exception of the singular form of -are, which ends in -a, these are all just the present indicative forms. That... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Badoo - a great place to practice your language skills

The most important thing part of learning a language is using it. Communicating with people. Unfortunately, finding ways to use a new language is not always obvious to the one learning it, so today I introduce Badoo.

First, get over the preconceived notions
Yes, it's true, many people use Badoo and sites like it for dating. And you can too, if that's what you're into. But you will also find a lot of people there who just want to make some new friends, pen pals, etc.

But think about what... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Ongoing action in the past with Italian's imperfetto

We've covered two perfective past tense forms, il passato prossimo and il passato remoto, which means we can now describe a completed action with some finesse. But we still haven't thought about how to describe an imperfective action — something that was ongoing in the past. Today, we'll fix that by looking at the imperfetto.

Il imperfetto
When describing an action that was ongoing at some time in the past, you need
to use an imperfect verb tense, and that is what the imperfetto is. Note... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

The T-V distinction

Showing respect in English usually just means inserting the word "sir" or "ma'am" somewhere into the sentence. In most other languages, however, there is some additional grammatical work involved in displaying an appropriate level of resepect. Perhaps the most common way of doing this is by use of the T-V distinction.

T-V doesn't mean television
Subject nouns are universally understood to occur in the 1st person, 2nd person, and 3rd person, each in singular (I, you, he/she) and plural (we, you... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

A first look at the Turkish language

In my recent look into the Complete World Traveler language list, many people were surprised to see Turkish make the list. But the influences of the Ottoman Empire have left their marks from south-eastern Europe, through the Middle East, and across all of Central Asia, even going well into Mongolia and northern China, where Uyghur (a Turkic language) is common language.

While I do have some Turkish friends, and a passionate love affair with Turkish food, it was my recent visit to Uzbekistan that... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

It's all in the past: Il passato remoto

It's been a while since we looked at a verb tense, and there are still a few left to cover. We've already covered the workings of il passato prossimo, for things in the recent past. Today, we're going to cover il passato remoto, the Italian verb tense used to describe things that happened long ago.

Il passato remoto
When describing an action that happened in the distant past, the passato remoto is used. It is really a simple past tense, meaning that it is formed by simply conjugating endings... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

Don't wait, use what you learn right away!

When learning a new language, it's easy to start deceiving yourself into waiting to use it. But why would you wait when there are so many good reasons for using it now, and so many interesting ways you can already use what you know to help you continue practicing and learning!

Confidence doesn't come from study, it comes from practice. It might be at a restaurant, while you're shopping for groceries, or just listening to the radio. You can practice your language and vocabulary while you're learning... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

The first book you read in a foreign language

If you've been doing the LiveMocha, it's likely that you've finished by now. And if you haven't been doing it — either because your language isn't offered, or because you just don't like LiveMocha — you're even more likely to need some new materials. And if you're not already done with LiveMocha at this point, it's probably time to be done anyway. It's an excellent free resource for getting you started in a language, but it's not good enough to get you to the next level.

Already... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

How does Italian fit into my goals?

This weekend I decided to improve the direction of this web site just a bit. I've updated my About Me and added a Bucket List, both in hopes of explaining my reasons for learning languages and for creating this site. But if you were paying attention, learn Italian isn't on my Bucket List. So why am I doing it?

While learning Italian has never been explicitly one of my goals in life, it fits in well with many other things.

To start with, many of the things I want to see before I die are... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

What do I want out of life?

In addition to sharing my tricks and methods for language learning, and my progress as I learn a new language every year, I have decided to also share with you my reasons for doing so. Today, I want to give more substance to that, by sharing my "Bucket List".

Just in case anyone is still unaware of what a "bucket list" is, it's a list of things you want to do in life before you "kick the bucket". Basically, it's all the things you want to do before you die.

Even though I'm just adding this... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

The new "About Me" page

Things are off to a good start here, but I think there's something that's still missing. Learning all of these languages is neat for a web site, but it's not the reason I do it. The real goal has always been to travel the world, and the point of the languages was to make new friends and enjoy new experiences in all of the places I want to go.

Over the next few days, I'm going to lay out some new changes on this web site, because I want to reflect the overall purpose. The main subject here will... continue reading at Fluent Every Year

My video from Tashkent

Last week I was in Uzbekistan, and I wrote about that a few days ago. I recently finised editing the video I had taken while I was there, and I've compiled a short report about my visit.

I hope you get as much enjoyment out of watching it as I got out of making it. :)

... continue reading at Fluent Every Year