Learning Italian - Part 1: Intro, and Julian's path.

4 of us here in Italy, each of us learning Italian in different ways. This post will be a work in progress noting my observations of how this process happens for each of us. Yes, each of us - although you'd never know it from hearing me speak Italian as perfectly and modestly as I do, even an ingrained "mother tongue" gets rusty in certain subtle (and not so subtle) ways when you are removed from "the culture" in the way I have been for the last, oh, 30 years. More about that later.

So, each of us learns differently in striking ways. Let's start with the kids. Everyone always tells you "the younger they start learning a new language the better", or "that (whatever "that" is) is the perfect age to learn". But what do they really mean? Here's what they mean (I think): the big difference is whether you already know how to read and write another language, or not. This is, in my opinion, the big difference between Augustin (8) and Julian (5). They are both making unfathomable strides in their capacity to understand and speak - and, in Augustin's case, write - the language. But in not-s subtly different ways.

Julian is not beginning to randomly insert complete sentences in Italian in regular conversation at home. Not a word here and there. He doesn't struggle to think about something he wants to say. He has internalized a situation from school, and a canned sentence - in his case, a series of sounds - that goes along with that. Because he parses no words in those sounds (or at least only has a tenuous concepts of separate words) he does not bother wondering "am I pronouncing this one right", "does this end in 'a' or ''o'" - he blurts it out. Naturally. For example: we were playing Legos (of course) the other night. I was messing around with a construction he made. He nonchalantly said to me, "No Daddy, non si fa cosi', guarda: si fa cosi!". Wha? Did my kid just speak to me in Italian? Perfect intonation, pronounciation, and all the other -ations. "Not like that, look, like this!". BOOM! Obviously something that came from a teacher (thankfully none of his speak any English) in a classroom situation. In the evening, going to bed he says "Giu' la testa!" ("Put your head down!"), something he obviously picked up at school at naptime (he loves that....). These fully formed, conscious sentences are the culmination of three months of full immersion at school. Julian is quiet and shy and we more than once we wondered if his propensity for isolating himself would mean he would not learn as quickly or as much as Augustin. Boy were we wrong. He is always sensing his environment (just as he is at home when his brother takes over the environment, on the surface, but he is right there with the conversation, even if he doesn't appear to be. A few weeks ago we got the first few glimpses that his brain was working overtime. Once the lights are off in the evening, and the boys are still awake, he would whisper in himself random snippets, half sentences, unfinished, in Italian. Over and over. The same three words. Next night, a different few more words. Like the brain, which had already learned them, was trying to hook up to the speech motor systems for output. You imagine that at the input end there was a similar adaptation where the eardrum was drumming strange noises into the head and at the other end the brain was waking and asking "what the heck" and sharpening its listening circuitry. OK I am engineering here. Anyway, a fascinating hidden process went on between the initial contact, a few months of apparent disengagement, to now, where he naturally is compelled almost, unconsciously to say it in Italian. Sometimes I think he doesn't even realize he used Italian, and surprises himself once he sees our reaction and realizes what happened. This also is happening at school, also out of the blue; the teacher yesterday reported that he walked up to her and announced "E' finita la colla" ("There's no more glue"). Just like that.

Sticking still with Julian for the moment, I will introduce another thread of thought about this, namely that personality has much to do with the ability of one to use a language as anything else. Julian is shy and somewhat of a perfectionist in certain things. In fact, I am reminded that he was really not into speaking in English way back when he started talking. He would rather just point at things he wanted untli one day we suspected that he actually could talk but was not doing so out of ? shyness? (lazyness?). We forced him to ask for what he wanted by name and lo and behold, "Pasta" came out. Julian also tweaks 7 pieces of legos for hours until they are perfectly exactly arranged in the very shape he means them to be arranged. Symmetrical, color balanced and 'fully upgraded' as he calls his ships. And so it id with Italian. He is not going to say anything until it's right. And when he says it, it is. When I made a game-quiz the other night asking what fall fruit we are likely to encounter more of in the next few weeks, and gave the clue that it began with ... C ... A ... S ... Augustin had already come out with a half dozen different semi-on target option, when Julian, quiet until then, nailed it with 'castagne'. 'What the heck?' I am not sure how he knew that.

Which brings us to Augustin. In the next post.