I am listening to Lucio Dalla. I am happy that I can understand a lot of what he is singing, but at the same time I am frustrated that I do not remember enough Italian to speak it. I can understand some when it is sung or spoken. My father learned some Italian during WWII. I had a dear friend who spoke it and several other languages very well (He was the Latin professor I mentioned in an earlier post.), and I have a friend who learned as a child when he spent time in Switzerland. For some reason for me it is the most difficult of the Romance languages. I cannot pronounce "gli" well enough to satisfy myself. One summer when I was in school I studied Italian on my own. Then in the fall I was able to take intermediate classes at the school. (They only offered two years of Italian). I later audited the intermediate classes again to keep it fresh, but the instructor had the class read Boccaccio in the original 14th century Italian. I was one of the faster readers and it was taking me thirty minutes per page. She realized that she had made a bad choice of reading material. We switched to Dante. Though written around the same time, his writing is much easier to read. Her specialty was medieval Romance languages. She was not the best choice to have teaching a modern language course. Nothing against her, but it was just not her area of expertise. Maybe some day I will be able to go back to Italy and do more than eat lunch and ride on an extremely slow train that stopped before going through tunnels.
I do want to learn Romanian I have learned a few phrases. It draws me for its combination of Romance languages and Slavic languages. I have a special friend on Facebook who is from Romania but in Canada. If you are reading this, te iubesc mult, sotul meu...pup.
I hope that I am not disappointing my Facebook by writing here in the morning instead of spending time there, but it helps me to start the day in a better mood.
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