Italian

I started to study Italian in September although I was a complete beginner and knew no grammar rules or vocabulary except cappuccino, pasta and tiramisu. I’ve tried to learn other languages than Japanese and English, however I’ve never succeeded to master any of them.

When I was a college student, I studied Chinese as my second foreign language because it was mandatory to take. I thought it might be easy to learn although it was obvious that the pronunciation was quite different even though the characters looked quite similar to Japanese. When I saw a Chinese newspaper, I could guess what the story was about from the characters. I was also interested in Chinese culture and history so it was a good opportunity to start to learn these from the language. The lessons started and I recognized that the class wasn’t what I expected it to be. Before memorizing the Chinese characters, I needed to learn pinyin which is their pronunciation system written in the Latin alphabet with accent. My teacher was a well organized person and he knew how important the pronunciation is for studying Chinese; he only taught us pronunciation for the first six months! After that I needed to memorize as many Chinese characters as possible which were not as easy as I imagined. The characters looked similar but not the same which meant it was possible to guess the meaning, but I couldn’t fully understand them, also it is impossible to make a Chinese phrase without knowledge of the grammar. Their grammar rules are completely different from the Japanese language. I should have known that it was impossible to understand another language in just one year studying, however I just felt I couldn’t keep studying it and I gave it up.

Some people say once you learn another language, it will be easier to learn a second one. I thought it might be easier to study a language which is similar to English. I bought a text book of Spanish which I thought was the closest language to English without much of a basis. I also bought a text book to learn French from English, I thought it would help me to study both languages however it ended up helping neither of them. I found it difficult to keep my motivation up for studying so I needed some reason to keep going.

I asked a German colleague to teach me German, but she said “we can communicate in English. You don’t need to study German.” it turned out she wasn’t interested in studying Japanese and learned no Japanese words even after a whole year there. After her, the other German colleague kindly offered to teach me German. During his stay in Japan, we kept studying however after he went home, I stopped.

Next I thought Korean might be the closest language to Japanese, I started to study it because I liked watching Korean TV dramas and movies. I could catch some words because some of them are the same as Japanese. However at first I needed to remember Hangeul characters which are man-made characters and very well organized. I couldn’t remember them all and I gave them up!
I also tried to study Russian, but I didn’t manage that either!

Yes, I gave up a lot, still I’m interested in studying other languages. Now I have an Italian friend whose husband is Japanese so she has reason to study Japanese. I offered her an Italian-Japanese language exchange and she happily accepted it. We started to find Italian text books as the first step, it wasn’t easy like we imagined. I bought two text books which are aimed at beginners, but they aren’t for beginners. They are more focused on daily conversation and the grammar rules aren’t described well. Of course I need to remember some phrases without rules especially greetings and introductions, but it would be helpful if I learnt them following the grammar rules. My friend writes grammar rules for me and we keep studying alongside the text books. This time I already know I’m a slow learner and I need time to learn languages. I hope that studying Italian will last as long as our friendship!