L’Italiano

It occurs to me that I have said nothing about my Italian classes except how much homework we have, so I will tell you about today’s class. First, Nicole usually gives us back homework. I made a B+ on the last quiz because I could not remember one word. {And because I had several spelling mistakes and the words that I misspelled were right there on the paper! Oopla! Then she told us how to put the accent on the e on our word processors. Hmm, it doesn’t do it here. Anyway, if you want to know, on a PC, you hold down at the same time the Ctrl key and the key on the top left that has the accent mark. Nothing appears on your screen but the next letter you type has the accent over it! Then she told us what was going to be on the test tomorrow. That was the point when I realized I really didn’t know all the verbs that were on the pink sheet we were given. I refer to it a lot but I don’t know them! Oh, well, I know what to study tomorrow.

Next, she gave us color names and we put them in sentences. Some of these adjectives, the ones that end in -o change their endings depending if the noun they modify is male or female and/or singular or plural. For example, the cute baby would be il bambino carino if it was a boy baby and  la bambina carina if it was a girl baby. Plural boy babies would be i bambini carini and cute girl babies would be le bambine carine. Some never change at all, for example blu is always blu. 

Next we worked on our new little story. She gave us all a tiny beanie-baby animal and we learned the names for what each of us had. I had il elefante. Then she started a story about this elephant who wanted to learn to sing! It all got pretty silly and fun and she asked us questions about the story in Italian and we answered in Italian. We are allowed to answer in single words. Our homework is to write our own little story, a variation of how she was constructing hers. Here is my first draft.

C’è una giraffa. La giraffa è chiama Macchia. Macchia è gialla e bruna. Macchia è a Taint Much, AL. La giraffa cantara non. Ma, Maccia vuole cantare.

C’è un uccello. L’uchello è chiama Zuzu. Zuzu è blu, giallo e rosso. Zuzu è a Antartica.   L’uccello ha fatto cantare.

Qui voleva cantare? Zuzu? No, Zuzu puo cantare. Maccia poteva cantate non! Macchia vuole contare. Povera Macchia!

Maccia  volara a Antartica in un aeroplano. Zuzu è un maestro maraviglioso e creativo!   Zuzu è anche in gamba!

Perchè  è l’uccello un maestro raviglioso? Zuzu e un maestro raviglioso perchè la giraffa Macchia lei cantara!  Bravo, Zuzu! Brava, Macchia!

There are a couple of constructions I am not sure about and I notice an accent over an e needs to be put in. {This is important because an e with an accent means "is." And an e without an accent means "and."} Oh, and the TaintMuch, AL? She has a list of towns with strange names that she uses for fun. So far we have had Gravel Switch, KY and Hot Coffee, MS, and, of course, the new one today. In addition to the story, we have a couple of exercises from the grammar book to do. I will tackle that tomorrow.

I was feeling quite down about my ability to understand her today. It is not that I don’t know the words. It is that I hear the words and there is a perceptible pause before I put the meaning with it.  But writing the raccontino {little story} was fun and a really good way of getting the vocabulary into my head… We are supposed to let her know if she is going too fast so on Thursday I will tell her "Piu lento, per piacere, Nicola!" {More slowly, please, Nicola!}

I have it written on a card!

Until later….