Italian!

I ordered "Italian the Easy Way" quite a while ago (only had to pay a penny plus $6.50 shipping and handling! haha). I've gone through 8 of 18 chapters already and it's a good introduction to the language. It helps to have good pronunciation in Spanish although the book has a decent pronunciation guide, and every time I'm not absolutely sure how to say a word (in my head or out loud!) I check that guide and I also made my own notes about the things I have the most trouble with.

The book is pretty good so far, I like it as an intro. It gradually goes through more and more vocabulary and grammar. I find turning singular nouns into plurals interesting because it's much different from Spanish. (il figlio - i figli.....la figlia - le figlie...lo zaino - gli zaini, gli also used for "l' l'esame >> gli esami) There are also more ways to say this/that/these/those and I have to be patient while learning even these "simple" things. I think even with pronunciation, unlike in Spanish, many Italian words do not have accent marks above the letters where there is an irregular stress ... I'll have to learn to pronounce those properly. In Spanish it's easy to tell where to stress because it's marked if it's irregular. The book helps by marking a little dot under the letter.

I'm still learning present forms of verbs, I'll need lots of practice to get used to this. Sometimes Spanish verb forms will pop up in my head and I have to ignore them!

I'm learning who/what/where/when/why questions and how to make basic sentences. There are often sections in the chapters that will ask you to create your own little story paragraph thing that includes certain things that they list...basic ideas or sentences in Italian. I try to make it a bit long and look up words I don't know! Here's one!:

Nora e Giovanni sempre vanno insieme al cinema ma oggi decidano andare al Bar Roma. Giovanni sempre (I wrote siempre but I'm correcting it here!) prende un cappuccino la e Nora sempre prende un espresso ma loro non sanno cosa vogliono oggi, cosi tutti e due vanno a casa di Dina, l'amica di Giovanni. Giovanni sempre prende qualcosa da mangiare e da bere ma Nora non conosce Dina e non sa che cosa prendere.

-Nora and John always go together to the movies but today they decide to go to the Bar Roma... John always orders a cappuccino there and Nora always orders espresso but they don't know what they want today, so they both go to Dina's house. (She's his friend) John always has something to eat and drink but Nora doesn't know Dina and doesn't know what to ask for.

Boom shakalaka.

Lately I haven't had the motivation to study... or desire, I think I may have to focus more on French though now even though I'm taking both Italian and French in September... French will be more difficult for me I think.