The Off Topic Topic

[Josquius]

French and especially Spanish helps a lot, initially at least. But I don't think you can bluff your way through a B1 exam.
How much time do you have?

A long while. 2 years at least. Still very much in the thinking about it stages.

Why do you need to learn Italian? Trying to run away from the UK and get into Switzerland with the missus? 

Pretty much :p
Or at least to have that option readily available if/when the time comes to move elsewhere.

Are you fluent in any romance language? Giving your opinions about French I rather doubt it.

Yeah. I think given your views on French v German you might not enjoy learning Italian.

Flipside is, unlike, French it's far better at doing what it says - the link between pronunication/written is a little bit more direct.

This is the main problem with French. The pronunciation is impossible. I think without that problem my French may actually be pretty good.  I can certainly read it well enough.
Considering listening is my weakness even in easier languages like Swedish or Japanese any improvements on this front are very welcome.

I don't think the grammar is really the issue with French - we don't learn English grammar (or at least the generation of schoolkids that me and Tyr were in didn't) so we have to learn from the beginning anyway. I've no idea what the English past participle is or if it or verb tenses agree. That makes it more difficult to learn first time because you have to get your head round the concept but in a way it's also easier - you just have to learn it.

Yep. My first exposure to all these grammatical words was sitting in Swedish class aged 21. I had to learn that English calls the batamd form the definite form rather than the reverse.

[The Larch]

2 years to learn a language to B1 level should be doable.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah. Plus an excuse to insist on only Italian holidays for the next two years, which is not the worst thing in the world.

Also All 4 has some good Italian shows at the minute.

[Josquius]

2 years to learn a language to B1 level should be doable.

Doable with intense effort or doable as a casual thing?

Also on Italian...its one of those that starts easy then has a big gap to get to intermediate or it starts hard then gets easier or...?
Japanese for example has a fairly U shaped difficulty, whilst French is fairly corona-esque.

Yeah. Plus an excuse to insist on only Italian holidays for the next two years, which is not the worst thing in the world.

I do hope corona buggers off soon, we were talking about going to stay with her cousins in the south in blackberry week.

Also All 4 has some good Italian shows at the minute.

Any stand outs?
I noticed they've a French season (or had last week) but the shows there didn't bring up any enthusiasm.

[Maladict]

2 years to learn a language to B1 level should be doable.

Doable with intense effort or doable as a casual thing?

Get a teacher, take weekly lessons (+homework). That should do it in a year or two.

[Tamas]

The disconnect between pronunciation and spelling on the other hand is more annoying

As if English is MUCH better in that regard.

[Sheilbh]

As if English is MUCH better in that regard.

Absolutely. English is horrendous for this. Soz.

[Sheilbh]

Doable with intense effort or doable as a casual thing?

Also on Italian...its one of those that starts easy then has a big gap to get to intermediate or it starts hard then gets easier or...?
Japanese for example has a fairly U shaped difficulty, whilst French is fairly corona-esque.

My impression is Italian is a bit like Spanish which is a gentle slope upwards

Any stand outs?
I noticed they've a French season (or had last week) but the shows there didn't bring up any enthusiasm.

I've been enjoying Maltese a lot - it's cop/mafia drama set in 70s Sicily. In the Walter Presents section.

[The Larch]

2 years to learn a language to B1 level should be doable.

Doable with intense effort or doable as a casual thing?

Maybe you can take it easier during the first months/year, see if you're progressing, and do a more intensive thing on the months before the exam.

Also on Italian...its one of those that starts easy then has a big gap to get to intermediate or it starts hard then gets easier or...?
Japanese for example has a fairly U shaped difficulty, whilst French is fairly corona-esque.

In my experience it was easy to get the basic grasp but fairly tricky to get into advanced stuff, but as I mentioned, having other romance languages as mother tongues made getting the basics very easy.

Yeah. Plus an excuse to insist on only Italian holidays for the next two years, which is not the worst thing in the world.

Now that's the proper way of thinking! 

When I did my B2 exam I spent 2 weeks in Sicily ahead of it. 

Also All 4 has some good Italian shows at the minute.

Any stand outs?
I noticed they've a French season (or had last week) but the shows there didn't bring up any enthusiasm.

The thing with Italian movies and tv shows is that sometimes they use a very coloquial/dialectal variety of the language, so you have to tread carefully. For instance nowadays Italian crime tv shows and films seem to be quite fashionable (Suburra, Gomorra, Romanzo Criminale), but because the characters are mostly low lifers they don't exactly use the Italian variety of BBC English, employing quite a lot of Neapolitan dialect in the case of Gomorra and Roman in the case of the other two.

[Grey Fox]

I've been learning Spanish since the start of April. It is much easier than Japanese.

[Josquius]

As if English is MUCH better in that regard.

Absolutely. English is horrendous for this. Soz.

In English however you can completely butcher the pronunciation of a word and still be understood. French....less so :p

[Tamas]

As if English is MUCH better in that regard.

Absolutely. English is horrendous for this. Soz.

In English however you can completely butcher the pronunciation of a word and still be understood. French....less so :p

Still it would be far easier for both languages if there was more than a passing resemblance between what's written and spoken.

If you take German or Hungarian for example, you learn the ABC and you can pronounce correctly almost everything written, even if you don't understand it.

But, I guess that ship sailed a couple of centuries ago.

[Duque de Bragança]

As if English is MUCH better in that regard.

Absolutely. English is horrendous for this. Soz.

Not only English is horrendous for this, but it's actually even worse than French in that matter. Some of the "English" spelling dates back from the Norman invasion. Spelling has been reformed ever since in France, last time in 1990.

[Tamas]

As if English is MUCH better in that regard.

Absolutely. English is horrendous for this. Soz.

Not only English is horrendous for this, but it's actually even worse than French in that matter. Some of the "English" spelling dates back from the Norman invasion. Spelling has been reformed ever since in France, last time in 1990.

Yeah if you are like most students of English. exposed to American English, then come in contact with the British one, spelling differences in the latter seem like some French guy was trying to write in English.

[Liep]

So apparently I am a descendent of Harald Bluetooth.. 31x great grandfather. It's something I guess.