Now that you have your ticket, let’s go! While we’re on the train, it’s a good time to talk about the Italian language.
Learning a new language obviously involves committing hundreds (and eventually thousands) of new words to memory. There are, however, a couple of tips we can give you to make the task less daunting. We will introduce these to you as the course proceeds.
Grammar Book Link
The first tip is very easy: if it looks like an English word you recognize, odds are the Italian word means the same thing. The term used for this type of word is a 'cognate'.
Since Italian and English can both trace their roots back to Latin, there are many words which are related by borrowing or derivation. Rely on your knowledge of English to help you create meaning during your study of Italian.
Equally as important is context. You can identify context both by seeing words you know or cognates you recognize from English. Moreover, context means that if you know you are in a train station, near a ticket window, there are a number of words you might expect to hear. Again, pool your resources of common sense, knowledge of English and context clues to better understand what you are seeing and hearing.
You should bear in mind that there are a few ‘false friends’, that is, words that look like the English we’re familiar with but actually mean something else. For example, the Italian word ‘parente’ looks very like our English ‘parent’, but actually means ‘relative’. Don’t worry – we will point out the potential traps as we go, and there aren’t too many.