Learn Italian from home – 3 important considerations that will help you greatly
You can now learn Italian from home using the resources available on the Internet. Today, growing up around a loud family table, eating pasta is not the only way to learn Italian from home. But there are aspects of the daily interaction inside a family that are crucial for learning a language.
Home sweet home
Each one of us has a place we call home. The home is where we live, move, and have our being. It’s in this space where we’re ourselves.
We dress up physically and psychologically when we go out. We sometimes put up quite a front when we go through our front door and move out upon the streets. But it’s within the home that we take off our mask, and we’re ourselves.
It’s within this environment that we learn our first words. And it’s in the home where words may not be necessary to communicate with each other. Language and emotions may be so inner woven together that words may not be the only mean for expressing our feelings.
We must honestly say that nothing beats learning a language in the home with bilingual parents. So consider the home an ideal place for learning languages.
Nowadays, most students learn languages with a laptop and headphones. But in this post, we will extract from the home scenario some helpful features. I recognize it’s quite an ambitious task to recreate an Italian home environment only with a computer. However, we will give you three points for learning Italian using only your laptop. So, those that didn’t have the luxury of growing up with Italian parents will find these tips valuable:
1.) Filling the background of your daily routine with Italian:
A person inside an Italian family can’t get up one day and say: “Ok, ok! I’m tired of Italian. Give me a break. Today we’ll all speak English.” That daily exposure is impossible to avoid. It constantly forces you to think and use Italian.
This daily exposure will give you familiarity with the language. It will help you lose your fear of using it. But, can you be adopted by an Italian family? That might not be possible. But you may surround yourself with the environment that an Italian family would have. You can listen to the news in Italian (click here to listen to some Italian radios online), watch programs in Italian, and submerge into the Italian culture.
A practical way of doing this is, for example, while cooking or working in the house, you can always have Italian playing in the background.
2.) Daily setting apart time to practice the language:
Daily exposure to the language inside a family is something we can take for granted. But, do you want to know if a child born in a home with foreign parents will learn the language of his ancestors?
Here are some questions to predict if the child will learn the language or not. Do both parents use the language daily? If only one of the parents speaks it, we would ask: Who is the foreigner? The mother or the father? There are greater chances for the children to learn the foreign language if the mother is the outsider because she may spend more time with her kids than the father.
Daily exposure to the language is a crucial aspect of learning a language. And that also applies to a person learning Italian with his laptop in a non-Italian home. You must set up the goal to daily interact with the language. You will not pretend to learn Italian if you are exposed to it once a month. That won’t work!
3.) Get emotionally involved with Italian:
The content of the language we speak inside the home is full of feelings and emotions. Words first start to have meanings to a child inside the family. And emotions help to pin words in our brain in a very effective way.
Our recommendation is to be emotionally involved when you’re learning Italian. When the pressure to become proficient in Italian only comes from the outside, it will be difficult (and even traumatic) to learn the language. Do you want to succeed in learning the language? Please feel attracted to Italian and excited each time you practice. You will see improvement in your learning curve when you follow this advice.
Wrapping Up!
We must be realistic. Take a look at these two cases. Person A is learning Italian by growing up with his family. Person B is using his laptop to learn in a non-Italian home. Thus, A has an enormous advantage over B. We can’t argue that! But, considering some aspects that take place inside a multilingual home can help those who did not have that privilege.
If you come from a multilingual home and want to share your experience learning a language growing up, we would love to hear from you.
If you want to learn Italian from home and have been searching for resources to do so, you can explore our site. Here there are many suggested resources and ideas to improve your skills. Click here to read about them. If you have any question or comment about learning Italian, we would be more than happy to hear from you too. That comment box below is yours.
Henry,
This advice may really help me. I’ve been learning Italian for over a year now and for some reason it won’t stay in my head. I do understand quite a bit though. Maybe what you say here might help me so I’m going to give it a go.
Ciao! – See I know some 😉
Hey, Glenn!
I’m very happy to hear you have been learning Italian for more than a year now! These are simple but important suggestions that will definitely help you improve. You’re welcome to continue visiting us on this site. I would be more than happy to hear about your progress! All he best!
These considerations can make a huge difference if we consider them while we’re learning Italian (or any other language actually).
Pinning vocabulary with emotions is the most powerful of all three you have mentioned here, in my opinion. Our brains will work in our behalf if we do this. But, I must admit I agree with you now, but before reading your post I hadn’t considered it.
Hi Jon. Thanks for sharing your opinion with us. Knowing how or brain works and taking advantage of it concerning emotions can really help us to learn a language.
Try to do this consciously with a few words. Add emotions to them as you learn them. Then wait for a week and try to remember them. See how many you can recall.
I have always wanted to learn other languages aside from my native tongue. You’re right, nothing beats learning a language in the home with bilingual parents. But these 3 points can help us greatly: having our daily routine set around Italian, setting time apart every day to practice it, and yes, emotions play a key role in getting abreast with a language.
I want to also add that the methods you outlined here can as well be used to learn other languages. What a great article to learn from. Thank you.
Hi! Thank you for your comment. I’m glad you found value in this post.
I also agree with you. These points mentioned here will help you learn any language you choose.
Keep well. All the best!
Hi…
Thanks for the tips. I now see why I found it hard to learn Italian language from a tutor when I wanted to learn the language some months ago. His fee was high and I paid because I really needed to understand the language but after 2 months, it seems I wasn’t making any headway so I had to pause for a while. From these tips now, I think I’ll consider starting up the lesson again from scratch. But with a total different perspective.
Hi Sammy. You’re most welcome. I’m glad you’re encountered to continue learning Italian. I wish you a nice journey learning the language from here on.
Hi Henry!
This is one of the best informative posts about learning languages that I have ever read. You have open my eyes concerning things I had never thought of.
After reading your article, I can’t help agreeing with you. Your statements are so logical. And will change for ever how I approached learning languages. Thank you very much!
Hi! Thank you for your words concerning this post. I appreciate them. I’m glad you have found value in my humble site. And I hope you continue visiting in future ocasions.
Practice, they say, makes perfection. Learning Italian is not an exception.
Nothing is too difficult to learn if there exist a will to push through its rigours. And taking note of the things that happen inside an Italian family as they teach Italian to their kids is an excellent way to turn our limitations into advantages.
Thank you very much for this post. I’ll always remember these 3 points.
Hi! You’re most welcome. I’m glad to hear you’ll embrace these points. And I wish you success learning Italian. And keep tune for more posts on this site. All the best!
I’ve always wanted to learn Italian but up to this point I hadn’t been considering these points you have mentioned here. And I agree with them.
One of the most important, in my book, is exposure. I know I haven’t been in contact with Italian as much as I should. I’ll be traveling soon and I really need to get working on this goal. I’ll continue checking out your site.
Hi Katy. Thanks for your comment. I wish you a good trip. And please don’t hesitate to ask for help if you need a hand concerning Italian while you prepare for your trip. All the best!
Dear Henry,
Thanks a lot for the informative post and I must say I found your post highly uplifting and educational.
Because of the advancement in technology, as you said, we can work from home, learn from home and everything made possible thanks to the Internet.
Learning other languages has always been in my interest. I am currently learning Hebrew! German and Italian are on my list.
Indeed daily practice and daily exposure plays a vital role. Watching Italian news and programs will be a greater help. That’s how I learned English.
Thanks a lot for the helpful insights.
Much Success!
Paul
Hi Paul! You’re most welcome. And there is possibility of so much training online. You can learn Italian if you want.
I resonate with this you explained here in this post! Specially the point that says “Fill in your daily routine with content in the target language”.
I’m glad you can feel related to this post. Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
I just commented a while ago but I’d like to amplify my comment. Learning another language isn’t all that easy for adults. With all the other things we have to do, there is not much time left to learn. I know it takes a strong desire and commitment to put in the time and the repetition needed to make it like second nature. All 3 tips are great. I know they work because that’s how I learned Yoruba years ago. Thanks for sharing.
Hi Peter. I know that learning another language takes time and as adults we have many other things to do. But learning a second language is sure rewarding. Thank you for sharing your experience learning Yoruba.
All the best!
Hi, I was very interested on your take of learning Italian in an non-Italian home environment. My parents are both Italian and we spoke Sicilian at home. But even though I was exposed to the language and the culture on a daily basis, my Sicilian is very poor.
I think that this is due to the fact that I live in Australia which is an English speaking country, and being fluent in English was much more important to me. So I think that in order to really learn a foreign language well, you first need to have a true desire to learn that language. After that the suggestions that you put forward such as filling the background with Italian will certainly help.
Hi Suzie! Thank you for sharing your experience. I completely agree with you. First of all, the person needs to have a desire to learn the language, and then the background experience will help.
Hi Henry,
This is so true! Funny, but I have the perfect example in our family. I live in the Netherlands with my husband. He is born and raised in the Netherlands. His parents moved to Portugal a few years ago, not in the tourist area, but in the middle of nowhere, where no one has ever heard of English. In the beginning it was very difficult to communicate with the locals, but soon they learned the Portuguese language by watching TV, listening to the radio and surrounding themselves with the locals. Now they speak and write Portuguese fluently.
His uncle and aunt are also in Portugal, but in one of the tourist resorts. Many Dutch people live there and one way or another, they always try to meet each other. Regarding television, they also receive Dutch channels there. You guessed it right: they don’t speak the language nearly as well as his parents do.
The 3 important considerations you mentioned are definitely worth it to learn the language best!
Thank you so much for this post, I enjoyed reading it.
Best regards,
Noorha
Hi Noorha! That’s a very good example. Thank you very much for sharing. When we don’t have any other option than learning the language, we seem to do better than when we can still cling to our mother tongue. I have seen that exact same pattern repeat quite a few times. It’s very interesting how our brain works.
Great article! Language is most definitely a core in every child’s household. I was always envious of the kids in my classes that spoke Spanish so eloquently, but I usually discovered one or both of their parents only spoke that language with them growing up. Usually if only one of the parents speaks a second language, the other parent needs to be willing to learn the basics of that language as well if they wish their child to be bilingual. It is so important to keep an open mind, even as we get older and feel we cannot learn a second language.
Do you think it’s a good idea to teach basics, like numbers and letters, in both languages at the same time? Or do you think this may confuse a young child?
Thank you for some wonderful tips and can’t wait to hear back from you.
Hi Ashley! It’s challenging to teach our children a second language when both parents don’t speak it. Yes, parents must agree to talk that language in the home for the sake of the children.
It’s ok to teach the basics to kids in both languages. 🙂
Hi, I’ve just gone through your article about learning Italian from home. I find it very helpful. I never thought learning a language could be done from the comfort of our home. And this not only applies to languages. Nowadays, almost anything can be learnt online. Certainly, somethings are behind a pay wall. But it’s still way more affordable than when we had to physically attend classes.
Hey, yeah, courses online are in most cases more affordable than training we had to go in person in the past. Good point. Thank you for your input.
I have been person A for a couple of languages and B for many others. A has an advantage over person B because there is Italian spoken in the home by at least one parent. I don’t think that person would need lessons unless they want to learn to read and write Italian.
But for person B, there are resources available! Thanks for putting things in perspective.
Regards, Corinne
Hi Corinne.
That is the point! Person B has so many resources that nobody has excuses.
I wish you all the best in learning your new language!
Hey! Your post has encouraged me to start learning a language. I thought it was not possible to learn a language on my own.
Nowadays, we can surround ourselves with any language. All we have to do is go online. I will start taking advantage of the resources available. Thank you!
I am glad to hear this post has encouraged you! Please, take advantage of these resources. All the best!
These 3 considerations are very important indeed. I love l’Italiano, but I didn’t grow up with the language, so I need to set aside time and engagement each day if I want to learn it. I try to watch Italian videos and series as well and then just follow along with subtitles or listen to Italian music, and look up the lyrics if I can’t understand what they are singing. 😉
Thanks for sharing what has worked for you. It may help others too!