Tips, tricks and tools for fools

I am fairly certain that all the reading I have been doing for my dissertation has got me heading straight for the same fate as Lieut. Colin Blythe in The Great Escape. In other words, I am going blind. Fact.

Recruitment for guide person will start shortly. 

So here's hoping that I'll make it to the end of this post.
Luckily the torrential rain and lightning which has been plaguing Bologna for the past couple of days has made it easier to insert myself in the library and stay there for more than 20 minutes (win). So after a fruitful day of studying, and a particularly dull week of minimal socialising and venturing out, I thought I'd just give a few tips and tools that have helped me over the years, for learning a language.

Aside from the classic and best-known tricks to picking up a language (drinking and perhaps picking up a native-speaker in the process) here are three things that I would recommend:

1) Use a Translation Dictionary Thesaurus 

My second mother from my second family, up in Milan, gave me a little pocket thesaurus and commanded that I use it when reading and writing in Italian. Parting with good ol' Wordreference was a heartbreaking prospect, but hey, apparently it's what all the kids at school are doing, and unlike a lot of English people, Italians, on the whole, have excellent command of their own language. And so, a couple of months ago I made the switch from quick and easy Wordref to my little black book of "sinonimi & contrari". It's a great way to expand your vocabulary and it all happens naturally; you look up one word and learn four or five new ones. And if you don't recognise any of the words listed, then you can use a dictionary. By which point you have also learnt the meaning of the four or five, previously, unknown words. Multiple words with one stone!    

2) Join the Club!

What stroke of madness made me dish out 140 euros to play volleyball on a non-competitive, mixed team when I was paying 1/14th of that for a competitive, women's team in London (with a coach) you ask? Well, aside from the fact that I didn't want to become completely spherical on my year abroad, it also boiled down to the fact that I didn't know anyone when I first got here.
Joining a sports team, taking dancing lessons, joining a book club - or even just going to talks and events that interest you - is a great way to meet people who, most likely, have similar interests and hobbies as you. Your first conversation is also less prone to being awkward, as the activity you are participating in, or the talk you have just attended becomes a good conversation starter. Key tip: don't be afraid to go it alone. And be weary of bringing along a native. If you go with someone who speaks your language, you will probably end up clinging to them for the duration of the event, or at least to begin with, which could hinder your chances of conversing with other people!

3) Lang-8
While tandems are a good way to meet people and polish up on your non-native languages, they can be a little awkward and tedious to maintain. Lang-8 is sort of like a language tandem social media website. Basically you sign up, specify which language(s) you are/would like to learn and which one(s) you speak natively and start writing! You can start with an introduction of yourself in your target language, or by writing journal entries, or a few paragraphs about your interests/hobbies; whatever you want. Then, people that have specified your target language as their native language will see your post and correct it for you. You will then be able to see your original version, line for line, next to the corrected version. You can (though don't have to) return the favour to others by correcting other people's English posts (or posts that are written in whatever is your native language). Simple!

Of course there are many other tips that I have not mentioned, like reading books, watching un-dubbed films/tv series with subtitles and all the usual, but these are a few that are a little bit off the beaten track (except for maybe the second one) which I thought could be handy! 

And finally, to conclude this post, I share with you a little piece of entertainment that I found in my academic reading this afternoon. I know a lot of people are revising or writing dissertations like I am, and it can be a tough time, full of self-doubt and plummeting confidence. Well, my friends, not to worry. Today, I received some consolation, and a laugh, when I read that the subject of my dissertation, Dino Buzzati (author of Il deserto dei Tartari, Sessanta Racconti, Poema a Fumetti and others - recommended reads) shared something in common with me: a poor understanding of the rules of punctuation.

Anyone that has read a couple of my posts will know by now, that I tend to toss my commas around. Which is why this little gem about Buzzati made me chuckle (alone, in the library of, typical):

“Montanelli afferma, a proposito dei primi anni di Buzzati al “Corriere”, che i suoi colleghi dovevano sempre intervenire, all’inizio, a sistemargli le virgole: i punti sapeva dove metterli, ma le virgole le “buttava così, come fosse stato del sale, dove andava andava”. – “[...Egli] scrive senza punteggiatura e non è mai riuscito a capire dov’è che finisce una frase e ne comincia un’altra”. 

“Montanelli (a colleague of the author) confirms, that during Buzzati's first few years at the "Corriere" (an Italian newspaper), his colleagues always had to intervene, at the start, to tidy up his commas: he knew where to put his fullstops, but his commas he 'threw around, like granules of salt, they landed where they landed.'” - “[He] writes without punctuation and has never been able to understand where one sentence ends and another begins.”

Fancy that - I spend so much time doubting myself and my capabilities but hey, at the end of the day we're all clueless, even the very best of us!

Happy Friday.

Image from The Great Escape was from here.
The one of the thesaurus from here.
The super corny team photo from here. The next image was from here.
And that of Buzzati from here.
Excerpt about Buzzati's poor punctuation from p187 of Nella Giannetto's Il sudario delle caligini (Firenze, 1996)