Hi HN, thanks for reading this.

I'm in Italy now and really need to learn the language fast. I had a lot of success in Mexico learning Spanish, but I had a lot of help from an online course called "Spanish with Paul".

This course in Spanish just put me on a very fast track to learning because of the order that it presented information, where you essentially start speaking right away, and you're constantly being drilled with more and more complicated sentences, as you introduce new grammar.

This was a system that worked extremely well for me, but unfortunately I have not found anything similar for Italian - like a good blend being comprehensive AND practical. There are many courses that are kind of gimmicky, which is fine and I appreciate them, but I'm really looking for something that I can spend 2-3 hours a day in focused study/practice that also lets me start building upon the daily practice I get from just living here.

I was planning on basically building my own version of the course I mentioned above, "Spanish with Paul", by essentially just translating the same concepts over, however very early on I encountered concepts that don't exist in Spanish at all, for very simply constructs. E.g.:

eng: I want \ esp: quiero \ ita: voglio \

(ok, simple)

eng: I want it \ esp: lo quiero \ ita: lo voglio \

(So far so good, perfectly smooth sailing)

eng: I need \ esp: necesito \ ita: ho bisogno \

(Ok, this 'ho' is acting like 'haber' in Spanish... I know this, not the end of the world...)

eng: I need it \ esp: lo necesito \ ita: ne ho bisogno \

(wtf... then I look up 'ne' and I am introduced at step 0. to the world of Italian pronouns and my face melts)

I'm sure it's just a temporary road block and in the future if I read a similar post to this I'll have great advice, but for the time being I'm in that awkward phase where I really feel like I'm wasting time by not doing focused studying because I'm chasing various rabbit holes.

So, something a little more curated would be great, and maybe I could eventually make that "course" I was talking about. Any help, would be very appreciated. My secret weapon with learning Spanish was really just studying a lot and practicing, and not wasting time doing other stuff.

Thank you!

user:	luana
created:	April 24, 2014
karma:	3