Learn Hello In Italian
Posted on July 26, 2009
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Italian for hello is “ciao”, pronounced “Chow”. Well done – you just learnt your first bit of Italian! It might sound strange, but this is all language learning really is: making the decision that you’re going to learn, and then doing it! Avoid making the very common mistake of getting bogged down with tricky grammar rules and masses of verb conjugation. The best piece of advice you can take if you want to learn Italian is to start small, get a feel for the language, and learn small, short, simple words and phrases that are going to be immediately useful to you. Seemingly trivial things like being able to say hello in Italian, or please, thank you and excuse me, are actually huge cornerstones for your learning. They’ll provide the foundation on which you build your knowledge of the language. Don’t be scared to dive in!
Getting yourself used to the basics first is a good way of starting a new language. If you’re heading to Italy, then let’s face it, it won’t be much good if you know how to conjugate twenty verbs but can’t say “Hello!” or “Excuse me, where are the toilets?”!
Thanks to the great selection of language learning tools, software and sites available online, you won’t ever be stuck for a study programme to follow. Many of them will provide you with pronuncation guides, vocab lists, writing exercises, and listening practice, so you can feel free to take it all at your own pace. A word of caution, though – be careful with that freedom! A common mistake is for beginners to launch themselves headfirst into learning Italian with great enthusiasm, so that the initial study sessions are an hour or two long, sometimes twice or three times a day. This sets a precedent that, I think most people would find totally unrealistic and impossible to maintain for any lengh of time! You are not going to become fluent in a week. It takes time, but the key to success will be you studying regular, but short manageable amounts of information and not overload yourself by trying to learn too much too soon. That’s why it’s really not so silly for me to tell you that by learning the Italian for hello, you’re making real progress!
As you work your way through a course, it’s important that you keep reviewing what you’ve learned so far, and revising it. This has two main purposes: it checks that you haven’t forgotten what you’ve learned previously, and it further engraves the words into your brain, increasing your familiarity and comfort with the language. That is where your fluency will eventually come from. So build that vocabulary up gradually, and don’t be embarrassed to start with something so simple as Italian for hello. See it as your first building block, and then start building on it!
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