La Lingua Italiana è per tutti e per tutte le età

An Article from Michael Kiefer about Lingua Più

http://www.azcentral.com/travel/articles/2010/03/04/20100304italianclass0307.html

Learning Italian in Italy

by Michael Kiefer - Mar. 4, 2010 06:06 PM
The Arizona Republic

CITTÀ DI CASTELLO, Italy - The message was scrawled in love-struck, foot-high letters by the riverside.

"Io e te, tre metri sopra il cielo. Irene ti amo." ("Me and you, three meters above heaven. Irene, I love you.")

Hopeless romantic: I thought it was lovely, but my traveling companion quipped, "This Ti Amo family must be very large. Already today I've seen 'Maria Ti Amo,' 'Lisa Ti Amo' and 'Laura Ti Amo' written on walls."

Later I mentioned the graffiti to my Italian instructor, Roberta, and she dispossessed me of my reverie.

"Oh, that," she said snidely. "That comes from a popular Italian teen movie. My daughter's boyfriend even wrote that to her once."

Ah. So, even the cliches in Italy are of high quality.

I spent two weeks in Città di Castello, a small, walled Umbrian city, not because I wanted to go somewhere but because I wanted to be somewhere. Nestled on the upper Tiber River near the Tuscan border, it's not so much a tourist destination as a regular, albeit historic, Italian city where most people don't speak English, and if they do, they have difficulty wrapping their ears around an American accent.

Here Roberta Marsili and her partner, Laura Gastaldi    , run a language school called Lingua Più, which means "language and more." They teach English to Italians and Italian to foreigners. In the summer, the Italian learners are group-tour Brits, and Aussies and Americans who want to go somewhere different. But in the off-season, when I visited, the students are Europeans who own houses in Italy and need to learn the language for their day-to-day life.

I studied Italian in college, but mostly, I can muscle my way through conversations in Italian because I'm fluent in Spanish. It's a bit like trying to use an American wrench on a metric bolt. It doesn't quite fit. Roberta complained about my ugly Spanish accent in Italian, much as her students complained about my ugly American accent in English.

Once, when I was in Sestriere, near the French border, a Spanish word accidentally slipped out during a conversation with a bus driver, and he was so annoyed at what I was doing to his language that he stopped talking. More than once, Italians who have lived in Spanish-speaking countries have picked up on my accent and shifted into Spanish to save us both a headache. I was counting on Roberta to cure me of those afflictions.

So I took two classes a day in Lingua Più's tiny classrooms. In one class, my fellow students were a pair of retired British college professors who had a home nearby in the restored medieval mountaintop village of Monte Santa Maria Tiberina, the site of a World War II battle. Frank was a hopeless case as far as Italian went, but he liked to cite research suggesting that learning a language kept the brain sharp.

The other class consisted of a Dutch couple who work for American firms and were restoring an old home in Città di Castello. They were brilliant learners, and the drills in that class included such great phrases as "Marco ha raccontato a Francesco di avere avuto un figlio dalla moglie di lui." ("Marco told Francesco that he had a child with his wife.")

Most of all, I wanted to master the all-purpose syllable, "eh," which Italians can bend with more inflections and meanings than California adolescents can wring out of the word "dude." When posed as a question: What?; as a resigned assertion: That's the way it goes; as a retort: So what?; drawn out and emphatic: You betcha!

Roberta's daughter, Giorgia, could hold up her end of a conversation, one syllable at a time: "Eh? . . . uh . . . ah . . . "

But when I tried, I could never hit it right.

"Eh."

"Too short."

"Eh?"

"Sounds like a duck."

"Ah!"

"That's what you say during sex!"

I went through a learning curve: The first few days went well, then I hit the wall, all brain circuits clogged by trying to force three languages through the same synaptic channels. But after about a week, I was conversing more comfortably. And I paid special attention to the hand gestures essential to the Italian language: A rotating finger held head-high means "later." An outward flick of a cupped hand means "get out of my face." An inward flip means "I'm leaving."

On my way home to Phoenix, I stopped in New York City for a few days. One night, I found myself chatting with a young Italian woman tending bar in the East Village. My Italian flowed as smoothly as the wine, and the conversation went well enough that my wineglass got topped off for free a couple of times. I amused her with my knowledge of hand gestures.

Then I brought up the graffiti: "Io e te, tre metri sopra il cielo."

She scoffed.

"I have a special hand gesture for the man who writes that to me," she said. "We call it 'the umbrella.' "

To illustrate, she raised her right fist and slapped down on the inside of her elbow with an open left hand, the classic Italian salute.

"The best part is that it shows him which way to go!" she said.

There was only one logical response.

"Eh!"

Cielo azzurro

Con questo tempo grigio e piovoso, meglio consolarci con una fotografia...Meglio di niente!

Back from Finlandia!

Here I am now! Back from Finland. I went there to visit our Finnish parner in Gruntivig Project "The New Generation +50" , South Ostrobothnia Folk High School , www.epopisto.fi.

I had wonderful time there! We discussed a lot about the differences between the Finnish target group and the Italian target group, as well as the different offer of our countries to those discents.

I made a nice lessons in the magna room about Italy, Italian, and our culture, and finally.....I sang a song,,,l'Italiano from Toto Cutugno! I will post some photos

Michael Kiefer è andato via

Studenti/amici australiani

Venerdì scorso si è conclusa la settimana all inclusive "La Mia Umbria" organizzata da Antonella, una collega che ha una scuola di italiano a Melbourne. 11 signori Australiani hanno preso parte alle nostre lezioni di italiano e alle tante attività che abbiamo loro organizzato. La settimana è stata molto intensa, ma sinceramente molto divertente! Ci siamo divertite noi insegnanti (io, laura e Antonella), ma anche i partecipanti che hanno potuto conoscere tanti nuovi amici italiani, praticare la lingua e imparare un pò della nostra "italianità"!

Che meraviglia la festa al Centro delle Tradizioni Popolari e, tra trenini e alligalli, il mago Kenzo ci ha reso la serata veramente speciale. U grazie speciale a Sonia che ha reso possibile la serata e Tommaso che con il suo grande sapere ha incantato i signori ospiti

Il tour in bicicletta lungo il fiume tevere è stato suggestivo e il giro in vespa con il Vespa Club di Città di Castello, dire divertente è dire poco! Una grande simpatia è nata ra i "vespisti" e gli studenti australiani, si sono scambiati doni  e si sono lasciati con la promessa che qualcos'altro insieme avremmo sicuramente fatto!

Poi però è arrivata la sera della cena finale e degli addii: ecco, questa cosa non mi piace proprio e io e Laura eravamo veramente molto tristi!

Però speriamo...

A presto amici australiani!!!!!!

Welcome Michael!

Il nostro caro amico, scrittore e giornalista di Phoenix, Michael Kiefer verrà a trovarci i primi giorni di settembre per parlare della nostra attività di centro di lingua italiana per stranieri e del nostro metodo comunicativo innovativo.

Ma Michael è anche nostro amico e quindi...cene, drinks e Italian Style!

Benvenuto Michael!

+50 The new Generation

L'agenzia Socrates ha approvato la nostra partecipazione al progetto internazionale intitolato +50 The New Generation.

Il progetto:

"Most countries in Europe have to face the same problem of a strong increase of the ageing population. In the near future most citizens in Europe will be at the age of 50+. This will influence social life but also the economical and political situation in the individual countries and in the entire European Union. New challenges will also occur in the broad field of education, especially in the area of learning in later life and intergenerational approaches. It is important to keep seniors active in terms of social as well as of educational activities"

Chi è interessato a partecipare con noi agli incontri internazionali che si terranno nelle varie nazioni dei membri del progetto, ci contatti presso la scuola e saremo lieti di poterne parlare con voi

P.S. I viaggi e i soggiorni sono tutti pagati

Sede di Esame CILS

Il centro Lingua Più è diventato sede di Esame della prestigiosa certificazione CILS dell'Università di Siena. Così oltre la preparazione potremo offrire ai nostri studenti anche la certificazione in sede. Non male eh!

Progetto La mia Umbra

LA MIA UMBRIA

Un Full Immersion in italiano

Partecipando a questo progetto è possibile fare esperienza diretta dell'italianità. Gli insegnanti seguono i propri studenti durante varie attività - visite dei meravigliosi villaggi umbri, corsi di cucina, di arte, ma anche giri in bici lungo il Tevere, giri in Vespa (un pò come nel film "Vacanze Romane" dove l'affascinante Gregory Peck fa visitare  Roma in vespa alla bellissima Audrey Hepburn), sempre parlando italiano, ma sperimentandolo "sul campo".

L'insegnante passa in media 10 ore il giorno, per una settimana, con i propri studenti e insieme prendono parte a feste con italiani, anche in maschera, cene; e tantissimo altro.

Molto informale e molto efficace! Per maggiori info rimando al nostro sito: www.linguapiuperugia.com