Need to learn Italian - best book / cd?

Raider · 20 Mar 2006 at 13:37

Off to Rome in June, so would be nice to know a few bits of basic Italian!

Can anyone recommend a book / cd type deely? Ta

Hodders · 20 Mar 2006 at 13:50

The best way of learning any foriegn language is a a girlfrien that only speaks that language - that's how I learnt French :-)

Failing that evening classes as there will be lots of chances for speaking to other people...

Also everybody learns in different ways - the right book/cd for one person will be the wrong one for someone else.... Tyr public libraries they often have these things for loan - see how you get on !

Stringy · 20 Mar 2006 at 14:07

Perhaps a local Adult education course at a college or something? Probably the easiest way to pick up the practical basics as you'll get to practice it with people, and not sound like a fool talking to yourself.

qwerty · 20 Mar 2006 at 16:39

Stringy said:
Perhaps a local Adult education course at a college or something? Probably the easiest way to pick up the practical basics as you'll get to practice it with people, and not sound like a fool talking to yourself.

This man has a point. If you learn it from a book/cd, when you get to Italy you will sound like some English plonker trying to say things that no Italian has said for 15 years and being far too formal with everyone. Go to a short, intensive, evening course, preferably with an Italian teacher.

BrenOS · 20 Mar 2006 at 16:49

Raider said:
Off to Rome in June, so would be nice to know a few bits of basic Italian!

Can anyone recommend a book / cd type deely? Ta

Yep, get the CD course by Michel Thomas. It's expensive at around £100 most places (although I got the Spanish version for £30 from Costco) but it's absolutely ideal for what you want. It teaches you the spoken word brilliantly. I only managed to do 4 out of the 8 cds before my holiday, but the people there couldn't believe I'd only done 4 hours of Spanish learning.

There are no books, you don't learn how to spell, but certainly in my case his techniques helped me to learn to speak Spanish in no time at all.

Highly reccommended.

matthew_o50 · 20 Mar 2006 at 16:57

I'm going to Rome in August and i'm just planning on taking an Italian phrase book with me and maybe one of those little translator things like a digital organiser. Apparently a lot of people over there speak English.

Is Italian similar to Spanish? My brother can speak that so hopefully he'll understand if I don't.