![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/files\/2017\/08\/IMG_2320-2-300x225.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAll the different accents and dialects in Italy make it very difficult to\u00a0for the beginner speaker. I first noticed the accent in Siena when my host brother Alberto asked for a \u201choha hola\u201d and received a coke. In Siena they pronounce the \u201cc\u201d sound as an \u201ch.\u201d No wonder I couldn\u2019t understand when my host mom said we were going back to the \u201chasa.\u201d Eventually I was able to tune my ear to the Sienese accent, but everything would change when I met someone who didn\u2019t live in Siena and didn\u2019t speak proper Italian like my professors.<\/p>\n
It turned out that these accents almost always go further than just pronunciation. In different regions they use different words to refer to the same thing, different slang, and sometimes even different grammar. In Siena they call watermelon \u201ccocomero\u201d but some regions use \u201canguria\u201d and others use \u201cmelone di acqua.\u201d In the Bologna area, apparently they use \u201czio\u201d meaning \u201cuncle\u201d to say \u201cbro.\u201d<\/p>\n
“Cathedral, Milan”<\/p>\n
In Milan they use the formal third person instead of the informal second person like they do in Siena. I visited Milan one weekend, and despite the heat and mosquitos, I managed to have lots of conversations in Italian, whether it was with my taxi driver, with the owner of a pasta food truck, or getting sightseeing advice from an old man in a bookstore. A couple times I tried to ask why each person used the formal tense with me, but quite frankly could not get my point across. After fifteen minutes trying to explain what I wanted to say to my cab driver, he finally understood my question and replied that that\u2019s just something you do.<\/p>\n
On reflection, I realized the reason I was having such a hard time explaining my point about the intricacies of Italian grammar was because I have a completely different understanding of Italian grammar than native speakers do. I think of conjugating verbs with a chart, but Italians just speak. In the same way the verb \u201cto know\u201d is the same regardless of the person i.e. whether I say \u201cI\u201d know, \u201cyou\u201d know, \u201che\u201d knows\u2026, in Italian the verb sapere has the same significance whether I say io so, tu sai, lui sa\u2026 Italians don\u2019t even realize they\u2019re conjugating verbs.<\/p>\n
This realization was actually very helpful for improving my speaking ability. Later that weekend when I ate lunch a pasta food truck I decided to stop thinking about how I was conjugating verbs and just speak. I ended up having a 45-minute conversation about food trucks- how they were up and coming in Italian cities, their popularity in Italy and the US, and what the legislation was like in both places, and how this guy started his business. Once I was able to just let the conversation flow, I received my highest marks yet for my conversation ability. I was no longer \u201cabbastanza bene\u201d (pretty good, sufficient), I was simply \u201cbene\u201d (good).![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/files\/2017\/08\/IMG_2311-300x232.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
“the pasta food truck”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
All the different accents and dialects in Italy make it very difficult to\u00a0for the beginner speaker. I first noticed the accent in Siena when my host brother Alberto asked for a \u201choha hola\u201d and received a coke. In Siena they pronounce the \u201cc\u201d sound as an \u201ch.\u201d No wonder I couldn\u2019t understand when my host … Continue reading “Hoha Hola” and Accents<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2487,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63995],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-italy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2487"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3961"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3961\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3965,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3961\/revisions\/3965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.nd.edu\/sla2017\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}