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Luca Lampariello, a native of Rome, LOVES learning languages.
In fact, he loves them so much that he’s already learned twelve and is still going.
I’ve known about his site, The Polyglot Dream, for a while now as he always has amazing information to share on how to learn languages from a scientific perspective.
This interview marks the second of a series of interviews completely spoken in Italian, although in this one we cheat a little bit and speak in English because I wanted all of you to hear his American accent.
You’ll learn:
— Why he believes that languages can’t be taught and must be learned
— How he constructed an American accent that makes you wonder if he was ever Italian in the first place
— How to choose an accent for speaking Italian
— Four suggestions for how you can construct an Italian accent while at home
— Why you shouldn’t try to learn a language by rote memorization
— His alternative methods to rote memorization that are far more effective
Can’t see the video player? Watch it on YouTube.
Transcript in English:
CHER: Today I’m here with Luca Lampariello, a polyglot, knows many languages e today he’s sharing his passion and his scientific method. In reality, not everything, but a little bit and obviously I will speak in Italian and for the interview we will continue to speak in Italian. Thanks for being here.
LUCA LAMPARIELLO: It’s nothing. Thanks for having invited me.
CHER: Okay, let’s start. For the people who don’t know you, can you tell us something about yourself, where are you from, and how many languages do you know?
LUCA LAMPARIELLO: So, let’s say, to make it short, I am Luca. I’m from Rome. I’m Italian. I’m 33 years old. I have a degree in electronic engineering but at the end I finished by working with languages.
Now I speak 12 of them. But it depends on what it means to speak a language, however we say that I am able to speak with people in 12 languages. Languages, at the beginning, were only a hobby and now they became not only work but also, let’s say, a way of happiness for my existence.
CHER: But why do you love languages?
LUCA LAMPARIELLO: Because if I say to you, no…if I ask to someone for example “Wouldn’t it be great to learn 5, 6 languages?” Everyone would want to learn 5 or six languages because 5 or 6, 7 or 10, because knowing a language is something that is always useful, not only for knowing another person or for traveling, but also a sort of existential travel inside of yourself.
I always say that we are like a piano and there are some keys that we touch with one language and there are other keys of our personality that we touch learning, speaking another language. The more keys we touch, the more we know how to play the piano of life, we say.
So, I noticed that also at the beginning often a person likes to paint, someone likes to draw, someone likes something else. With languages, the incredible thing is not only do you like something you do with yourself but you can do it together with others, so, we say it opens many doors, but not only for knowing another person, for working, but for whichever thing: its like living many lives in one.
CHER: For everything, it seems.
LUCA: For whichever thing.
CHER: You affirm that languages are not taught but are learned, what do you mean?
LUCA: I mean to say that, in this sense, when one speaks of teaching languages, if one goes to school…the reason for which many people that, for example, learn or try to learn English or French at school – I’m referring to Italy, in the United States, for example, Spanish is very popular – you will notice that people that live, that go to university and go to a language school, after five years don’t know how to put a sentence together.
And the reason for which this happens is because from one part the scholastic system is not the best and from the other because they are waiting that someone else teaches them the language.
So in this reference system, the professor stays at the center and the students are all around, revolving around. Instead, when one learns a language, one should realize that the principal actor of the movie is you and, in this sense, if one changes perspective starting, for example, also if one goes to school, goes to school, listening to lessons but then returning home and studying or learning on one’s own.
The best students in every discipline, in all subjects, are those that listen in class but then do it at home. That is, they go home and in life. A language is not a topic to study, it’s a thing that one learns living and also learning in a certain way.
And if one changes perspective that it’s not strange anymore that a person speaks ten languages.
Normally, if you say “I speak 10 languages”, I say “No! It’s not possible!
It took me ten years at school to learn Spanish.”
But everything depends on how you live, no? I live in a certain way and living in this way made it very easy for me to use 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 languages each day and not be a dream. It’s a reality. And everyone can do it.
CHER: When you speak English, you don’t have an accent. It’s really incredible. How come your accent disappeared?
LUCA: Beh, now. It didn’t disappear, but it was constructed. In the sense that very often there are some courses like “accent reduction”, but I’m talking about “accent foundation” that is how an accent doesn’t disappear…but is constructed.
If I had started speaking with an accent, if I hadn’t worked on the pronunciation from the beginning now probably I would not talk this way.
The reason for which I speak, I don’t know if without accent – you say that it’s this way, I don’t know, but I say it’s because I gave it a lot of attention…for me, when one says for example that when one speaks a foreign language it’s important to communicate, it’s true, but the intonation, the way of pronunciation sentences plays a part of the communication.
And I give a lot of importance to, not only the words, to the phrases, to idiomatic expressions but also to how they say things, in English like in other languages.
And so, having this way of thinking each time that I listen to things, I watch a movie, I listen to a podcast, my brain adapts to imitate, not all of the sounds but we say to empathize…to almost play a role. And it’s more of a psychological factor than physical.
Some people have, for example, difficulty in pronouncing some sounds, but the true secret, it’s not so much in doing the training with the mouth (yes, that plays a part) but more than others it’s a thing that happens here.
If you want to be someone else, in another world, in another language, you should have a different mentality. This is the first fundamental step.
And then regarding the American, from when I was young, from when I was 13, 14 years old, I watched at least one film a day every day, at times I also watched a film two times in the time period of one week and each time, after I finished watching the film, I spoke like the actors, for reciting all of the scenes, etc, etc.
Then in Rome is also very important living in a certain way, also if I lived in Rome for many years, almost all my life, apart from a break in Paris, I was with many Americans, all of my American friends and so by constantly being with Americans, by constantly watching films, constantly reading – because I, you see here all of the books that there are also up there are many, many are in English – constantly staying in contact with English, I ended up speaking it like or almost like Americans. Also if I’ve never been to America. I should come.
CHER: Can we speak a little in English, this way people can hear it?
LUCA: Yep. If you want.
CHER
Quindi. Do you have some advice, you mentioned that you have to use your brain as one of the first things but people who don’t have access to people who are Italian, in America, what should they do to help them better their accent?
LUCA
Well, first of all you can use the internet ,everybody can use the internet, more or less. First, there’s a lot of Italians in America, I think, not everywhere obviously, depends where you are but you always have the chance for example to talk to native speakers. There’s a number of websites where you can just write a message and say “Hey, do you wanna have a language exchange with me?” There’s a lot of Italians, there’s a ton of Italians who are willing to give you advice and help you because they’re also looking for, they’re looking forward to meeting you, to seeing you, to talking to you in English. Italians in general want to learn English, you know. You told me you were in Italy, you spent six months in Italy, so you can tell that there’s lot of Italians who won’t speak a word which is actually great for you…
CHER
Yeah, it was awesome.
LUCA
But the bottom line of it all is that if you really want to, you can … the first piece of advice is to search for native speakers. It’s not true that you don’t have the possibility of practicing because there’s the internet. Obviously, a face-to-face conversation would be the best solution, would be best, but at the same time you can always look for websites where you can get to know people and then you can ask “hey, do you want to come to the United States or you can come to Italy” that actually happened quite a few times in my life. I met some people, you know, you start talking, they were interesting and I said, you know what, we can meet up.
[10:44]
So, it’s also building the network of people because I still maintain that people are the best resource we have to speak languages because when you have a conversation with a human being, when you have the possibility of emotions involved, you have a lot of things that are an integral part of language learning, and that’s very very important. You can tell yourself, well in order to better my pronunciation what I can do is I can train myself, I can read books. You can do that.
[11:15]
But the secret is always a combination of things. You can get hold of a book in which people train you to pronounce things better, you can watch a couple of YouTube videos but still the bottom line is get hold of a native speaker which is wonderful. You never know, they can become your friends, they can become your partner, you never know, but I believe that this is like the most important thing to do, right here, right now.
[11:41] CHER
Right here, right now.
LUCA
Why not, right here, right now. Life is short.
CHER
You’re right. Now, because I’m wondering, I really don’t know how to corner your side about choosing your accent and I am obviously biased for Viterbesian and the Roman accent, so everyone that I speak to I try to take on their accent instead, for the people who might not know what accent they want to choose from Italy do you have any recommendation for like regions?
LUCA
Well, this is kind of complicated because everybody… it really depends, I think that it really depends on where you want to live. First, if you’re learning Italian in the United States, I think that you might want to go for the Standard Italian but I have to say that nobody, (differently from other countries such as France and even the United States where they have a Standard American Accent) in Italy actually just a few people, very few people, actors or people who work on that speak this version of the Standard American accent. Normally people say that the so called “standard” version of Italian is from Florence but at the same time people from Florence are very proud of that, you know. That’s where actually the, you know, they thought for the first time of building this, of founding this school and modern Italian comes from that two centuries ago.
[13:11]
But to tell you the truth if a Roman or a person from another region goes to Florence they would actually figure out pretty quickly that they have a very thick accent. For example, we Italian say “casa”, they say “la hasa”, no?
CHER
LUCA
La hasa. So, I would say that it really depends on where you are learning Italian, if you are in the United States you will hear standard Italian television etc. but if you start talking with a certain native speaker, you might want to go for their accent. There’s no, no accent is better than another one. It depends on what kind of connections you make with people. If you go to Rome, obviously, you will learn how to speak …
CHER
Like a Roman?
LUCA
…my ex-girlfriend, for example, was from Paris, she came to Rome and she started speaking like a Roman. And she was proud of that, you know. Now, if you go to Paris…this is for everybody not just for people who want to learn Italian language, the case is Spanish for example, there’s a lot of people, a lot of European who go to South America and fall in love with the accent from Argentina say, other people go to Spain and fall in love with the Spanish accent so it really depends on whether you go to the country, if you meet some people, even if you don’t’ go to their country if you have contact with native speakers of a certain version of that language you might want to go for it.
[14:36]
If you want to learn certain accents, the best way is to go live there because online can be confusing. Because you can hear an accent and then you can hear a YouTube video with a completely different accent. Everybody in Italy, differently from other countries in the world, everybody has an accent. You can tell, if you got a good hear, you can tell immediately where that person comes from. So it’s really impossible to learn exactly one very specific version of the language unless you live there.
But I would say that in general that for Italian you can go for the standard version and you can hear it on television, movies. It’s kind of a difficult subject because Italian is a very special language in this regard. So my suggestion is, which is an excuse to come visit Italy, you can tell people you know, this is the perfect excuse, “I want to go for the Roman accent, I want to go for the accent from Florence, you come visit you stay there for like 6 months and you gonna pick that accent.”
CHER
Sì, mi piace tantissimo.
LUCA
CHER: You declare that learning by memory is not one of the best ways for learning a language. Could you tell us something more on this topic?
LUCA: Yes, so. I could also do…see here, wait. I’ll give an example, now imagine when you’re speaking in English and also when you speak in Italian that there are two languages that you speak well, you don’t think about the individual words. When you start a sentence, one word draws the other.
In English one says “one word leads to the other”. The reason for which this happens is that in reality language is like a net, or it’s like a spider’s web in which the flies (that is the flies in English) attach themselves to the spider’s web.
If you construct a spider’s web, if you construct a web, all of the elements that you go to learn attach themselves to the web. This works both for words and for the sounds.
When people learn things by memory, you can learn 100 words by memory, one thousand words by memory, three thousand words by memory, but then you don’t know how to put them together.
Who speaks a language well knows to put the pieces together.
When you are a kid, you don’t know many words.
When you are six years old, seven years old, the number of words that you know is relatively limited. But what you have that’s special is that you’ve learned to put them together.
That is, you form some sentences, those that once calls the syntax.
Learning things by memory doesn’t go well because there are many other ways of learning a language in a much more efficient way and without exertion. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of “Spaced Time Repetition”.
CHER: Yes
LUCA: “Spaced Time Repetition” is a thing in which if you are, for example, learning a word, or a sentence, you learn it in one day then you to tend to forget it very quickly because this is way memory works. But if you do it in a way of reusing that sentence two or three days after in a different context, the sentence will remain longer in your mind.
In reality, when one speaks languages it’s about using a sort of dynamic memory. It’s never static. Languages are not a collection or a lump sum of words but they are a combination of words.
In fact, people that speak, if you notice, according to a statistic, in reality, words that we use everyday, each day, are a small, small part of the words that we have in our vocabulary. But the difference is that the possible combinations that we can create with these words is enormous.
It’s for this that for speaking well a language you don’t need to know all of the vocabulary, you don’t need to know one hundred thousand words, but you should learn, from the beginning, to learn dynamically a modest amount of words or a relatively limited number to learn how to put them together.
Then, you can think to reading books, etc. etc.
It’s called expansion.
And so it’s not true that one should know thousands and thousands of words by for being able to speak. And it’s fundamental because learning a thing by memory doesn’t go well.
CHER: Thanks for the advice. What future plans do you for your site?
[20:03] LUCA
Now, right now, I made some conversation. I was talking about some important things. My site, my blog, we say, has the intention of becoming bigger, than being a multilingual platform like you have noticed now there are many articles in many languages.
But it’s also a way of explaining like “languages are life, life is languages” how one can integrate, how one can integrate languages in life for becoming, becoming multilingual without exertion. And then now I am creating many products also online because I think in this way I can help many people to understand a thing that seems difficult but is not.
Once you understand how one does it, it doesn’t seem like magic anymore.
So from one side there’s this blog, from another side also there is a site that I want…there are some products that I am creating and then there will be a special site with special projects for the future, not for this year, because now I have many conferences to go to however for the year after surely this special site will come out, quote unquote.
CHER: And a product is your workshop, yeah?
LUCA: There are many more on the market. There’s the workshop that I did in Vienna that is that we say more complete.
There is also that I have done in Russia, that I did last year, however, the principal thing now is this workshop that I did in Vienna and I will do another in Poland in two months.
CHER: That’s great!
LUCA: In a little bit, there’s the conference in Berlin. You should come.
Tra poco c’è la conferenza di Berlino, ci dovresti venire.
CHER: Where can we find you online?
LUCA: Now, online depends. The YouTube channel is called Luca Lampariello. It’s enough to write Luca Lampariello and you’ll find it. Instead my site is called thepolyglotdream.com and Faceobok you can find it on the YouTube channel by clicking on the Facebook icon and one can find the the blog, too, so, it’s easy to find.
CHER
Thanks again for the advice. It’s really great. It was truly a pleasure.
LUCA
Thanks to you. It was a pleasure also for me.
Transcript in Italian:
CHER
Sono qui con Luca Lampariello, È un poliglotta, conosce tante lingue e oggi condivide la sua passione e il suo metodo scientifico. In realtà, non tutto ma un po’ e, ovviamente, parlerò italiano e per l’intervista continuiamo a parlare italiano. Grazie per essere qui.
LUCA LAMPARIELLO
Di niente, grazie per avermi invitato.
CHER
Allora, cominciamo. Per le persone che non ti conoscono, puoi raccontarci qualcosa di te, di dove sei, e quante lingue conosci?
LUCA LAMPARIELLO
Allora, diciamo, per farla breve, io sono Luca, sono di Roma, sono italiano. Ho 33 anni, ho una laurea in ingegneria elettronica ma alla fine ho finito per lavorare con le lingue. Adesso ne parlo 12. Ma dipende da cosa significhi parlare una lingua, però diciamo che riesco a parlare con le persone in 12 lingue. Le lingue all’inizio erano solo un hobby e adesso sono diventate non solo un lavoro, ma anche diciamo un motivo di felicità per la mia esistenza.
CHER
Ma perché ami le lingue?
LUCA LAMPARIELLO
Perché se io ti dicessi, no… se io chiedessi a qualcuno per esempio “non sarebbe bello imparare 5, 6 lingue?”, tutti vorrebbero imparare 5 o 6 lingue perché 5 o 6, 7 o 10, perché sapere una lingua è qualcosa che è utile sempre, non solo per conoscere altre persone o per viaggiare, ma anche una sorta di viaggio esistenziale dentro se stessi. Io dico sempre che noi siamo come un pianoforte e ci sono dei tasti che tocchiamo con una lingua e ci sono altri tasti della nostra personalità che tocchiamo imparando, parlando un’altra lingua. Più tasti tocchiamo e più sappiamo suonare il pianforte della vita, diciamo.
[2:23]
Quindi, mi sono accorto che anche all’inizio spesso a qualcuno piace dipingere, a qualcuno piace il disegno, a qualcuno piace qualcos’altro. Con le lingue la cosa incredibile è che non solo ti piace qualcosa che fai con te stesso ma che puoi fare insieme agli altri, quindi, diciamo apre tantissime porte, non solo per conoscere altre persone, per lavorare, ma per qualsiasi cosa: è come vivere tante vite in una sola.
CHER
Per tutto, sembra.
LUCA
Per qualsiasi cosa.
CHER
Ok, affermi che le lingue non si insegnano ma si imparano, che cosa intendi?
LUCA
Intendo dire che, in questo senso, quando uno parla di insegnare le lingue, se uno va a scuola…il motivo per cui molte persone che per esempio imparano o cercano di imparare l’inglese o il francese a scuola – mi riferisco in Italia, negli Stati Uniti per esempio lo spagnolo è molto popolare – noterai che persone che vivono, che vanno all’università e che vanno a una scuola di lingue, dopo 5 anni non sanno mettere una frase insieme. E il motivo per cui questo avviene è perché da una parte il sistema scolastico non è dei migliori e dall’altra perché loro si aspettano che qualcun altro gli insegni la lingua.
[3:54]
Quindi, in questo sistema di riferimento, il professore sta al centro e gli alunni gli girano intorno, gli orbitano intorno.
Invece, quando si impara una lingua, uno dovrebbe mettersi in testa che l’attore principale del film sei tu e, in questo senso, se uno cambia prospettiva comincia, per esempio, anche se va a scuola, va a scuola, ascolta le lezioni ma poi torna a casa e studia o impara per conto suo.
Gli studenti migliori in tutte le discipline, in tutte le materie, sono quelli che ascoltano in classe ma poi fanno a casa.
Cioé fanno a casa e nella vita. Una lingua non è una materia da studiare, è una cosa che si impara vivendo e anche imparando in un certo modo.
E se uno cambia la prospettiva non è più strano che una persona riesca a parlare 10 lingue.
Normalmente se tu dici “parlo 10 lingue”, dico “no! non è possibile!”.
Io, per imparare lo spagnolo, ci ho messo 10 anni a scuola. Ma tutto dipende da come vivi, no? Io vivo in un certo modo e vivendo in questo modo mi diventa molto più facile usare 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 lingue al giorno e non è più un sogno, è una realtà. E lo possono fare tutti.
[5:18] CHER
Ok, ok. Ma quando parli inglese non hai nessun accento, è davvero incredibile. Come mai il tuo accento è sparito?
LUCA
Beh, allora, non è che è sparito ma lo ho costruito. Nel senso che molto spesso ci sono dei corsi come “accent reduction”, ma io parlo di “accent foundation” cioé di come un accento non è che sparisce ma si costruisce.
Se io avessi cominciato parlando con una pronuncia, se io non avessi lavorato sulla pronuncia fin dall’inizio adesso probabilmente non parlerei così. Il motivo per cui parlo, non so se senza accento – tu dici che è così, non lo so, però diciamo è perché io do molta attenzione… per me, quando si dice
per esempio che quando si parla una lingua straniera l’importante è comunicare è vero, ma l’intonazione, il modo di pronunciare le frasi fa parte della comunicazione.
[6:30]
E io do molta importanza a, non solo alle parole, alle frasi, alle espressioni idiomatiche ma anche a come si dicono le cose, in inglese come in altre lingue.
E quindi, avendo questo modo di pensare ogni volta che io ascolto delle cose, guardo un film, ascolto un podcast, il mio cervello si é adattato a imitare, non tutti i suoni ma diciamo a immedesimarsi a recitare quasi un ruolo.
Ed é un fattore più psicologico che fisico. Alcune persone hanno per esempio difficoltà a pronunciare dei suoni, ma il vero segreto, non é tanto nel fare del training con la bocca (sì, fa parte del training) ma più che altro è una cosa che avviene qua.
Se tu vuoi essere qualcun altro, in un altro mondo, in un’altra lingua, devi avere una mentalità diversa. Questo è il primo passo fondamentale. E poi per quanto riguarda l’americano, io da quando ero piccolo, da quando avevo 13, 14 anni mi guardavo tutti i giorni almeno un film al giorno, a volte anche un film guardato due volte nell’arco di una settimana e ogni volta, dopo che finivo di guardare il film, parlavo come gli attori, per recitare tutte le scene, eccetera, eccetera.
[8:08]
Poi a Roma è anche molto importante vivere in un certo modo, anche se ho abitato a Roma per tanti anni, quasi tutta la mia vita, a parte una parentesi a Parigi, sono stato con molti americani, tutti i miei amici americani e quindi a forza di stare con gli americani, a forza di vedere film, a forza di leggere – perché io, vedi qua tutti i libri che ci sono anche lassù sono tutti, moltissimi sono in inglese – a forza di stare a contatto con l’inglese, ho finito per parlarlo come o quasi come gli americani. Anche se non sono mai stato in America. Devo venire.
CHER
Possiamo parlare un po’ in inglese, così le persone riescono a sentirlo?
LUCA
Va bene. Se vuoi.
CHER
Quindi. Do you have some advice, you mentioned that you have to use your brain as one of the first things but people who don’t have access to people who are Italian, in America, what should they do to help them better their accent?
LUCA
Well, first of all you can use the internet ,everybody can use the internet, more or less. First, there’s a lot of Italians in America, I think, not everywhere obviously, depends where you are but you always have the chance for example to talk to native speakers. There’s a number of websites where you can just write a message and say “Hey, do you wanna have a language exchange with me?” There’s a lot of Italians, there’s a ton of Italians who are willing to give you advice and help you because they’re also looking for, they’re looking forward to meeting you, to seeing you, to talking to you in English. Italians in general want to learn English, you know. You told me you were in Italy, you spent six months in Italy, so you can tell that there’s lot of Italians who won’t speak a word which is actually great for you…
CHER
Yeah, it was awesome.
LUCA
But the bottom line of it all is that if you really want to, you can … the first piece of advice is to search for native speakers. It’s not true that you don’t have the possibility of practicing because there’s the internet. Obviously, a face-to-face conversation would be the best solution, would be best, but at the same time you can always look for websites where you can get to know people and then you can ask “hey, do you want to come to the United States or you can come to Italy” that actually happened quite a few times in my life. I met some people, you know, you start talking, they were interesting and I said, you know what, we can meet up.
[10:44]
So, it’s also building the network of people because I still maintain that people are the best resource we have to speak languages because when you have a conversation with a human being, when you have the possibility of emotions involved, you have a lot of things that are an integral part of language learning, and that’s very very important. You can tell yourself, well in order to better my pronunciation what I can do is I can train myself, I can read books. You can do that.
[11:15]
But the secret is always a combination of things. You can get hold of a book in which people train you to pronounce things better, you can watch a couple of YouTube videos but still the bottom line is get hold of a native speaker which is wonderful. You never know, they can become your friends, they can become your partner, you never know, but I believe that this is like the most important thing to do, right here, right now.
[11:41] CHER
Right here, right now.
LUCA
Why not, right here, right now. Life is short.
CHER
You’re right. Now, because I’m wondering, I really don’t know how to corner your side about choosing your accent and I am obviously biased for Viterbesian and the Roman accent, so everyone that I speak to I try to take on their accent instead, for the people who might not know what accent they want to choose from Italy do you have any recommendation for like regions?
LUCA
Well, this is kind of complicated because everybody… it really depends, I think that it really depends on where you want to live. First, if you’re learning Italian in the United States, I think that you might want to go for the Standard Italian but I have to say that nobody, (differently from other countries such as France and even the United States where they have a Standard American Accent) in Italy actually just a few people, very few people, actors or people who work on that speak this version of the Standard American accent. Normally people say that the so called “standard” version of Italian is from Florence but at the same time people from Florence are very proud of that, you know. That’s where actually the, you know, they thought for the first time of building this, of founding this school and modern Italian comes from that two centuries ago.
[13:11]
But to tell you the truth if a Roman or a person from another region goes to Florence they would actually figure out pretty quickly that they have a very thick accent. For example, we Italian say “casa”, they say “la hasa”, no?
CHER
LUCA
La hasa. So, I would say that it really depends on where you are learning Italian, if you are in the United States you will hear standard Italian television etc. but if you start talking with a certain native speaker, you might want to go for their accent. There’s no, no accent is better than another one. It depends on what kind of connections you make with people. If you go to Rome, obviously, you will learn how to speak …
CHER
Like a Roman?
LUCA
…my ex-girlfriend, for example, was from Paris, she came to Rome and she started speaking like a Roman. And she was proud of that, you know. Now, if you go to Paris…this is for everybody not just for people who want to learn Italian language, the case is Spanish for example, there’s a lot of people, a lot of European who go to South America and fall in love with the accent from Argentina say, other people go to Spain and fall in love with the Spanish accent so it really depends on whether you go to the country, if you meet some people, even if you don’t’ go to their country if you have contact with native speakers of a certain version of that language you might want to go for it.
[14:36]
If you want to learn certain accents, the best way is to go live there because online can be confusing. Because you can hear an accent and then you can hear a YouTube video with a completely different accent. Everybody in Italy, differently from other countries in the world, everybody has an accent. You can tell, if you got a good hear, you can tell immediately where that person comes from. So it’s really impossible to learn exactly one very specific version of the language unless you live there.
But I would say that in general that for Italian you can go for the standard version and you can hear it on television, movies. It’s kind of a difficult subject because Italian is a very special language in this regard. So my suggestion is, which is an excuse to come visit Italy, you can tell people you know, this is the perfect excuse, “I want to go for the Roman accent, I want to go for the accent from Florence, you come visit you stay there for like 6 months and you gonna pick that accent.”
[15:38] CHER
Perfetto. Vengo fra un mese.
LUCA
Un mese. E dove vai a Roma, Firenze, a Milano?
CHER
Ad Orvieto. E anche Firenze e Viterbo, ovviamente.
LUCA
E a Roma non vieni?
CHER
Ma per due giorni forse, forse tre.
LUCA
Ma tu sei già stata a Roma? Ti piace?
CHER
Sì, mi piace tantissimo.
LUCA
E’ bella. Anche Firenze è bella. Anche Orvieto, sono tutte belle.
CHER
Ok. Dichiari che imparare a memoria non è uno dei modi migliori per imparare una lingua. Puoi raccontarci qualcosa di più su questo argomento?
LUCA
Sì, allora. Te lo potrei anche far vedere qua, aspetta. Ti do un esempio, allora immaginati quando parli in inglese, e anche quando parli in italiano che sono due lingue che parli bene, tu non pensi alle singole parole.
Quando cominci una frase, una parola tira l’altra. In inglese si dice “one word leads to the other”.
La ragione per cui questo avviene è che in realtà la lingua è come una rete, oppure è come una ragnatela in cui le mosche (che sono le flies in inglese) si attaccano alla ragnatela.
Se tu costruisci una ragnatela, se tu costruisci una rete, tutti gli elementi che tu vai imparando si attaccheranno alla rete. Questo vale sia per le parole, sia per i suoni.
Quando le persone imparano le cose a memoria, tu puoi imparare cento parole a memoria, mille parole a memoria, tremila parole ma poi non le sai mettere insieme.
Chi parla bene una lingua sa mettere insieme i pezzi. Quando tu sei un bambino, tu non conosci tante parole.
Quando hai sei anni, sette anni, il numero di parole che conosci è relativamente limitato. Ma quello che hai di speciale è che hai imparato a metterle insieme.
[17:51]
Cioé, tu formi delle frasi, quella che si chiama la sintassi. Imparare le cose a memoria non va bene perché ci sono tante altre maniere di imparare una lingua in maniera molto più efficace e senza sforzi. Non so se tu hai mai sentito parlare di Spaced Repetition.
CHER
Sì.
LUCA
Spaced Time Repetion è una cosa in cui se tu per esempio impari una parola, oppure una frase, la impari in un giorno poi tendi a scordartela molto rapidamente perché la memoria funziona così.
Ma se tu fai in modo di riusare quella frase due o tre giorni dopo in un contesto diverso, la frase ti rimarrà molto più in mente.
In realtà, quando si parlano le lingue si tratta di usare una sorta di memoria dinamica. Non è mai statica.
Le lingue non sono una collezione o una somma di parole ma sono la combinazione di parole.
Infatti, le persone che parlano, se tu noti, secondo una statistica in realtà le parole che noi usiamo quotidianamente tutti i giorni sono una piccola, piccola parte delle parole che stanno in un vocabolario.
Ma la differenza è che le possibili combinazioni che noi possiamo creare con queste parole è enorme.
E’ per questo che per parlare bene una lingua non hai bisogno di sapere tutto il vocabolario, non hai bisogno di sapere centomila parole, ma devi imparare fin dall’inizio ad imparare dinamicamente poche parole o un numero relativamente limitato e saperle mettere insieme.
Poi, puoi pensare a leggere i libri, eccetera, eccetera. Si chiama espansione. E quindi non è vero che uno deve sapere migliaia e migliaia di parole per poter parlare.
Ed è fondamentale perché imparare le cose a memoria non va bene.
CHER
Grazie dei consigli. Che programmi hai in futuro per il tuo sito?
[20:03] LUCA
Allora, proprio adesso ho fatto delle conversazioni, conversavo su alcune cose importanti. Il mio sito, il mio blog diciamo ha intenzione di diventare più grande, di essere una piattaforma multi-lingue come hai notato adesso ci sono tanti articoli in tante lingue, in tante lingue diverse.
Ma è un modo anche di spiegare come “le lingue sono la vita, la vita sono le lingue” come si puo integrare, come si possono integrare le lingue nella vita per rendere, per diventare multi-lingue senza sforzo.
E poi io adesso sto creando tanti prodotti anche online perché io penso che in questo modo posso aiutare tante persone a capire una cosa che sembra difficile ma non lo è. Una volta che capisci come si fa, non sembra più una magia.
Quindi da una parte c’è questo blog, da una parte ci sta anche un sito che io voglio… ci sono dei prodotti che io sto creando e poi ci sarà un sito speciale con dei progetti speciali per il futuro, non per quest’anno, perché adesso c’ho tante conferenze da fare però per l’anno prossimo sicuramente uscirà questo sito speciale, tra virgolette.
CHER
E un prodotto è il tuo workshop, sì?
LUCA
Ce ne sono di più sul mercato, c’è il workshop che ho fatto a Vienna che é quello diciamo più completo. Ce n’è un altro che ho fatto anche in Russia, l’ho fatto l’anno scorso, però la cosa principale adesso è questo workshop che ho fatto a Vienna e ne farò un altro in Polonia tra due mesi e …
CHER
Ma che bravo!
LUCA
Tra poco c’è la conferenza di Berlino, ci dovresti venire. La conferenza …
CHER
Bravo. Dove possiamo trovarti online?
LUCA
Allora, online dipende, il canale YouTube si chiama Luca Lampariello. thepolyglotdream.com e Facebook lo si trova sul canale YouTube basta cliccare sull’icona Facebook e si trova e anche sul blog, quindi. E’ facile da trovare.
CHER
Ok, grazie ancora dei consigli, sono davvero preziosi. E’ stato un vero piacere.
LUCA
Grazie a te, è stato un piacere anche per me.
My favorite resources from Luca
— A short introduction to dialects and accents in Italy
— The Laziness Paradox – Sam Gendreau
Resources Luca Mentioned
— [WORKSHOP] How to Master Any Language On Your Own
Get to know Luca
— Site: thepolyglotdream.com
— Twitter: @poliglotta80
— YouTube: Luca Lampariello
Have an extra ten seconds? Say hi to Luca on Twitter by pressing the click to tweet below!
Even more motivated to learn Italian + perfect my accent after listening to @poliglotta80. Grazie!
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[…] Luca Lampariello, founder of The Polyglot Dream, told me once in an interview, “When one learns a language, one should realize that the principal actor of the movie is you […]