Adventures of a student of Italian
Essential Grammar 2 – Aspect – 25 August 2011
To continue on from the last post, which discussed mood, this time we’ll look at aspect.
Aspect. We normally think of “aspect” as being synonymous with “facet” or “feature,” as in, “We examined every aspect of the proposal.” In this sentence, the aspect is what we are looking upon.
But when it comes to grammar, it helps to think of “aspect” in one of its other meanings: “viewpoint.” Here, aspect is what we are looking from. When you say “this house has a lovely aspect,” you mean that the view from the house is lovely, not that one particular view upon (or of) the house is lovely.
And what we are looking upon, in grammar, is time. As speaker, you are communicating to the listener how the action existed in time, such as whether it was continuous or momentary, habitual or unique. This is different from tense, which locates action in time – past, present, or future – but doesn’t indicate the nature of the action. Think of different ways to express an action in the past: “I played the ukulele” is different from “I used to play the ukulele” and “I was playing the ukulele.” All three of them occurred in the past, but each one has a different aspect.
Two terms to know relating to aspect are perfective and imperfective, which in Italian are the perfetto and imperfetto. (And just to irritate every English speaker in the world, there is also a grammatical term called the “perfect,” which should not be confused with the perfective discussed here.) You use the perfective aspect when an action is discrete or complete, while you use the imperfective aspect when an action is unfolding, continuing, or habitual. Using the above examples, you’ll see that the perfective aspect is expressed in the sentence “I played the ukulele” because the action is discrete and complete. The imperfective aspect is expressed in the sentence “I was playing the ukulele” because the action was still occurring at that point in time.
You might be wondering why the first example is “complete” and the second isn’t, since both occurred in the past and presumably I’m not still playing the ukulele as I type this. Good question. Once again, it’s about your viewpoint, and how you frame the actions you’re describing. “I played the ukulele and then a fight broke out” shows that one event occurred – was completed – and then another event occurred. You’re ordering them in time. If you said “I was playing the ukulele when a fight broke out” then you’d be indicating that the first action was continuing while the second event occurred – you never stopped playing the ukulele as the fight broke out. For the duration of the thought you’re expressing, it was continuous.
Okay, two down, one to go. Next time, tense!
*Non ho tempo adesso per scrivere, perche devo partire a Augusta. Scrivero piu la volta prossima! Per favore, scrivimi se hai domande o commente. Ciao!
*Disclaimer: I am a beginning/intermediate student of Italian, and I can almost guarantee that there will be mistakes in my Italian writing. Don't think that because it's here, it's error-free. You've been warned!
Essential Grammar 1 – Mood – 22 August 2011
Apart from being able to tell my verbs from my nouns, I really learned nothing of English language structure or grammar until I began studying foreign languages. After all, when you grow up speaking a language from the start, you never have to stop and explicitly ask yourself about gerunds and tenses and subject-verb agreement. Instead, you have an ear that tells you when something is off. When you’re learning a foreign language, however, you can’t count on that instinct, and that’s when it helps to know your grammar.
Over the next few posts I’d like to get into the nitty-gritty of grammar and explain the basics, kind of like a crash course, covering the things most of us never learned in English 101. At the very least, knowing what these terms mean will help us when we’re reading dry prose about various verb conjugations in textbooks and our eyes (understandably) start to glaze over.
I have often been confused about the difference between mood, tense, and aspect, and thought that would be a good place to start. Since there have been entire books written on the subject, I’ll give each topic its own post over the next week. Up first: Mood.
Mood. When you speak your native tongue, the listener will automatically understand your attitude through the way you conjugate your verbs. I don’t mean attitude as in “you’re sassy!” – I mean attitude as in how you relate to the content of the sentence. Do you think that what you’re saying is an indisputable fact? Do you think think that it’s a possibility, but isn’t proven? Are you instead issuing a command? Although the content of the following three sentences is similar, their meanings are different, because each has a different mood:
1) “Aliens frequently land on earth.” You’re stating that as a fact – that’s the indicative mood.2) “It’s possible that aliens frequently land on earth.” You’re not sure that this is a fact – it could be true or it could be false. You don’t know. This is an example of the subjunctive.
3) “Aliens, frequently land on earth!” This is a (rather strange) demand – the imperative mood. In this mood, you are telling someone to do something.
English has these three moods: indicative, subjunctive, and imperative. Italian has these same three (in Italian: indicativo, congiuntivo, imperativo), plus the conditional (condizionale). (Of course we can express the conditional in English, which we do by adding the auxillary verb “would,” as in “I would eat that whole cake if I could.”)
One difference to keep in mind is that Italian, like other romance languages, uses the subjunctive much more than we do in English. For example, when expressing opinion, you use the subjunctive. Think of how often you start sentences with “I think that…” or “I believe that…” In Italian, both of those (“Penso che…” and “Credo che…”) would be followed by the subjunctive. Also, the subjunctive mood requires the use of pronouns in certain cases, something not necessary in the indicative, because there is no difference in the conjugation of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd person singular forms. However, more on the subjunctive later. Let’s not get bogged down in details at this point. Other moods exist in other languages, but since we’re not trying to get our PhD in linguistics here but just understand English & Italian, we’ll keep it simple and stick to these four – indicative, subjunctive, imperative, and conditional – in future discussions.
*Non conosco nessuno chi trova la grammatica divertente. Ma, non è importante se è divertente o non; è importante se è utile. Deve si imparare tutti i definizioni di parole di grammatica? Qualcuno dice si, qualcuno dice non. Forse, non è utile per tutti. Dopo parlare Italiano per molti anni, si puo sentire semplicamente quando qualcose è scorretto. Ma fino ad allora, è utile qualche volta, per esempio quando si consulta una tavola di verbe, sapere i definizioni. Ma non è valera la pena di stressato molto! Per favore, scrivimi se hai domande o commente. Ciao!
Words I looked up to write this:
Nessuno = nobody/not anybody
Utile = helpful
Scorretto = incorrect (word, language)
Fino ad allora = until then
*Disclaimer: I am a beginning/intermediate student of Italian, and I can almost guarantee that there will be mistakes in my Italian writing. Don't think that because it's here, it's error-free. You've been warned!
Learning Italian as an Adult – That Strugglin’ Feelin’ - 28 July 2011
Remember when a typical evening of homework consisted of a chapter of biology notes, an essay on Wuthering Heights, 40 pages of reading on the Civil War, and a set of math problems? Remember dreading pop quizzes and cramming for exams all night long? Remember report cards and parent-teacher conferences? Most of us wouldn’t choose to go back to that life, because if we remember correctly, we remember that being a student was hard. As adults facing the Herculean task of learning a foreign language, we should try to adopt the mindset we had when we were younger, faced with tough homework on a daily basis. Here are three strategies to try out:
1) First off, EMBRACE THE STRUGGLE. Now that we’re grown-ups we have jobs, pay bills, and take care of our families; we’re used to feeling competent in our day-to-day lives. We have to give up that feeling of competence as we’re learning a new language, though. None of us like the feeling of straining to remember the Italian for something basic like “tomato.” We might take the opportunity for a little negative self-talk: “I can’t even remember the word for ‘tomato,’ what’s wrong with me? I’ll never learn Italian!”
The thing is, that struggle you feel is the learning. Every time you come up with the word on your own, instead of looking it up, you’ve strengthened the connection in your brain and the next time it will be just a little bit easier to recall. As long as you continue to learn, you will always feel that struggle, so make friends with it now because it’s not going away! Try to catch yourself in those moments when you’re feeling defeated and realize that you’re making progress, even if it doesn’t feel like it.
2) Speaking of progress, the next thing is to TRACK YOUR PROGRESS. In school, teachers did this automatically for us, with tests and report cards. Now it’s up to you to keep track of how far you’ve come in your quest. How? Well, you can watch as your pile of vocabulary flashcards grows fatter and fatter over the months. Or you can write a paragraph in Italian once a month, and go back in a year to compare the oldest and the newest samples – you’ll be sure to see a difference in the complexity and style. You can do the same with a recording of yourself speaking extemporaneously.
Or how about this: take a passage in Italian and underline all the words you know right now. At regular intervals, go back and underline all the new words you now understand. Here’s the first line from Dante’s Divine Comedy (the language of which served as the basis for modern Italian) – how many words do you know? How many will you know in six months, or in a year? “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita mi ritrovai per una selva oscura ché la diritta via era smarrita.” (Dante, Inferno, Canto 01)
3) Finally, DEFINE YOUR ENDPOINT. In school, the endpoint was, conveniently enough, the end of the school year. As adults who are hopefully more mature than our 15-year-old former selves, we can aspire to something a little loftier than simply making it to summertime.
Most of us want “to learn Italian.” What does that mean? We have to face the fact that no matter how hard we study, and how much time we spend in Italy, we are unlikely to ever achieve the fluency that a native has. That’s perfectly okay! So make your goals more realistic. Do you want to be able to ask a stranger on the streets of Rome where the train station is, and understand the response? Or learn the words to your favorite Italian aria by heart and know what it means? Or read the entire Divine Comedy in the original? Take a few minutes to figure out exactly what you want out of the language. Maybe you’d like to double your food & cooking vocabulary rather than spend hours on the nuances of preposition usage. It’s up to you to guide your own learning to your goal.
While it's true that we do face challenges trying to learn a language as adults, we have one great advantage: we choose to learn Italian. The motivation from that fact alone can take us to new heights.
To show you that I practice what I preach, I will end each blog entry with a paragraph in Italian*. I’m hopeful that in a year, I will see clear improvement. Here I’ll give a little bit of my background, including my brief history learning Italian.
Mi chiamo Erin. Sono cresciuta all’estero, principalmente a Londra. Abito a Charleston per sei mesi e mi piace molto il tempo qui! Prima, abitavo a New York per cinque anni, in cui cominciavo studiare Italiano. Qui a Charleston, vado a classe tutti sabato. Ho imparato la coniugazione del verbi presente, imperfetto, futuro semplice, e trapassato prossimo. Non ho imparato ancora il congiuntivo né il condizionale. Come la maggior parte di studenti della lingua straniera, trovo piú facile da leggere e comprendere che scrivere e parlare. Il mio vocabulario e piccolo, ma crescere! Per favore, scrivimi se hai domande o commente. Ciao!
Words I looked up to write this:
All’estero = overseas
La lingua straniera = foreign language
*Disclaimer: I am a beginning/intermediate student of Italian, and I can almost guarantee that there will be mistakes in my Italian writing. Don't think that because it's here, it's error-free. You've been warned!
