Italian Facebook!

A new development: I just realized I can now read my Italian nephews’ Facebook postings—i.e., in Italian! I translated a couple for Brandt. Without a dictionary there are still words I don’t get, but with a dictionary I can understand virtually everything.

This is very exciting.

Today I went through my SparkNotes flashcards, which I haven’t done in a few days. The pile of cards I don’t know is getting smaller and smaller.

This was a particularly grammar-heavy day. I had a lot of endurance for it. Sometimes after a couple of uninterrupted hours of grammar, my brain locks up and I have to stop for a while, but not today. I did tons of exercises, even into the wee hours. The explanations in these Italian books are heavy-duty grammatical, in the same way that I remember for Spanish and German and French. Also Russian.

My Arabic experience was not like that, however. I felt as though I was supposed to sense patterns, and I was not given a lot of rules. I like rules. And I love love love grammar.