As the countdown reaches single digits I am (for once!) surprisingly organised. My main suitcase is already packed and will be heading to Italy tomorrow before I join it on Friday, I have plenty of Euros and I've even pre-charged my SLR (get ready for the photo overload in the following weeks).
The one remaining task I have is to learn Italian (and prepare my stomach for some awesome italian food, but more on that in my next posts). Obviously I don't need to be fluent but my ABSOLUTE BIGGEST pet hate is tourists abroad who don't even bother to say their Ps and Qs in their destination's native tongue. So, in order to avoid being a massive hypocrite I started a course in Italian on my Duolingo app a few weeks ago... problem is I lost internet last week so I've completed all of two units and know approximately 6 italian words (minus ciao... because everyone knows ciao!).
For those of you who haven't heard of Duolingo, it's a fantastic free language learning app for phones and tablets. As a linguist myself (I speak Northerner, Spanish and a little French), I'm all for opening up free language learning to the world, especially given the prices of some language software (we're talking £££s for the basic levels). Although the pre-recorded pronunciation can be a little confusing at times I found it really helpful for refreshing my French skills and I would definitely recommend it for any budding linguist or traveller.
That's my first post done, along with my first review (sort of). So... umm... Grazie for reading this and I hope you come back soon!
Ciao for now
Vx
No comments:
Post a Comment