The Pilot

It is official.  I am getting married!

As exciting as that is, (and it is very exciting honey if you are reading this) what is even more exciting makes it even more exciting is that we have decided to take our honeymoon in Italy!

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Yes, Italy.  Land of the Romans, the Papacy, Pizza, Fancy Coffee, and a 92% Italian population.

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Having double majored in History and Latin, with minors in Classical Civilizations and Medieval Studies, and having done nothing with those majors, a honeymoon to Italy will finally validate 4 very costly years of college.

The date of the wedding is May 30, 2015.  Today is June 3rd, 2015.  That gives me two years to learn everything I will need to get the most out of my trip to Italy.  The primary goal of this blog: keeping me honest in learning Italian.

Not counting 2 years of high school Spanish and 3 days of college level Italian, I have not taken classes for a spoken language other than English.  Sure, I might be able to give you a rough translation of Latin at sight and given 20 minutes I might be able to translate those 3 lines of Classical Greek with the help of my trusty Middle Liddell, but as far as spoken foreign languages I have, effectively, no experience.

In an effort to not get ripped off and better enjoy my time in the Italian peninsula I am embarking on an adventure to learn enough of the language to act as translator on our trip.  I am also not going to be paying anything (or very little) to acquire these skills so if you find yourself in a similar situation I welcome you to come along on this journey and we can learn together.

Ideally I will make a post every day about new words/phrases/concepts I learned, even if it is just a single vocabulary word.  Of course this is not an official contract and real-life obligations, such as visiting parents at a lake where there is no internet access, may prevent me from posting as often as I like but I will do what I can.

If anyone has done this before or has any good resources for me to use I would greatly appreciate any information.  I plan on using things like YouTube, Google Translate, and other blogs/sites to cobble this together, and maybe I'll even get into podcasts or CDs from the library.  To keep a front row seat of all the action and/or kindly instruct me in the error of my ways feel free to visit and comment often.

I am pretty excited about this and worst case scenario this ends up being another learning tool just for me.

Thanks for reading!

Matt