Learn Italian Ep.26 - Using "Reference Phrases" to Speak Faster in Italian

[@pegberthold3988]

Listening to the singing trio of "Il Volo" helped me learn and "bank" reference phrases without realizing that it was a good study habit. In fact, it is because of their singing Italian songs with so much passion (like "Caruso", which brought me to tears, not even yet understanding the language) that I wanted to learn Italian. Something about the language made me feel like "this is home". (Then, through DNA testing, I learned that I am part Italian! The best parts, il mio cuore e la mia anima.) I started with a couple of good books, and watched several videos by different people, but Tom, something about the way you teach simplifies it, and makes it come alive. Your open, loving, embracing heart shows on your face and comes through in every way you teach.Truly, you are incomparable. I have learned more from your videos, and continue to learn, and at a much faster rate. Your impressionable manner makes learning so much easier and a pure joy. Grazie mille!!!

[@ricardomaislin491]

Ppm pkkkk😊😊😊

[@Mo_Vet]

Tom I am a disabled vet in retirement age, and I have been to Italy to visit my family twice in the past 13 months. I am going again in September and really want to ramp up the learning process. Because of my TBI and PTSD from the Army, I have to study harder and longer than your normal student. I started learning with Rosetta Stone 4 yeas ago and found that it is so much easier learning with you; if you would call learning easy. It is important for me to push myself to learn and because I have so many of my mothers family in Italy, and learning helps reroute neropathways. I can make my way around Italy and communicate like a 5 year old, but want to speak like you. PTSD gets in the way too, because I get mad at my computer when it hiccups. The predictive speaking drives me nuts too, because I try to type everything you put up on the screen as you say it. If you have time, it would be neat to make a few videos with more repetition. Apparently you are a college graduate, so you may have friends that understand TBI and can ask them to help you understand us veterans who have this disability. Thank you for helping me. I tell everyone about you.

[@debbiedebarto7443]

My reference phrases are often from a song, because i love italian music and so I remember all the words and from singing them over and over again I'm able to speak quickly. So I would say listening to italian music helps you create your personal reference phrases. Love your videos, you have always the best ideas to support your learning

You're too kind, thank you! :) I learn a lot by listening to Italian music too! Keep up the great work!

[@lilyi5144]

Hi, can you recommend any italian bands? Or alternative genre? Thanks

[@debbiedebarto7443]

+Hearts and Stars Bands: Lunapop (Song: Qualcosa di grande), Le vibrazioni (ovunque andró), Subsonica (Tutti i miei sbagli, Disco labirinto), Gianluca Grignani (Lä fabbrica di plastica), Litfiba (il mio corpo che cambia) These are older songs but I love them very much

[@rickferraro2687]

Thanks!

[@PrettyPureSalina]

Great quality! The surroundings relax me so much haha! Hai una pronuncia incredibile!

[@dibyajyotilahiri2667]

I would have lost motivation to learn the language in about a month had it not been for this channel. Thank you so much!

[@Wilban53]

Your videos are so helpful and you are an excellent teacher. Thank you!

[@WalkWIthMe74]

An interesting video. I'm just starting to come across this stuff now. I'm getting fed up of having to literally translate word for word and I'm finding I'm naturally gratitating towards these go to phrases for speed. The one about the park that you used above was interesting. I got it, without having to analyse it too closely. Even though I'd forgotten 'fosse'. Grazie Tom!

[@la-civetta]

Excellent tips, Tom! I would encourage everybody to use own reference phrases from personal experience, like taken from music/movies etc. that you like. That way, there's the most feeling and hence deeper connection in learning/remembering and re-using the phrases. Always learn by things u like, words and phrases that matter to you!

[@Jbm0230]

The Congiuntivo is the hardest tense for me to understand at the moment. My own Italian professor said it was hard for even the native speakers. But the phrase "Se fosse stato...." really helps me.

[@CaesarDicax]

I recommend "Modern Italian Grammar : A Practical Guide" by Sarah Proudfoot..It explains it in full detail.

[@ThatCreepypastaGuy]

id never thought of this, really good idea! it will help me lot :)

[@stefanochiaromonte]

Thank you so much Tom! This is gonna be extremely useful for my students who are studying Italian!

I'm happy to hear it Stefano! And good for you that you're teaching people Italian, bravissimo :)

[@selinafyfable]

Thanks for the tips, Tom.

[@63Frasca]

Video breve ma esplicativo! Bravissimo Tom. In italiano molte parole identiche hanno sostanzialmente significati totalmente diversi a seconda del contesto dove appaiono. Effettivamente capendo il contesto si riesce a parlarlo velocemente. Io penso la stessa cosa per l'inglese ovviamente. Ciao,sei un grande!

Grazie!! :)

[@EnzoVecchiaio]

One route to automaticity is to write short- to medium-length essays in Italian about your personal experiences; for some of us, who do lots of writing in English (or other native tongue), the phrases used in this writing can often gain in automaticity, as what we wrote will stick with us based on its personal connection. Get together w/ a conversation group and read/recite your essays to one another. If I'm stuck, I generally resort to the impersonal structure to at least get the idea across when the more-personal direct declarative sentence doesn't fall into my mind. Ex: "Quello film offre i sottotitoli". Rather than struggle a second or two with the conjugation of "offrire", this could be reframed as "si puo avere i sottotitoli." Ti ringrazio per tutti i tuoi video.

[@Antreus]

Can we make a list of reference phrases?

[@leebeeskee]

Hi Tom. Thank you so much for the help with my Italian but I have an itching question: the verb prendere apparently can be transitive or intransitive. So if I said 'I have taken the lid off' or 'I have taken a car home', which type of passato would I use? Io ho preso or io sono preso? Hope that makes sense. Grazie mille

+Lee Squires Hey Lee, good question! Sometimes in Italian you can come across verbs that will have Essere or Avere in front of them depending on the context. With the Passato Prossimo, the rule is to use Avere as the helping verb for Prendere. So you'd say "l'ho preso" for "I've taken/gotten it," for example. But you can come across phrases like "essere preso in giro da qualcuno" which means "to have been fooled by someone." Hope this helps!

[@HHHGeorge]

Good tip but can we have a list of reference phrases for the not as advanced?

[@alessiacattaneo1223]

ciao tom, potresti fare un video su must and have to? grazie

Ciao Alessia! Li ho spiegati nel mio video "Imparare l'Inglese - Modal Verbs," lo puoi trovare sul mio canale :) Praticamente significano entrambi "dovere," ma "must" si usa quando sei obbligato o costretto a fare cosa. C'è anche questo sito che ha fatto una spiegazione bellissima! www.tuttoinglese.it/must---have-to.html

[@xoxglamourgirlxoxo]

Love you Tom!!!!

[@SMoggyinski]

"Tu non mi conosci, io non conosco te" (you don't know me, I don't know you) is a phrase which helped me begin to understand the reverse logic (compared to English) of Italian pronouns and word order, by basically repeating it over and over until it got stuck in my head. I think maybe part of the usefulness of sites such as Duolingo is that you end up getting lots of phrases stuck in your head, which gives you a basis for later building on too? Anyway great vid. It's interesting seeing videos about the actual _process_ of learning languages, as well as about grammar and tenses etc, too :-)

[@kamildoguskarabulut396]

hey, I just noticed something. I think you made a mistake there.. It probably should be '' Io non ti conosco.'' Because If you're saying ''mi'' the reversed version should be ''ti'' right?

[@SMoggyinski]

Dogus Karabulut > Confusingly I think there are two ways of saying it .. "Io non ti conosco" and "Io non conosco te" mean the same thing .. so the phrase could equally be "Tu non conosci me, io non ti conosci", except that maybe doesn't sound so good :-)

[@gnogko]

ciao sei su hello talk? mi piacerebbe parlare con te in italiano (sono italiano) e poi in inglese

[@aftabahmad9124]

thanks really helpful

[@robertknull456]

Do you have any bad videos?? Another great vid!!

[@sarahw8672]

Thank u for this👏👏👏

[@drargere5287]

tu sei bravissimo tom qusto video mi auita tanto, tom vorrei ti chedo una domanda ? io un problema di legere ,tom come potrei impare se hai qualche consiglio mi aiuti perfavore

[@ultimus7600]

ancora meglio: ti vorrei "fare" una domanda, ciao!

[@weynskitblyos386]

ok grazie mille tom

[@drargere5287]

Ok perpicere

[@Xelacreations1337]

+ultimus porre una domanda è il modo migliore di dirlo.

[@EF_ATELIERCOMMUNICATION]

Hi Tom, I wanted to ask, I'm studying English at the course with an American teacher, when you studied the Italian by himself or with a teacher? my curiosity, I hope to succeed with English

[@alessiacattaneo1223]

grazie

[@rainbowatsummit]

i do that with english and songs, most of the time for phrasal verbs haha i just repeat the song in my head that has that particular verb and i remember it :)

Awesome!!

[@CaesarDicax]

I don't want to sound like a dork..but could you please make a video where you illustrate all of your reference phrases? Italians speak super fast and i tried a lot speaking with them, but i stagger in the middle of the conversation; thinking which tense to use.

[@CaesarDicax]

Weilà Tom Yeah i watched that too.. Your videos really helped me a lot..Thanks Tom :)

[@Aturrrrr206]

You seems to be a nature lover! Where do you live in Sir?

[@user-it8kw3wy2y]

Nicholas Saro New York

[@hundredpercentx]

Does anyone remember the name of the radio station that was once adviced to use when learning italian? I can't remember for the life of me :(

I think I've mentioned Radio 105 before. There's also Radio Kiss Kiss, Radio Deejay, RDS, ILA Italia, and RAI has radio stations too. There are lots of others that you can probably find online :)

[@hundredpercentx]

Tom Txxytu Ok thanks I'll try some of those :)

[@hundredpercentx]

Tom Txxytu Ok, I think I found it. The ILR one seems similar. Thanks again

[@fabiopea]

In English i get confused with the conditional, particularly with "would have / would be" i can't understand when i have to use both. So for me it's quite different learning the conditional in English, i have this sentence stuck in my mind "If i were you, i would be freaked out" just because i heard that on a move, i cannot find a way out from this.

Well maybe I can help! I'll give you a few examples. "It would have been nice" = "Sarebbe stato bello." "I would like to see you" = "Vorrei vederti." "It would be nice to see you" = "Sarebbe bello vederti" o "Sarebbe bello poterti vedere" anche se "It would be nice to be able to see you" sarebbe la traduzione più giusta per quella frase! "That would be great" = "Sarebbe bello." I hope this makes the differences a bit clearer :)

[@gigihigino3154]

sei in francia?

[@syannasylwiaanna7468]

We have this inner home joke (me, my mom and sister are living in Germany and mom's partner is German): (Du bist sehr böse), du musst geschlagen werden. Literally "You are very bad, you must be beaten". Specially the second part of it was priceless for me: not only kinda three verbs (musst, geschlagen, werden), but also passive voice. This sentence, being declined in various ways and situations like Du wirst gleich geschlagen, Warum soll ich geschlagen werden?, Ich wurde geschlagen, Sie hat gesagt, dass du geschlagen werden musst... (You're going to be beaten shortly, Why should I be beaten?, I was beaten, She said that you must be beaten...) helped me find my way through more complex sentences. One could say "sure but they aren't that difficult or various". Right. But they are kinda ready patterns where I just have to put right words in right places. And I don't need to think about it. It's like math. x = (5y*2z - 11)/4a. You can designate formulas for y, z and a, but it takes time. And remembering sentences is much easier, faster and funnier than remembering formulas.

[@fantasticilomenz2266]

mi piace il tempo che hai usato a fare questo video

[@gubby740]

\o/