How to Start Reading in Italian

If you aren't aware by now, but possibly if you found this post, then likely you have recently been enlightened, that reading is simply the best way to get a tonne of foreign language material into your brain in as little time as possible. Even having a habit of reading a tiny amount, whether it be a page a day or even a few lines, chances are you will improve significantly at Italian. 

There is so much more variety of vocabulary and expressions that you would not come across if you are only to use audio as your main learning source. While there are other great resources for reading such as news articles, blog posts or even the YouTube comment section. 

Reading long form books that have a fully fleshed narrative, that require us to remember key facts and even attempt to predict what may happen in the following chapters, increases our mental ability, general outlook on life and our overall happiness. On top of that when you have to look for new articles or reading content we lose time inbetween that could have been used for reading.

I have been reading a lot of books since I started learning Korean in 2019, moreso than I'd ever actually read in English. It also prompted me to visit books that I'd never read in English but didn't want to waste time reading them in English so I could kill two birds with one stone. I actually ended up reading Korean content that was created more recently and written by Koreans.

Korean doesn't have a huge classical literature library that spans from the 1800's and sometimes beyond, so Italian was a great place for me to pick up from there. Initially I will share a set of books for beginners that want to get into reading and then I will show you the great publisher Newton Compton Editori's fine selection of books that include Italian authored and worldwide authored classic books.

For Beginners

For any language learning starting off reading is going to be a struggle as they have mostly been raised to believe that it's impossible or very difficult to start reading. Personally I would like to argue that for Italian especially, there are enough cognates, that even a brief run over some grammar and a few hundred words will leave you able to read from week 1.

Luckily for us Olly Richards, has decided he would like to be the forerunner for providing reading content for beginners of many languages and has a whole set of books aimed at beginners written in many different languages.

Obviously the ones we want to focus on in this article are the two books: 

• Short Stories in Italian for Beginners
• Short Stories in Italian for Intermediate Learners

The first book in the series is extremely simple, even cutting out some grammar concepts that will be used in the Intermediate book. These series are quite simple I believe that most people will be surprised that they can actually read and understand large portions of the beginner book even from the first week.

As per the instructions in the book, you may find it beneficial to read the stories multiple times before moving onto the intermediate book. I think you will surprised how strong the effect of reading is and how active your imagination will become, especially if you aren't a well versed reader in your native language.

I have a whole article on reading tips that may help those who are just starting out. Generally I would recommend, highlighting or writing down words that you don't know and looking them up after you finish each chapter or story as it will allow you to not worry about stopping and just try to reach the end. You may find that you will understand what some words mean without even having to look them up.

Reading actual novels

Despite what people think it's not actually that difficult to read a novel. Many language learners have this misconception that they need to be ready to read but actually this just holds them back. You can read from day 1 and as long as you are looking up words you will be more knowledgeable than you were the day before. 

You learn words long term by encountering them hundreds of times over and over. Reading long form content such as novels will allow you to learn and remember easier and for much longer than just looking at word lists or doing flashcards. Doing those is a great way to deliberately expose yourself to a word but it's not useful over the long term.

As I mentioned before Italian has a great set of authors who have created many great works, Verga, Pirandello, Pavese to name a few. Luckily there is also an Italian publisher who is willing to publish these great works and even translate and compile works from other worldwide authors. 

Newton Compton Editori have many different sets of classics but the two main ones I will be sharing are the Mammut and the MiniMammut. The Mammut set of books are generally very long books or compilations from great authors. The Minimammut set of books are just seperate novels for those that want to just buy a single title or a hardback copy of a book they love.

The beauty of this series is the price point. You can own a large library of books for a very miniscule price. If one book is going to last you many hours then the $2.99 price for the e-book versions is very enticing. I highly recommend this series of books for those that wish to get into reading in Italian. If you find that you have been learning for a long time and that your progress has stalled it may be worth purchasing one of these and seeing how you fare.

The main issue we come across is being able to differentiate between what is an easy book and what is a difficult book. To that I say, "it doesn't actually matter", even if you struggle to read a book, you will likely learn more from that book than you would an 'easy' book. Over time regardless of whether you read hard or easy books, the amount of words you look up will decrease and the amount of words that will be in your long term memory will increase.

For the value, I would first recommend purchasing one of the mammut series that combines various works for younger audiences such as:

• I magnifici 7 capolavori della letteratura per ragazzi - $5.99
• I magnifici 7 capolavori della letteratura per ragazze - $5.99

Then for harder content move up to the ones that are based on authors from various countries:

• I magnifici 7 capolavori della letteratura americana - $6.99
• I magnifici 7 capolavori della letteratura francese - $6.99
• I magnifici 7 capolavori della letteratura inglese - $6.99
• I magnifici 7 capolavori della letteratura irlandese - $6.99
• I magnifici 7 capolavori della letteratura italiana - $6.99
• I magnifici 7 capolavori della letteratura russa - $6.99
• I magnifici 7 capolavori della letteratura tedesca - $6.99
• Le magnifiche 7 signore della letteratura inglese - $6.99

Although I have linked to the Amazon versions they are actually available on Google and a few other providers if they are your preferred company of custom. If you actually managed to get through all of these you would find that your Italian has increased tenfold.

Hopefully this has lit the fire in some new language learners or sparked new inspiration for long time learners who have hit a plateau. Please check out my other content for more inspiration and I may make more content for Italian if the demand is there so please leave a comment.

For related posts please check out these pages:

• How to Start Reading in a Foreign Language
• Nintendo Switch Games to play in Korean
• The Role of Listening in Language Learning
• The Role of Grammar Study in Language Learning
• The Monolingual Transition and How to Approach it
• Realistically How Long Does it Take to Learn a Language?
  
• Watching Media and Using Subtitles to Learn a Language
• How to Spend as Much of Your Day as Possible Learning Korean
• Olly Richards' Short Stories in Korean for Intermediate Learners Review
• Using Audio Description for Language Learning
• I read 61 Korean books in 2020
  
• 7 Reading Tips to Accelerate Your Korean Learning
• I read 50 Korean books in 2021
  

Ridibooks Adult Verficiation Guide

If you're interested in gaining access to the 성인 titles available on Ridibooks then you'll have to send a picture to the team so that they can verify your age. It took me a while to figure out how to do this as the method is different for foreign nationals. 

The method for Koreans involves downloading programmes and apps to verify your identity but the version for foreigners is much more simple and more akin to something like Amazon. There is a simple link you can click to take you to the page where you fill out your details here.

 You can watch the video below or continue reading for some basic troubleshooting:

Simple 10 minute 떡볶이(Tteokbokki) Recipe

Nostalgia for many Koreans, a great treat for those having a stressful weak at work or school. Doubling as both a street food and a simple meal that people can cook at home. This dish is very far from being considered healthy and is probably best eaten once a month or so.

I have been cooking with this recipe for a few years, occassionally making a few tweaks. I will include the base recipe and some added ingredients you may want to add depending on your tastes. The ingredients listed are for 2 portions. 

Generally for myself I make 1 portion by halving all the ingredients except water which will usually be between 200-300ml. Most of the ingredients may need to be purchased from a specialty korean or asian store. Some may also be available via Amazon which I will leave links on the ingredients.

SBS VOD: Watch Korean TV Legally Free (No VPN required)

 

This little known website is great for a couple reasons. Generally you'll find to watch any kind of VODs on Korean tv, MBC and KBS both require you to be a resident of Korea or use a VPN. Alternatively you can view some of their content on YouTube but it is usually broken up into multiple episodes or is just short clips, usually they have English subtitles which you might prefer if that's your style.

However as Korean learners we should be striving to break away from the subtitles and watching and listening to content purely receiving input in it's auditory form. You'll find by doing this you will escape the 'needing subtitles' trap. 

The beauty of this site is that it has a huge base of content going all the way back to the 90s. Older shows can often be hard to find in any form, even illegally. With SBS VOD we get a consistent quality with no episodes missing and autoplay, making it easy to get through hundreds of episodes of your favourite shows. Ranging through Comedy, Sports, Dramas and even documentary/factual shows, there is something for everyone.

Link to the homepage

Where to Watch Digimon Series Korean Dub (디지몬 더빙 다시보기 링크집)

This page is a compilation of various pages and webplayers where you can watch the full series in Korean. It's possible that some of the link may cease to work. I will try to keep it as up to date as possible. Some series may not yet have been posted. I'm unsure if there is anywhere to purchase the DVD copies for the dub, so this is the best we have for now.

You shouldn't need to sign in to any accounts to watch anything. Other than the links being dead you may have to deal with low quality sound and video. If there was a place to watch it in higher quality I would point you there. If it becomes available I will update this page accordingly.

Hopefully digimon lovers, Koreans or Korean learners will find this page so we can all enjoy this series together. I don't have the movies yet but I may search for them later and add them to this post.

The Best Vocabulary Books for Korean

What seems to be an overlooked aspect by many language learners, whether they are using classroom methods or immersion methods, here I want to share some books where one can increase their understanding of the language very quickly with very little effort. At the end I will also share some apps that can help beyond the books shown.

You may have heard about study methods such as reading through a frequency list. The main problem with this advice is that frequency lists generally have no structure or example sentences. Some words also have multiple meanings which the frequency list does not usually separate. If you are interested in a frequency list then you can find one here on ko.wiktionary.org 

As you can see if you check the link, it is merely a list of words with no meaning or examples. The advantage of using the books I will recommend in this post is that they all contain much more information about every word and you can quickly go through them. Also I have created Anki decks for them meaning that once you have read them you can use an SRS to remember the vocabulary long term.

Although the Anki decks are free to use, I highly recommend purchasing a copy of the books not just to help support the creators but to give yourself more information about the words included. A quick read through before starting the decks will give you more of an advantage to remembering the words.

Korean Dictionary Symbols Explained

First look at the dictionary may be confusing. In this article I want to clear up some of the more confusing or overlooked parts that are super useful for learners. I think its very easy to overlook helpful information because it seems overwhelming.

Like all knowledge it becomes much easier to digest when we know about it before hand. So I just want to point out a few things that you can take into the future with you.

Personally there are only 2 dictionaries I use. Krdict and Naver dictionary. The first is my preference because it shows the description of the word and has some examples very clearly laid out. I tend to use Naver as a last resort for words that are not on Krdict.

7 Reading Tips to Accelerate Your Korean Learning

There's a lot of fluff lists out there. "how to learn X language", "20 tips to become fluent in X" and 99% of the time they're all just generic advice that everyone already knew. Well this list aims to actually give you tips that you can actually use to make progress with Korean. There is no real order or priority to any of the tips but they will all benefit most people in some way.

As I have stated in previous posts, reading is simply the best way to make rapid progress in a language due to the amount of content you can cover and the large amount of vocabulary used. The tips will be useful for all levels including tips that beginners and advanced learners can use straight away. 

If you found these tips helpful or have tips of your own you would like to share, let me know in the comments below. It's great to get a lot of different perspectives so that we can help future learners achieve their goals. There will likely be a part 2 so please return for that at a later date.

Below I will leave a playlist of video versions of similar tips and more.

Korean Grammar in Use Advanced - Grammar Points Ranked

This list is sorted based on how much I have personally seen them used in books, TV and media that I consume. It may not be 100% accurate and as I continue to learn I will continue to notice more the grammar that I rarely see. I have read a large variety of books at different levels and regularly watch science related content.

I want the different sections to represent how I feel about the contained grammar forms. There are actually a fair amount of grammar points missing from the entire series of Korean Grammar in Use. I will try to keep this list updated and add grammar points at the end that regularly come up but are not in the book.

I have placed a description in Korean next to each point because I've found that I understood the grammar much better once I had read the Korean description. Please note that the list is likely heavily biased to my own experiences and if you mainly consume content that is not the same domain as myself you may find certain grammar more or less common.

Please refer to the book or perhaps search the dictionary or google to find more information about the  grammar points. I recommend using this as a reference as to which grammar points you know. It is good to let yourself know of the existence of grammar prior to seeing it in context so that you can identify that it is grammar.

How to Learn Korean in 2021

As the new year comes around, there may be many more people who are looking to pick up a language as part of their new year's resolutions or new year's goals. If you found this article then most likely you are looking to learn Korean, A language that continues to grow in popularity every year.

If you've just started or are looking to start, then this article will outline the key aspects of language learning and how you can apply them to Korean. Later, I will introduce places where you can find almost any type of Korean content to enjoy.

Whatever your reason for learning Korean, you must understand that learning a language is a long term pursuit. You will have the most success by treating it as a part of your life rather than a skill that you learn. To put it into perspective you will be looking at a minimum of a year to feel like you have a basic understanding and probably around 2-5 years to feel comfortable.

Before we begin I recommend bookmarking my Korean Fluency Path so that you can refer back to it later. It covers the first 2 years of the learning journey. After around 6 months you will likely have graduated from using learner's materials and have moved on to content created for natives.

How to Master the Korean Number Systems

This article is going to presume that you have at least the knowledge of the number systems, although as we all know knowledge is not acquisition. I will try to cover some strategies you can use to better help remember the numbers and also make it more natural to read them in Korean.

As anyone who has tried to learn another language will know it's very difficult to read a written arabic number without defaulting to saying it in your native language. I know many people who are extremely fluent in English and say they always count in their native language. However our aim should be to at least be comfortable with numbers so that we can tell people things like our age or our birth date.

I've found while learning Korean that numbers come up very often in various ways and it has become beneficial for my reading speed and understanding to be able to automatically know the number in Korean. For reference I will refer to 일, 이, 삼 as the Sino-Korean system and 하나, 둘, 셋 as the pure Korean system.

Talk to Me in Korean Advanced Idiomatic Expressions Reference List

Starting at Level 8 TTMIK added idiomatic expression lessons based on 1 word. Here the list is compiled for easy access with links to each lesson. There is also an Anki deck available which covers the idioms from the collaboration between TTMIK and Naver.

• TTMIK Grammar points list
• Hanja(word builder) lessons list

The Role of Anki in Language Learning

I've been wanting to write about this for a while. I see a lot of people over complicate their experience with Anki and even shy away from using it all together because they perceive it to be more complicated than it is. The first thing I will state is that all the content within this article is based off of my own opinion of the software from how I've used it and how I've seen others use it.

The first thing to note is that Anki is merely a supplement to your learning. The reason and method of using Anki will vary throughout your language learning journey. However one should not feel obligated to use it at any point. Once it becomes boring or you forget the reason you're even using it, then simply just stop.

You can download for free Anki here:

• for PC and Mac
• for Android devices 
  

Should You Learn Korean?

Should you learn Korean? Should I learn Korean? Should I learn a language? Perhaps you have pondered about this before? Perhaps are thinking of starting to learn a language or just recently started learning a language and are wondering if it's for you? I'm going to presume you clicked this article because you fall into one of these two categories.

It's very normal to have doubts when starting or before starting on a long term goal. Partly doubt of whether you will succeed and partly doubt of whether you think the investment is worth it. I'm sure we all have the same doubts when it comes to spending the valuable resources, time and money.

I want to focus on whether one should learn Korean as a western native language speaker. If you already know or were raised with a Sino-language then the journey will be easier, similarly as it would for a native English speaker to learn, say, a romance language. Because of the huge time commitment required, there are what some would consider good reasons and bad reasons to even start in the first place.

How to Use Ridibooks(Korean Ebook Store)

Depending on where you live, it can be very difficult to get your hands on Korean books. Here in the UK I imagine there are only very specific areas in London that have a Korean populace selling their old books. This leaves us with the options of flying to Korea to pick up books and maxing out our luggage weight or doing the simpler and (sometimes) cheaper option of buying E-books.

Smartphone Apps for Learning Korean

 

When you think of or ask about language learning apps, the first thing to come up will likely be Duolingo. Sadly it has a lot of drawbacks, it's slow to update despite having ads and subscription options, the courses are community made and pretty low quality and overall it doesn't contain enough content to actually get anywhere in the language you're studying.

How to Type in Korean and How to Practice Typing Faster

Check out the related video here: 

When learning a new language with a new writing system many people like to focus on how to write or type in the language. While writing is not strictly necessary unless you live in the country, typing will be very handy for when you need to look up a word, search for things or even have conversations. So how can we go from not having a clue where the keys are to touch typing. While this guide is aimed at Korean, the tips can be used for any language.

How to Spend as Much of Your Day as Possible Learning Korean

With the rise of immersion learning and 40 hour week challenges and such, I feel this might help those who want to push their time to it's limits. As someone who has been doing at a minimum 5 hours a day of Korean for the past 2 years, I started to value my time to the point where it will frustrate me if I feel someone is wasting my time.

I used to spend days not really achieving anything and wondering where the days have gone, I had zero plans for my days and just did things whenever I felt like it except for certain things like exercise that I would do at around the same time every day, which is pretty much what I applied to my language learning.

Watching Media and Using Subtitles to Learn a Language

Related video for extra viewing:

 

A lot of learners often ask questions around the use of subtitles and whether they should be using native subs, target language subs or just foregoing subs altogether. The answer can vary depending on your reasons for watching and also your level. Subtitles are a great resource for learning new words while being able to relax more than pure reading but also have the added visual queue in which to understand the words on screen. Let's go over a few different ways you might consider watching content in your target language

The Monolingual Transition and How to Approach it

What is the monolingual transition?

For those who do not know, the monolingual transition, popularised by the Mass Immersion Approach, is the process of transitioning from learning via a known language to using the target language itself to learn the language. Many learners do not seem to grasp the reasons or the process behind the 'transition' even though it is in the name.

Often learners take to 'trying it' or simply brute forcing it and spend hours deep diving into the dictionary searching up every new word until they can finally understand one. Many also like to think, as with everything, that it is either or, you're either 100% monolingual or 100% using your native language.

Due to similarities of close languages you may never have to use a monolingual dictionary as the words have roughly the same meanings and usages although some words obviously stray from this the majority of words can be exchange 1:1 due to them stemming from the same origin and similar culture.

Monolingual dictionary showing multiple meanings and synonyms.