Alef Arendsen

‘I want to speak Italian’ that is… A bit over 2 years ago I wrote this exact same sentence in Spanish. This was just before me third (and to date last) trip to Costa Rica. I figured that investing a bit of time in learning Spanish (on of the top 10 world languages according to Wikipedia) is never a wasted effort, so I took some (electronic) courses.

Two years have passed and I haven’t visited a Spanish speaking country ever since, and I also haven’t spent a lot of time learning Spanish anymore. Sure, I can probably still go around asking for directions or book a hotel room, but that’s pretty much it.

In the meantime–if you’ve followed me–a few friends of mine and me bought a house in Italy and I’m spent more time in Italy then anywhere else the last year (apart Holland and any business trips that is). So I figured I’d take up Italian lessons instead of Spanish. And why not use the most effective language learning method that I know of. Instead of raving about it here myself, I’ll just quote somebody’s review on the Amazon pages for Italian with Michel Thomas:

I ama language teacher, teaching English in Italy. I found Thomas’ course to be by far the finest self-study teaching aid I’ve yet found. It’s important to explode a few myths: there’s nothing ‘magical’ about Mr Thomas’ method. He follows many universally-recognised language teaching axioms, chief among them that the student must PRODUCE the language (they’re not really learning it if they don’t produce it). The ’spin’ Mr Thomas puts on his lessons is truly his own, however; I’ve never come across anything quite like it before. Also, Mr Thomas claims that you will not forget what you learn on his course – well, actually, you might; you can forget anything if you try hard enough! But the rate of recall after using this course is significantly – perhaps exponentially – higher than for traditional book-and-tape courses. Mr Thomas takes some amazing short cuts with the Italian language in his course; but all of them are justified, as the intelligent student will see. Anything he leaves out is easily slotted in later, into the structures he has already taught you. My advice is to listen to this course first, and then buy an ‘ordinary’ book and tape course, or go to conventional Italian lessons. Mr Thomas’ course is not enough on its own, but it lays a foundation of a strength that, speaking as a language teacher, I find unbelieveable. I sincerely hope he brings out an Advanced Italian volume.

I took it up little over a year ago, but haven’t had a lot of time since then. It’s not a method you can easily use in the plane or on the train, as it forces you to speak out loud and I’m sure my fellow travelers wouldn’t like me doing that very much. Lately, I have some spare time however in the evenings, so I’m taking it up again and this reminds me how wonderful Michel Thomas’ language learning methods really are. Highly recommended.

In the meantime, some music I’ve been listening to the last few weeks:

• While boarding in Italy: Less than Jake
• While relaxing and getting to sleep: Junior Boys
• And in between: Pulp

I had to go back and forth to Schiphol Airport this week for a training at a client of ours. The previous time I visited this client, the location was very close to Schiphol Central. There’s a very frequent train service between Utrecht Central and Schiphol Central that only take 30 minutes.

There’s a big difference however between being at Schiphol Central and being at Schiphol Rijk. The two are separated by an infrequent and at times lengthy (30 minute) bus service. That’s why I decided to take the car to this week. After day one, I immediately knew why I had decided not to take my car to Amsterdam anymore in the past four months. The first day, getting there took me an hour. Which is not that bad. The second day (yesterday), took my 90 minutes. Today again took me 90 minutes to get to Schiphol Rijk because of an accident on the highway A2 towards Amsterdam. I gave Kees a lift today (his wife needed the car) and he showed me his usual route, which avoids the highways all together. It only took about 45 minutes to get to his place and another 10 minutes to get mine. That means I saved about 30 minutes. I’m going to try that one out tomorrow morning as well.

One thing is certain, I’d rather take a plane twice a week than commute back-n-forth to work 5 days a week (at least, that is, if it’s by car and in the direction of Amsterdam).

In the meantime, I did learn a bunch of Italian though. I recently received my copy of Italian with Michel Thomas, an excellent way of learning Italian (or any language for that matter, like Spanish) while driving. There are a lot of other courses (like Pimsleur), but of all of those, I like Michel Thomas’ courses the best.