The thing about being a white person is, you will probably give up your Italian CDs after next week, try a software program the week after that, and claim it was no good. Sorry.
I found reading the dual language version of Siddhartha did wonders for my German. The copy of the Comedy I have has Dante's Italian on one side and English on the other. I sought out the Mendelbaum translation because I loved his version of the Metamorphoses. His Comedy is equally compelling. Dante's "Italian" is a little like Joyce's English, so you'd have to proceed with caution if you want to use your language in conversation. I don't think lumos and expelliarmus are Italian. Harry Potter has too many made up words in it. You're right about the similarity with Spanish. I can understand at least a little of any romance language other than French, which I find odd given the amount of French that leaked into and poisoned our own language. Poisoned how?, you might ask. Do you remember the last time you declined a noun? It's bad, but not as bad as Creole.
As far as the English version of Purgatorio goes, I find it to be inferior to Joyce's reworking of it in the second half of Ulysses (though I make no claim to the FW reworking of Purgatorio). This is partly because Joyce's characters have more depth and are in more realistic settings. However, the flow of Mendelbaum's poetry makes for easier reading than Ulysses. Fewer (to no) laughs, but very comforting in its rhythm and elegance in form and content. If you don't have any 13th century Italian music, I suggest Indian classical music, where you go round and round until you are purged of illusion. Speaking of which, I must get back to just that.
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Date: 2009-08-28 07:00 pm (UTC)I found reading the dual language version of Siddhartha did wonders for my German. The copy of the Comedy I have has Dante's Italian on one side and English on the other. I sought out the Mendelbaum translation because I loved his version of the Metamorphoses. His Comedy is equally compelling. Dante's "Italian" is a little like Joyce's English, so you'd have to proceed with caution if you want to use your language in conversation. I don't think lumos and expelliarmus are Italian. Harry Potter has too many made up words in it. You're right about the similarity with Spanish. I can understand at least a little of any romance language other than French, which I find odd given the amount of French that leaked into and poisoned our own language. Poisoned how?, you might ask. Do you remember the last time you declined a noun? It's bad, but not as bad as Creole.
As far as the English version of Purgatorio goes, I find it to be inferior to Joyce's reworking of it in the second half of Ulysses (though I make no claim to the FW reworking of Purgatorio). This is partly because Joyce's characters have more depth and are in more realistic settings. However, the flow of Mendelbaum's poetry makes for easier reading than Ulysses. Fewer (to no) laughs, but very comforting in its rhythm and elegance in form and content. If you don't have any 13th century Italian music, I suggest Indian classical music, where you go round and round until you are purged of illusion. Speaking of which, I must get back to just that.