Mamma mia! Italian in month

Adam   Sun Jan 20, 2008 6:30 pm GMT
England's new manager, Fabio Capello, has said that he will try to learn English within a month.

So Th Sun's David Lowe decided to try and see if he could learn Italian in a month...


Mamma mia! Italian in month
By DAVID LOWE

Published: 18 Jan 2008
The Sun

IF there’s one thing more difficult than being England manager, it’s learning a language in a month.

And that’s exactly what Fabio Capello swore he’d do back in December.

But one month on the England boss is still doing interviews through a translator - with no signs of giving him the boot.

Was FabCap just too ambitious when he took on our national squad AND language?

We set features writer David Lowe the challenge of learning Italian in a month - on time for a training session with an Italian-speaking team in London.

Mamma mia! - he had his work cut out.

Italy - the land of pizza, vino and pretty girl-sa.

It’s hardly surprising I jumped at the chance to learn Italian.

But when I discovered there was a one month deadline and I’d have to coach an Italian football team at the end of it, I admit I had second thoughts.

Still, never one to pass on a challenge I loaded my iPod with an informative CD, got stuck into books on Italian grammar and even took daily tuition.

The month flew in, and before you could say "La dolce vita", I was standing before 20 or so Italian-speaking footballers from AC Finchley in North London for an evening’s training.

Surprisingly my introductory team talk went rather well - judging by the cheers from the lads when I’d finished.

Then again, perhaps they were laughing at me rather than with me.

Clutching a steaming cup of coffee, it was time to face the driving rain outside and my first session as ‘allenatore’ - Italian for coach.

“Andiamo al campo di coniglio!” I yelled, meaning “Let’s go to the football field!”

I could hear a few stifled sniggers and realised there’d just been a catastrophic mistake.

I’d said rabbit field - d’oh.

With only a smattering of Italian it’s easy to mix up similar words like calcio, meaning football, and coniglio, meaning rabbit.

Getting the runs abroad is everyone’s worst nightmare - and as the evening wore on I continued to suffer foreign verbal diarrhoea.

“Defendi l’aria di porta!” I shouted at the confused-looking goalie.

He kindly whispered that Italian pronunciation is extremely important.

I’d just told him, “Defend the song of the goals!” - instead of saying ‘l’area’ I’d said ‘l’aria’.

I was beginning to realise that as in English, a single letter in Italian can make a hell of a difference.

After a few drills and warm-up exercises the team, or ‘squadra’, split for some five-a-side.

The game got off to a good start, but then the ref spotted a foul tackle and a player was called over for a yellow card.

“Che e’ successo?” - “What happened?” asked one of the team.

“E’ stato armato,” I replied with misguided confidence in my ability to explain a yellow card.

“You say he was armed?” came the reply.

The toes were already curling inside my water-logged size nines and I hid a little further under my Steve McClaren-style umbrella.

‘Ammonito’ would have been correct, but somehow I’d substituted the admittedly similar word ‘armato’.

Naturally no-one was armed - but I’m pretty certain if I’d been going for a real manager’s job I’d have been fired.

From my experience it’s easy to make a balls-up of learning a language and using it to coach within a month.

And as I haven’t heard Fabio Capello speak in English yet, I hope he’s working hard.

But thankfully one important football word is the same in English and Italian - one we hope FabCap will have us yelling from the terraces rather more often in 2008.

That word?

GOAL!

Thanks to allinitalian.co.uk and rosettastone.co.uk for language tuition.


thesun.co.uk
Guest   Mon Jan 21, 2008 1:18 am GMT
I suspect that it would be a lot easier to learn the fundamentals of English in a month that the fundamentals of Italian.
Guest   Mon Jan 21, 2008 4:19 am GMT
That must be a joke. Italian is fairly easy as far as Indo-European languages go, but I don't think it is that easy. For an average person with some good training, I think tourist to basic Italian is possible in a couple of months- That's if the person already speaks an IE language.
People with language "blocks" ("I can't learn languages mentality.") will probably take three times the average time.