mi piace...

I've had a realization. I love Italian. And this is after only two classes where my conversational skills still reside with "my name is" and "I'm fine, thank you, how are you?"

I was pretty confident that I'd like Italian when I started the class. But so far the only language I loved was French. Even after studying Japanese for a year, I only really liked it.

Ah...but Italian is up there with French. I still love the...gentleness of the French language, the way many of the letters sound like a whisper and how it's more like a soft song when spoken. Italian is musical but French...I don't know, French is mostly like a lullaby. Right now I'm thinking of the soliloquy that came after Cyrano's "Non merci" tirade: "Avoir l'oeil qui regarde bien, la voix qui vibre..."

I haven't been this excited about a class since I first started taking French in high school. Even reading the dialogue while studying the other day, practicing the musicality of the language, was a thrill. With my French background, the pronounciation has proved tricky in parts. The "Rs" are rolled and now "swallowed," and all the letters are pronounced and pronounced individually. Words with an "oi" have tripped me up, as have the few words we come across that end in "n" or "t." I must remember those are not left off.

And...after declaring my love for another language (don't worry, French, you still have first place in my heart), I'll leave you with an Italian proverb I learned yesterday and have been telling it to nearly everyone:

Tutte le strade portano a Roma

All roads lead to Rome