Greetings Fellow Bloggers/Saluti Fellow Bloggers

Ciao (chow) = Hi,

I would like to introduce myself. I am Linda.

I am trying to learn Italian, so one day I can fulfill a life long dream of going to Italy, and enveloping myself in the artistic culture where pioneers in the arts like Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti, and others artisans of their time created the priceless art relics we hold so dear.

I am an artist in my own right, and some of my art can be viewed at http://www.lindricksbaseline.com. You have to enter the URL in the address bar of the browser to be able to get to it to see my artwork.

I was a painting major at KU in the early 90's, and I was going to study abroad in Italy, but I didn't know Italian, which doused that plan.

Now, later in life I have decided that I am determined to learn Italian, and at least take one painting class in Italy before I die.

The purpose of this blog is to give me a sounding board to filter through the many processes that I will have to try to obtain my objective. I will share the techniques that I come up with on how a person with dyslexia tries to absorb a foreign language when they have difficulty mastering their native tongue.

I am new to blogging, so there will be a learning curve in the delivery process at first.

As I progress in my learning process I will start creating my blog entries in Italian. I welcome any native speaking Italians' input into my sentence structure when I get to that point. Right now thou, I am just starting to learn some basic vocabulary in Italian.

I have listed the numbers 0 to 20 below in Italian.


Numeri = Numbers
0 = zero, 1 = uno, 2 = due, 3 = tre, 4 = quattro, 5 = cinque, 6 = sei, 7 = sette, 8 = otto, 9 = nove, 10 = dieci, 11 = undici, 12 = dodici, 13 = tredici, 14 = quattordici, 15 = quindici, 16 = sedici, 17 = diciasette, 18 = diciotto, 19 = diciannove, 20 = venti.

Repetition, Repetition, and Repetition is how I am starting to remember these numbers (numeri). Study them everyday. Count things! Everything you can. Brush your teeth to the count of 20 (venti). Count yourself to sleep. Well, that one is a little hard to actually help you to slumber land because you have to concentrate to much at first, but it will help you imprint the numeri better in you memory.

I will highlight the Italian words that I have introduced in yellow (giallo).

Colori = Colors

           rosso ( rohs-soh) = red

           arancione (ah-rahn-choh-neh) = orange

           giallo (jahl-loh) = yellow

           verde (vair-deh) = green

           blu (bloo) = blue

           violetto (vee-oh-let-toh) = violet

           marrone (mair-roh-neh)  = brown

           grigio (gree-joh) = gray

           nero (neh-roh) = black

           bianco (bee-ahn-koh) = white

           rosa (roh-zah) = pink

                              mulitcolore (mool-tee-koh-loh-reh) = multi-colored

The color (colore) section starts with a colore swatch, followed by its' Italian name (nome), with the English enunciation in parenthesis, then followed by the English word (parola).

The colori are as close to the colori that I could create with the blog tools. Later on I will create a layout in Adobe Illustrator and put on this blog.

I have found the best way to learn your colori in Italian is to identify the colori of cars before they pass you. I ride public transportation, so this is a good pass-time game I play with myself as they pass by. Some times it is a real challenge when traffic is at a steady stream to say all the colori of the cars that go by before they pass you. This game has proved to be very helpful for me to learn and identify the correct basic Italian color's (del colore) nome.

I am signing off for now, and I will continue my learning quest later.

arrivederci (ar-ree-veh-dair-chee) = goodbye

Linda db