Hey folks, are there any plans for a SSi Italian in the near future?
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I think there were a couple of trial lessons of SSiItalian a few years back. I certainly remember downloading them.
Iâm here quite a long time but I never saw any Italian lessons, not even trials, but I might be here not long enough to really remember so @aran might be the right person to answer this. But, for how much it was written here on the forum I donât remember it was said that Italian woulc come out in any near future. There was French, German, Serbian and some more languages announced to come out the first but I donât remember Italian being mentioned.
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A long time ago Aran was trying out some alterations to the lessons. It was possibly when the levels were being developed. Volunteers signed up for two languages they had no prior knowledge of to test the proposed changes. You were given two lessons in each language. I think there was a choice of four or maybe six languages. I chose Italian and Spanish. I still remember more from those two Italian lessons than I do from a whole term of night school classes. These sample lessons were emailed only to the volunteers, I think.
I guess once the SSiBorg is up and running, if there are people to help with the recording, then possibly SSiItalian could happen. But, like Tatjana, I have not heard that there are any immediate plans for Italian.
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Italian is one of the most common requests we get - and weâre closing in on being ready for the next stage of testing the SSiBorg⊠once I stop giving Ifan mountains of work to make sure all the new guided courses play properly⊠
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Cheers. Thanks for the update Aran.
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I can speak some - well, actually a little bit - of Italian.
My first Italian teacher (at my local college) told us that standard Italian is that spoken in Tuscany, which at the time of unification was the pre-eminent region of the newly founded country.
However, my understanding is that, to a much greater extent than English, Italian is very much a language of dialects, many of which are mutually incomprehensible. I guess this would be because of the fact that Italy as we know it only came into existence in the late 1800s.
Nevertheless, Iâve been to the north and Iâve been to the south, and it all sounds beautiful to me.
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Itâs interesting that youâre writing this today. I happen to be on holiday in Tuscany and just yesterday I was listening to a few locals talking and wondering how hard it could be for foreigners to understand what they were saying! It really is the standard Italian but they use some peculiar expressions and pronounce a few letters (like c) l
in a strange way. Like:
âo heâ tuffai? Vidi il tuâ babbo he porthava i huhhiai a hasa pohâanzi!â
We are used to catch the meaning anyway, but maybe itâs not so obvious (and I noticed it because I was having a hard time recognizing a few words in Welsh when they mutate, while itâs certainly natural for more experienced Welsh speakers)
I think it is true it is the one of dialects but becoming mostly the land of accents because most of us do not speak them any more (I can understand a few but cannot speak any).
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Very interesting posts from David and Gisella. Iâm learning my Italian via duolingo website. Itâs fun but itâs nowhere near as good as SSiw - dim yn yr un stryd!
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Apart from French at school, Italian was the first language I had a go at. Even at my best, I wasnât fluent, but after several visits and a few yearsâ of lessons I could have a basic, faltering conversation. But I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and, with the exception of a back street shop assistant in Sorrento and a cafĂ© waitress in Ortesi, everybody was pleased that I wanted to try the language.
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@aran, purely an enquiry, (no pressure), is there any news about this potential course?
Iâm basking in the huge delight of having completed Welsh Level One 
and very excited about starting Level Two.
Anyway, Iâm off to Italy in Sept 2020 for a hol and would love to have the same level of conversational competence in Italian by then
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Sept 2020 - thatâs not outside the bounds of possibility⊠Italian is very high on the list of ânext things we doâ, depending partly on partnership project discussions in the next few months⊠
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Italian!!! I want to learn Italian!! I hope this happens soon. 
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Ha! Grazie COVID-19 .Iâm not getting there in Sept 2020 
Iâm learning Cornish instead for now.
Stay well all.
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Hi Aran, I was wondering if there is any news about new languages being added to SSI. I have always struggled with languages. Whilst I will never be fluent in Welsh, SSI has taken me to a level I never thought possible. Whilst continuing to develop my Welsh, I am following the Spanish lessons and I am hoping to have the opportunity to learn Italian or French as well. In these difficult times, I have found that learning languages has given me something positive to focus on. Best wishes to all SSIWers. Stay safe.
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Oh, sorry for never seeing this, Anne - and thank you for your very kind words!
Weâve got some ideas about how to get to Italian and French that we hope will be coming before too long⊠
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Canât wait! As someone said earlier, duolingo is good, but it isnât as good as SSi. My daughter and I were conversing in Cymraeg a couple of WEEKS after starting the program. Weâve been trying to learn Italian using duolingo and dictionaries, etc. for MONTHS and havenât gotten past âbuon giornoâ. OK, it isnât that bad, maybe, but almost, lol. The point is, as much as I love duolingo, the ability to actually USE the language is sooooo much faster with SSi.
Of course, nothing is as beautiful as Welsh. It may just be that we learned it so quickly because it feels magical to say dwiân siarad Cymraeg . . . .
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Wow, you must have really thrown yourselves into it - brilliant! 
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Oh, yes! We were doing the lessons three times a day, and had a rule that, if you knew the word in Welsh, you had to use Welsh, ie: âDw iân mynd y eat an apple, ond I have to wash my hands first.â 
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